Category: Band Profiles

Interview by Sarah Williams.

South London’s Lay It On The Line are a brutally fast melodic hardcore quintet, adhering to the popular double-time skate-punk template but twinning it with frenetic, furious anger and a unique combination of male and female vocals.

We spoke to vocalist Alice to learn more about this ferocious band.

Hey! We really enjoyed The Black Museum – it’s heavy as hell! How would you sum up Lay It On The Line for someone who’s just discovering you?

Pretty simply really, we’re fast melodic hardcore. I think every member of the band is a fast punk rock fan so we probably couldn’t play it much differently if we tried! Dual vocals between myself and Mike gives an extra edge to the sound as, whilst we both sing and scream, we do it quite differently.

There’s also a little sprinkling of the occult in there too – Mike is influenced quite a lot by the Process Church of the Final Judgement in his writing and this comes across in a lot of his lyrics, as well as a few song and release titles. The title The Black Museum itself is a direct reference to one of the writings from The Process that talks about how we are obsessed with day to day life and luxuries, forgetting that humanity does a lot of damage to the world.

For me, the thing that sets Lay It On The Line apart from other bands is the combination of your vocals – how did that first come about? Do you think it’s harder writing for two vocals parts?

Mike first asked me to do some guest vocals on some old tracks and it just worked. It was quite organic and when we wrote together for the album it was actually really easy – our ideas just seemed to fit together and in the case of the first track (Level Up), myself and Mike actually found that we’d written about similar experiences without even consulting each other first. Maybe it was just luck, but the whole process was remarkably easy – we’re both pretty open to the other’s ideas and not afraid to say when we don’t like something so it came together very quickly. We only finished the lyrics and arrangements in a few hours the night before we recorded!

Continue reading “Band Spotlight: Lay It On The Line [Interview]”