Meet alternative, punk, grunge band SOBER from South London. I feel like a lot of musicians love to try and imitate the prior iconic punk bands but SOBER aren’t one of them. Their sound is so raw and they are making music to not only express themselves but to have fun; that’s what making music is about. Check out the long awaited interview with two o the trio below.
Name: Louis Bourlet, Matthew Spurrell
Age: 18, 18
City: London
Who are SOBER?
Louis – “We are a Hardcore Punk/ Grunge band from around Bexley. My main hobbies are playing guitar, politics and gaming. If I’m not writing songs or procrastinating, I’m mostly listening to music, cooking, watching films or hanging out with Matt.”
Matthew – “We’re a hardcore punk band from South-East London; we’ve evolved a lot in the past few years and it’s been loads of fun playing gigs over the past year. I spend a lot of my time gaming, working, playing bass, or just chilling.”
How did you three meet?
Louis -” Me and Matt met through school and have been good friends for a while and since we needed a bassist we agreed that I’d teach him some stuff. When our drummer quit, we found Greta on one of those ‘find X musician’ websites, we had a practice and got on pretty well and now she’s our fully-fledged drum girl!”
Matthew – “I met Louis through school and became good friends with him, and we just met Greta when she agreed to be our drummer.”
How did you come up with the name SOBER?
Louis – “It started out as a sort of joke, like we’d come on stage and say “hey we’re sober” and people would be really confused. We thought that’d be funny, even though it probably isn’t. In the end it was between ‘SOBER’ and ‘Noose,’ but SOBER just had a nice ring to it so we thought we’d stick with it.”
Matthew – “I don’t really remember; we were looking for a short, punchy name that could describe us. In the end we settled on ‘SOBER,’ deliberately because it doesn’t describe us very well.”
Have you always been musical?
Louis – “Yeah, I grew up around my dad playing guitar and I’d always loved guitar solos and learning the words to some obscure 17 minute songs. When I was about 10, I got some crappy strat-copy and went on from there, but I’ve always loved music.”
Matthew – “I have always been somewhat musical, but it was only a couple of years ago that I really got into the punk scene. Then about a year ago, Louis offered to teach me how to play bass so that we could form a band, and I’ve put a lot of my time into getting better for the band; I think it’s paid off.”
Who are your biggest musical influences?
Louis – “Probably Black Flag, Nirvana, Green Day and FIDLAR. I have a wide variety of influences it’s basically impossible to say really, anything from mathcore to blues to classical and I like to think I take a bit from a lot of different genres when writing. We’ve been likened to Black Flag and Nirvana a lot so they probably come through the most in our songs.”
Matthew – ” I get my style mostly from both hardcore punk bands like Minor Threat and Dead Kennedys, with their heavy and fast riffs, and from 90’s punk like Green Day and Nirvana, with their slightly more melodic bass line that has a larger role in the song.”
If you could collab with anyone who would it be?
Louis – “Probably Nirvana or FIDLAR, I’ve always admired Nirvana and FIDLAR have this real ‘I don’t care’ attitude that seems pretty cool.”
Matthew – “I would love to play with FIDLAR, I really enjoy their attitude and fast paced style and I can imagine that it would be a lot of fun to be a part of it.”
When can we expect new music from you?
Louis – “Well, we’ve got an EP ‘Mental Decline’ that’s just come out which we’re super excited for people to hear. Apart from that we’re hoping to possibly release another EP either late this year or early next year- most likely another 4-track.”
Matthew – “We just released our 4-track EP, ‘Mental Decline,‘ and I think people are going to love it. Hopefully we’ll be recording new stuff asap, I can’t wait to share what we’re working on with everyone.”
What’s next for you?
Louis – “Onward and upwards hopefully! We’re looking to play some bigger London venues later this year and we’re gonna work hard to build a fan base and get our name out there. For now though, we’re working on getting a new set list ready for the end of the year and getting it super tight.”
Matthew – “Next we’re looking to get really good with our current set and looking to play as much as we can, possibly looking to London in the future for our gigs, we’ll see.”
This could be potentially the newest modern punk band to come out of this generation. Let’s make them ICONS!
https://www.facebook.com/sober.rocks/
https://www.instagram.com/sober.band/
https://soberband.bandcamp.com/releases
By Destiny Crawford-Corri
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