Having spent more than half their lives embedded in the UK hardcore scene, Pest Control are rapidly making a name for themselves as the hottest, thrashiest thing right now. Raised on a community spirit and a DIY attitude, the five friends are ready to take things to the next level with a new EP and monster tour with Knocked Loose, but they’ll always stay true to the scene they call home…
“There was one gig we played, and someone told us afterwards they heard an argument in the crowd,” Ben Jones tells Kerrang!. “He said it was between a metalhead saying we're a metal band, and a hardcore guy saying that we're a hardcore band.”
Things like this aren’t important, of course, but the drummer’s anecdote is instructive about Pest Control. Rooted in Leeds’ famously strong and active hardcore scene, their thrashy noise is as fast, furious and fabulously moshable as Anthrax or Slayer or Municipal Waste.
Said conversation actually took place while the band – Ben, singer Leah Massey, guitarists Joe Kerry and Joe Williams, and bassist Jack Padurariu – were on tour with death metal OGs Obituary earlier this year. “I think we’re metal for hardcore people,” adds Jack.
What’s not up for debate, however, is that Pest Control are one of the most exciting new noises in British heavy music. After forming in lockdown, they quickly earned a name as a smasher of a live band when gigs were allowed again, while last year’s Don’t Test The Pest debut full-length was 21 minutes of quickfire energy that managed to cram the untethered electricity of their live show into a record that furthered their growing reputation.
And the infestation continues to get everywhere. They’ve trod the stages at Bloodstock, as well as London's Roundhouse as part of Desertfest, where the traditional stoner bill also included a turn from crossover legends Suicidal Tendencies as headliners.
When they were first powering up, it didn’t take long for folk to get bitten by the bug. Even their own heroes.
“Early on, we got offered a run with Kreator and Municipal Waste,” says Leah. “It was actually Tony Foresta from Municipal Waste who was trying to get us on it. That was an insane moment, because when we started, Municipal Waste were one of the bands that inspired what we were doing, mostly. I was a bit mind blown at the time thinking, ‘How have we gone from a practice room, not being able to play live, to having someone from one of our collective favourite bands asking us to go on tour with them?!”
In more recent activity, a couple of weeks ago, the band marked the release of their excellent new Year Of The Pest EP with a return to Outbreak in Manchester, playing a riotous show on the legendary hardcore shindig’s main stage as part of Outbreak Autumn. As long time patrons of the fest both on and off stage (“Between all of us, we’ve played every Outbreak in various bands,” says Joe Kerry), it was a marker not just of how far things have gone for themselves already, but for the scene that nurtured them and their contemporaries who make things happen.
“I've been going to Outbreak for 10 years-plus now maybe,” says Leah. “To see it grow from what it was initially to this, it just shows the place that hardcore is at at the moment.”
“That was definitely the best Outbreak that we've ever done,” says Joe Kerry. “That was our third time there, and in the top five Pest Control gigs that we've ever done. The sense of possibilities now is really exciting. Case in point: when we first started, we joked about being on the front cover of Kerrang!, and now we’re doing this interview!
“To see all this happening,” he smiles, “it’s insane.”
Before Pest Control, everyone in the band had a years-long hardcore habit. Leah remembers being 16 and becoming a regular at show in Leeds venue Boom, where “I would go to any show that was on, even if I hadn't checked out the band playing before, because it was a fiver.”
“That was the first venue that I went to where I felt, ‘This is something that I want to go and spend my weekends doing, and can get involved in,’” she says. “I felt a bit lost in terms of what I was into and what I wanted to do, hobby-wise. I don't play an instrument, I don't take photos, I didn't really do anything. But [hardcore] felt like something that I could play a part in, in some way. So, after a couple of years of being involved in hardcore, I started putting on a few shows for mates’ bands and people coming over. It was just nice to feel part of something like that, because that was the first time that I felt it in my teenage life.”
For Joe Kerry, a longtime metal fan with a taste for Metallica and Judas Priest (“There’s a video of Priest on the Painkiller tour in 1991, and I swear to God, Rob Halford’s doing a two-step!”), other than a bit of Black Flag, hardcore hadn’t much entered his sphere until he went to a Trash Talk show at Joseph’s Well.
“I remember seeing Lee [Spielman, Trash Talk singer] punching people in the head and people moshing harder than I'd ever seen before,” he laughs. “It actually scared me at first. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a bit too much for me. I just like Judas Priest, what the hell's going on?’ But then I went away to uni, and became aware that my home city of Leeds had a really good grindcore scene, and that [was my way into it]. I didn't go straight into hardcore, it was hardcore-adjacent DIY stuff. That’s how I met Ben, and we bonded over our love of crossover thrash, and then gradually made my way closer and closer into hardcore, then met Leah and we formed the band.”
Joe Williams and Ben actually moved up to Leeds from South Wales (“Where the scene at one point was as good as Leeds, everyone would come through”) and St Albans respectively, partly on account of the music. On the latter town’s scene, the drummer remembers at 16 years old going to a video shoot for local hardcore heroes Your Demise, and realising this was something different than he was used to.
“In the first 10 seconds, someone's two front teeth got knocked out!” he recalls. “I’d never seen a hardcore crowd before. I was like, ‘This is fucking insane.’”
The band started with the idea “to do a hardcore band with thrash bits”, according to Ben. Whatever it was called, they were taking their first steps in a DIY musical world to which they’d all become a part. “One of the first shows we ever played was to about 20 people in a really tiny practice space that we can barely fit in,” says Leah.
It was as Don’t Test The Pest dropped that they noticed something was going on. People weren’t just coming to the shows, they were actually on board with what Pest Control were doing. At the album release show, something came into proper focus.
“There was one show that was the first time I realised that people knew our songs and liked us,” says Ben. “It was a packed show, and people were singing along.”
“You could hear everyone singing the songs over the music,” adds Joe Williams. “It was so intense as well, because it was a super-intimate show. So, when the people were in our faces and you could hear everyone screaming the lyrics back at us, that was when I thought, ‘Fucking Hell, this is insane.’ That’s the first time I’ve ever felt anything like that.”
As Pest Control have grown and done more, they’ve kept these roots with them, and noted the difference as they’ve found themselves at bigger bashes. It’s become even more noticeable with the rise and rise of hardcore in the past few years.
“I think for people joining it now, who may have not been into hardcore before, and they go into the first show, they’ll notice that one, there’s rarely barriers so you're you can be up there with the band as close as you want to be, which is a lot different to bigger shows,” says Leah. “And two, bands will just walk about. They'll be selling their own merch. If you're someone who only goes to bigger arena shows, you're not really going to get that.
“And because there's no disconnect from the band onstage to the people in the audience, it's all one unified scene together. I think once people go there and they think, ‘Oh, those people on stage are just like me,’ it gets that interest going. That's what inspires these people to want to start bands and do things, because the accessibility of it seems so much more than it does on anything on a bigger scale, where you don't really see bands in the smoking area.”
“At metal festivals, everyone seems to stick to the green room,” says Joe Kerry. “But then at Outbreak, we're all out and about, talking to our mates, hanging out with everyone.”
“There’s elements of that in underground metal as well, but it doesn't scale up as well,” says Jack. “You have stuff like tape trading, and a strong thing in the underground of people doing art and promotions, but it doesn't seem to have the same reach, or the same kind of community feel.“
“It’s self-sufficient as well,” says Ben. “If you want someone involved to put a show on, then it'll be someone in hardcore that you go to. It's not going to be just some miscellaneous music promoter.”
“I think it's the community aspect,” says Joe Williams. “Obviously the crazy shows are sick because it's a spectacle to watch. It's enjoyable to go to the shows where everyone's jumping all over each other. But part of it is the community aspect of meeting people who are like you. Where I'm from, there was not many people who were like me. But then when I started going to gigs, I realised these are my people.”
“When I started going to gigs, I realised these are my people”
One crucial thing about what’s happening in hardcore at the moment – from the numbers being done by Turnstile and Knocked Loose, to the increasing possibilities to fests like Outbreak – is that it feels like its bringing a lot of the underground attitude with it. It’s what makes the difference between selling and selling out.
For Pest Control, this came into play back in June. Having been booked for a slot at Download, as the date came closer, they felt uneasy upon learning about the festival’s partnership with Barclays, and the bank's ties (however tangled) to defence companies supplying the Israeli government. Tested, the Pest decided they simply couldn’t do the show.
“It was a scary thing to do for us, in a way, but it wasn’t really a hard decision,” says Joe Williams. “For me personally, my brother had bought tickets and was coming up with my niece. But then I thought, ‘Hang on, there's bigger things than that to think about.’ We slept on it, woke up in the morning, and still thought, ‘Of course we're pulling out of this. It's the right thing to do.’”
Before making the announcement, the band texted their mates in Speed and Scowl to give them the heads up, both of whom also cancelled their appearances, along with Ithaca. Having thought that nobody would even notice they’d dropped off, the news quickly snowballed. Comments piled up, everyone wanted to talk to the band. A friend sent them a screengrab of news in Israel talking about them.
“It wasn't until later that day, once we'd already announced, and all these articles were going out. And then I was like, ‘Oh, shit, maybe this is quite a big thing,’” says Ben.
“I've never been to Download, so I didn't really know the scale of how big it was,” says Leah. “I couldn't comprehend how many people were going to be in the comments. Within an hour, I realised this is going to a big thing. I had sleepless nights thinking about all these comments. I really found it hard to kind of switch off from it. And it was never that I doubted that we'd made the right decision or anything. It was just a lot, and it was a really overwhelming time.
“It was constant, and then we were getting hit up by Channel Four and the BBC for interviews. We didn’t do them, but it felt like a really intense week.”
“In the first 10 seconds, someone’s two front teeth got knocked out!”
A benefit gig for Palestine was organised in Birmingham featuring the bands who had pulled out. It sold out almost instantly. Further afield, as well as Download cutting the deal with Barclaycard, the bank themselves eventually backed off from some of its defence-related activities. Joe says this is vindicating, but even if it hadn’t precipitated such a difference, the band did right by themselves, and didn’t step into something they weren’t comfortable with.
“In the hardcore scene, there's so many fundraiser gigs. So, how can you go from playing a fundraiser gig with a Palestine flag and raising this money, to then doing something that kind of funds the opposite?” questions Leah. “It was never an attack on Download as a festival or anyone involved in it. I think people think when you get festival offers, you look at it and it says, ‘By the way, this is sponsored by Barclays,’ and it's not. You just don't know. So when it did get brought to our attention by people tagging us in that Bands Boycott Barclays page, we did think, ‘Oh, what do we do?’ But when we made that decision, it was easy. Why wouldn't we do this? And then other people doing it was nice for us to see and for people in hardcore to see, that solidarity.”
If things have been bright for Pest Control so far, the future is positively scorching. Next year, they’re heading out with Knocked Loose on their biggest UK shows to date, winding up at London's O2 Academy Brixton (a sure indicator of the scene’s current fortunes if ever it were needed). Then there’s stuff they can’t tell us about on the record. Also massive.
Even on Year Of The Pest, these newfound possibilities have subconsciously seeped in, now the band know what works best on a bigger stage.
“For me, lyrically and vocally, it was interesting to play a couple of big shows and then smaller shows and seeing what people responded to,” says Leah. “Whether it was making something more catchy, or whatever, it definitely came through.”
This is all very good news. And, as one of the best new bands in the UK, very richly deserved. But, like Knocked Loose, part of what makes Pest Control so cool is the feeling that, the bigger places they go and the more they do, they’re still taking the underground, that realness, with them. Because when you’re as up to your neck in something as they are in their scene, it’s hard to do anything else.
“I think just because we've done it for so long, and we've been involved with it for so long, it's our life anyway,” offers Joe Kerry. “Even if in two years’ time, everyone stops caring about hardcore, we're still going to do it, because that's what we've always done. We're not jumping on the bandwagon now because it's getting big. I've done it since I was 16 and I'm 33 now. But I do find myself looking around sometimes and going, ‘How did it get this big? How did it get to this point?’”
So, 2024: The Year Of The Pest?
“It's been amazing,” grins Joe. “But for me, it feels like The Year Of The Pest is what's stretching out in front of us. I can’t wait.”
Us neither.
Pest Control will tour the UK and Europe with Knocked Loose, Basement and Harms Way in March 2025 – get your tickets now.
Read this next:
