There has never been a more prevalent time to stand up for who you are, what you stand for and who you love. There is no wrong or right when it comes to someone's sexuality or gender roles within modern society and the more people that choose to use their voices and the stages they have been given to spread that message the better. Enter the band Uncertainty.
A self-labelled Hardcore Queer-tet from Bristol in South West England. Uncertainity have been using their music as a vehicle to spread their LGBTQIA2+ message to as many people as possible and refuse to bow to any predetermined notions about what is 'normal." Last year, they released Creation of a New Normal, their debut EP.
I caught up with Uncertainty vocalist Tim to get an inside perspective on the current state of the hardcore scene and what can be done to spread the message of inclusivity.
The band recently played its biggest show to date at 2000 Trees festival. How was that experience for you?
2000 Trees was such a surreal experience, but one I don't think any of us will forget anytime soon. Personally I have never played a stage that big and the morning of the show I was just full of anxiety and stress. To make matters worse literally two seconds before we started Isaac - our drummer - who is usually the cool head among us leant over to me and said "I'm feeling nervous now." I just said to him can you not right now I already feel like I'm about to throw up.
Once we got going it was just like muscle memory and we all really enjoyed ourselves, and we were so grateful that so many people came down so early to check us out as the tent was pretty full from the get go. Which we weren't expecting and was really cool to see.
As a band you make a tremendous effort to push for the rights, inclusion and progression of all things LGBTQ+2A. Just how important is the message to you on a personal note?
Massively important, as someone who identifies as non-binary and queer the issues which are impacting LGBTQIA2+ people is something that affects me and many of my loved ones on a daily basis. When I was exploring my gender identity, it was the support and advice of other people who had experienced similar things to myself which gave me that confidence to embrace that side of myself.
So now that I have the opportunity to stand in front of crowds with a microphone I am not going to take that opportunity for granted and I will continue to push for the rights of LGBTQIA2+ people. I am also very open about talking about how things are impacting LGBTQIA2+ people so if I can do even the smallest thing to give people a better understanding or to give someone a voice who otherwise wouldn't feel comfortable in doing that then I will.
What is so worrying at the moment is that our government and other governments around the world seem to be of this mindset that they want to take away access to services or just basic human rights from LGBTQIA2+ people without thinking about the consequences and exactly how much harm that is going to do to people. Or because of what people read in the media and the idea of pronouns being "woke" is the agenda which is being pushed all the time makes it sound like these are new issues. When in fact if you actually look at history books there has been LGBTQIA2+ people representation throughout history, we just aren't told about a lot of it because a part of society still sees it as "wrong".
So being able to have the band as an outlet to put the anger and frustration of not just myself, but the worldwide community, feels important.
Is there more that the hardcore scene at large can do?
Thankfully, hardcore does seem to be (as it always has been) ahead of the curve in terms of representation and support for LGBTQIA2+ people. It is by no means perfect but as the counterculture that hardcore has always been, people in the scene have for the most part always been really strong allies for LGBTQIA2+ people.
What I would love to see is a bit of integration with some of the more "traditional" hardcore lineups having more queer representation to them. There are pockets of really cool promoters here in the UK who focus on putting on queer lineups and it is always a really cool space to be a part of. But at some of the bigger hardcore shows and festivals you don't tend to see the same level of representation or at least of bands who outwardly identify as queer hardcore bands, if that makes sense.
Also, we know how great the hardcore community are at rallying round to support causes for the most marginalised people or people in crisis. I would sometimes like to see that same level of energy extended to LGBTQIA2+ causes. That's not to say it doesn't happen but there are some real issues at the moment where grass roots organisations are trying to support LGBTQIA2+ folk and the support of the hardcore community could go a long way as well.
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Creation of a New Normal has been out for a while now, can you tell us how it all came together?
Everything about the release was extremely DIY, our guitarist Kyle recorded it all in our practice space in Bristol over a two day period and then had our friend at Slow God Audio mixed and mastered it for us.
In terms of the tracks themselves and how they came together, Kyle is our predominant song writer and they will generally bring ideas to the room and then as a collective we flesh it out. Once all the music is done, I will then add lyrics to it based on the tempo and song structure based on what I have written - I have a notebook full of songs which I then adapt in the practice space.
As we had two of the tracks written for our initial demo we put out we knew we wanted to re-record those to do them justice and then the other tracks were just what we had written up until that point and we wanted to get some new music out into the world, as we had played a lot of shows up until that point.
Can you explain a little about the themes discussed in the songs?
A lot of the basis of the songs come from a frustration of the systems which fail us. Whether that's- governmental systems or societal systems which we are meant to follow. When we started Uncertainty as a group we kinda agreed that we wanted a strong message of anti-authority, pro LGBTQIA2+ and pro vegan and that is the basis of a good 75% of the record.
From previous bands I have been in I wrote from a place of speaking from my heart and what my experiences were. But with Uncertainty, even though I am still singing about my experiences, they are based in a more community voice way and I really wanted to portray that this isn't just my struggle as a queer identifying vegan, but thousands of others who are also experiencing this same level of disregard for our basic human rights and the rights of every living thing.
What does the future look like for Uncertainty?
We are going to be putting out some new music hopefully by the end of the summer and then we are going to start writing some more new material. We are also going to be embarking on our first full UK tour before the end of the year which we are really excited about and that will hopefully be announced in the next month or so.
We also really want to get back over to mainland Europe next year and maybe do a bit of a longer run than we did earlier in the year, so that is what we are looking at on the horizon for 2026.
Do you have a message for the people reading this? Do you have any particular charities or organisations that you would like to push?
Just thank you to everyone who has supported us up until this point. The world is a shit place for everyone right now but the fact we can come together as a hardcore community and actually effect change is something we will continue to strive to do. Support queer hardcore and speak up when LGBTQIA2+ need their voices amplified.
In terms of charities and organisations a selfish plug would be my day job working for an LGBTQ+ led organisation called The Diversity Trust.
But also the following:
- https://transactual.org.uk/
- https://notaphase.org/
- https://genderedintelligence.co.uk/
- https://goodlawproject.org/
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Uncertainity on social media: Instagram
Tagged: uncertainty
