It doesn't take a musical genius to understand that the first thing you have to establish when you start a band is what style you're going to play. Just don't tell that to the guys in Beretta, a new UK-based hardcore band. "We were initially going to start a doom band and had a couple jam sessions here and there writing some slower dark stuff, but we never really went anywhere with it," says Alex, the vocalist, who was formerly in Curbstomp SCBD.
"With Curbstomp SCBD breaking up, I wanted to keep making music. I had been listening to a lot of All Out War, Kickback, and Arkangel at the time, and I had the idea of taking the metallic hardcore sound and making it our own, adding some influence of doom bands like Primal Man, as well as newer hardcore and beatdown. We had a little writing session with our guitarist, Kurt, and drummer, Ben, and it all went from there."
The way I found out about Beretta was through Jacques of another great UK band, Balance, who Alex shares my love for them. "Balance are one of my favorite bands at the moment. Jacques and I started Curbstomp together with a few mates! UKHC is great at the moment. I'm seeing a lot more people at shows, a lot of new bands, and more people getting involved. My favorite thing about this era is it seems a lot of bands are bringing their own thing to the music, which is great. There was a whole load of new bands a few years back that mostly sounded like slight variations of the same thing, but now we got bands taking influence from literally everything from Smashing Pumpkins to hip-hip to shit like Emmure. I cant remember the last time I went to a show and where two bands sounded similar.
"Unfortunately, we do see a lot of the bullshit crabs in a bucket mentality, a lot of beef between different scenes, etc., but definitely less so than before. That aside, we got magazines like Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, and probable more I cant think of right now, covering hardcore shows, which is nuts. It's definitely on the rise."
Beretta recently dropped their debut EP, and the cover art features a painting by late Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński. "I guess the artwork chose us, as cheesy as it sounds. We had a lot of designs we picked out that never seemed to stick. We did have another design that was the final but we came across Beksiński’s paintings and loved the dark feel to them. We spent a solid day digging through a load of paintings he had done and trying out different things. As soon as we saw the painting we used, it was settled that it was the one. It definitely fits the feel of the music.
I know that the EP just came out, but I ask Alex if Beretta has been hit up by any record labels yet for a future release. "We’ve got a lot of material both finished and in progress at the moment. We will either be doing a longer EP next and then setting to work on a full-length or just going straight in with a full length, either way there will definitely be one in the pipeline. We’re in the process of ordering physical copies of our self-titled EP and will be sending a few to Rucktion Records in London, Filled With Hate Records in Germany, and Guillotine Records in Leicester. We’ve only really approached them for distro at this stage but we are planning to get in talks about a next release through a label soon!"
Download the Beretta EP on Bandcamp and follow the band on Facebook.
Tagged: beretta, new artist focus
