Sounding somewhat like Ronker bench-pressing mclusky whilst Pissed Jeans spots approvingly, Man Band’s debut LP – suitably titled Strong Man – releases at a pivotal time during the culture-wide conversation regarding masculinity. As we all discuss the public dawn of the manosphere and how the stereotypical connotations of masculinity are both outdated and changing with our modern world, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to gauge just what masculinity entails in our current Western culture.
There’s no denying that toxic masculinity is rampant, but simultaneously, its non-toxic aspects are becoming flexible with the public understanding that gender binaries are outdated and unfit for purpose. It’s arguable that the notion of masculinity has been warped to become something no longer related to gender, but ideology. What Man Band provide with Strong Man are personal experiences with such masculinity.
With the band featuring Chainy Rabbit and Daniel Sargent of OHHMS as well as members Aaron Jaygo, Dan Bigwood, and Jim Davies, here, Man Band offer six songs that detail lived-in experiences of grappling with masculinity. There are moments of grief, shame, violence and humour. But perhaps the most encompassing aspects of Strong Man are feelings of self-awareness and vulnerability.
This is an unflinching, darkly sardonic record, one that’s delivered via a fluid sound that takes cues from everything from post-punk to doom in order to truly detail the mercurial and personal nature of the stories that bind it. If anything, it feels like a lyrical outpouring of emotion that the music itself adapts and flows with, ultimately becoming something as weighty, malleable and chaotic as the central topic that binds it. It doesn’t conclude that aforementioned conversation regarding masculinity, but instead offers a lived-in voice that adds to it.
With that in mind, and with Strong Man released tomorrow via Faith Healer Records, stream the record exclusively early and dig into the track-by-track below.
Dane Valley
Chainy: ‘Dane Valley’ was the first song written for Man Band. Our first practice was myself, Daniel and Joe (original drummer, we’ve had a few now, 4 I think, we are good at losing them). We wrote a song at that practice that felt very emo, which I didn’t really want to be the direction of the band, So I recorded a demo of the kind of music I was thinking of looking back we should have talked about it before we started. Dan and Aaron had already written a lot of riffs that were later used throughout the album, but Dane Valley was specifically written for this project.
For legal reasons, I can’t go into the details of the lyrics in much depth, but in short, I had £50 stolen from me in Dane Valley, which, growing up, was considered a rough area of Margate. I later returned to the same park, hoping to find the guy and politely ask for it back, but he sadly wasn’t there. I have heard that he’s in prison, so I guess that’s karma in some kind of way.
I wrote Dane Valley with the intentions of our own introduction to the band as well as an opening track for an album. I wanted each member to come in at a different times to each other, slowly building to a heavy chorus. I’d always felt in our previous band, OHHMS, our full dynamics were loud, very loud and far too loud, so it was important for me to introduce quiet parts to this new project. Recording the music video was very embarrassing, in the middle of winter, topless in a very public area, screaming about how great I am was probably karma for starting a band called Man Band.
Daniel: I enjoyed watching you freeze. The rest of us were laughing at you.
My Dads Bigger Than Your Dad
Chainy: Probably my favourite song on the album, and goes down well at gigs. The song is the reality of fighting. People either fear it or get excited by it. You need arrogance to walk into a fight believing you’ll win, and even if you do win, you will get hurt as well. When I was a kid, I was scared of fighting and would lose fights, but my dad apparently hasn’t ever lost a fight, and both he and my grandad got into a lot of fights with people in Margate in the 80s. There is a sense of pride of even if I lose, my dad will still beat your dad which is what influenced the song, though the song goes deeper into my own modern confidence I’ve grown about fighting. My personal idea of fighting is focused more on self-defence, but still with the arrogance a bully would have while searching for a fight. An ex UFC fighter was threatened with getting jumped at a hotel, and his response was, “if you and your guys jumped me at my hotel, you’ll quickly find out you didn’t bring enough friends”, which I used for the end line of the song.
Daniel: Defo one of my fave songs to play live, has a savage chorus but with weird groovy bits slotted around it. I don’t know if Chainy knows, but I met his Dad in a corner shop in Margate and I only found out it was his Dad because a picture of Chainy fell out of his wallet, and I picked it up and gave it back to him. Our Dads did actually have a fight once, it was a draw.
The Nutter
Chainy: This song is about an embarrassing time in my life. I once started seeing a girl a few years back, who had lied to me about her current relationship status. I was led to believe her ex wouldn’t leave her alone, and they had broken up a few months before. I found out, far too late, that they were still together and he was trying to save their relationship. I found out by him phoning me up and threatened to stab me in the face. This went on for a few days and I spoke to the girl’s friends to find out more details about the situation I had gotten into.
Eventually, I agreed to meet up with this “nutter” for drinks and to talk it out. I assumed it was walking into a trap, but he showed up by himself, gave me a hug and got me a drink. We talked for a few hours, and the more I heard his side of the story, the worse I felt. At the end of the conversation, I promised to leave both of them alone. A few months later, the girl had lied about me getting back with her, which I never did, and he was threatening me down the phone again. I learnt through mutual friends, they were both as bad as each other. So even though “The Nutter” was originally a reference to him, it summed up both their behaviours, and I’m still ashamed that I was involved with either of them. The outro riff, which is as long as the song itself, came from the drummer not stopping playing it once at practice, and we all joked that we should keep it that length. It’s fun live because I have 3/4 minutes to climb on things as I don’t have a mic holding me back.
Daniel: Chainy, your whole life is like this story.
Captain Sensible
Chainy: Lyrically I wanted to write something I’d never done before, a song about sex. I’ve never been motivated by sex, as a teenager I’d spend all my time at home, alone, learning my guitar while my friends were out, trying to find girls. But being a huge fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I wanted to task myself with writing something that’s both graphic but cleverly put together. I don’t like classing my vocal style as rap, but it is for sure a very 90s style rap, but over 7/4, which I thought would be a nice challenge.
At the time, I had just started a new relationship with a girl who lived 4 hours north of me, and a lot of the lyrics reflect that. I also like embarrassing her at gigs by introducing the song as, “this song’s about my girlfriend’s arsehole” which she’s never really appreciated as much as I thought she may have. The song does finish with love, which was important to me as the song is pure lust until then. I believe it’s perfectly fine to be dirty and sexual, as long as it’s coming from a relationship built on love. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable writing such a depraved song based on a fling. It had to be a deeper relationship than that.
Daniel: I didn’t know this song was in 7 until Chainy told me, I’m still not sure about time signatures and don’t do it on purpose; I just like to find a groove. The main riff was originally written for our previous band OHHMS, I wanted to do something more chilled out than our normal stuff, but it kept being beefed up with power chords and chugging so I pulled it and kept it locked in my brain for later. Originally I wanted to play the lead part but Aaron the other guitar player, did it better so he stole it from me. Dan (bass) came up with the chill bass parts, and It was the first time he had written something of his own in the band, fits it perfectly, exactly what the song needed.
Men Don’t Cry
This song was a combination of ideas from Dan and Aaron as well as myself. They had the riffs written for their previous band How To Die In Space and I had specifically wanted a verse that was vocals, drums and feedback. Lyrically, it is on similar lines to ‘My Dad Is Bigger Than Your Dad’, but without the humour. The song is about the thoughts that run through your head in the middle of a fight: fear, adrenaline, confidence and the lack of consequence. The main influence for the lyrics came from a kickboxing match i had when I came face to face with someone clearly more advanced than myself. At the start of the fight I had my bell rung and got repeatedly kicked in the stomach. I wanted to quit, but I pushed through.
Towards the end of the match, I noticed the confidence left my opponent. He’d literally worn himself out, trying to knock me down. Even though in the back of my head I was having a bad time, I kept my composure and wouldn’t stop walking forwards. For whatever reason he must have thought this was my game plan all along and started to lose confidence the more he got tired. He won on points, which I didn’t protest, but it wasn’t until I saw his next fight, where he completely destroyed the guy, that I realised my fake confidence had gotten into his head. Before our match, I introduced myself to him and we spoke for 10/20 minutes very casually about ourselves. We could have been enemies or brothers but we were going to fight. I came off as someone who wasn’t scared of anything, but really, in the back of my head I was thinking, “this is going to fucking hurt”.
Daniel: This song hurts my pointy finger to play. We use thick strings so we can play in B. I don’t think that’s as bad as being punched tho, but I haven’t been in a fight since school, so I’m not sure.
Ian’s Song
Chainy: Even though every song on Strong Man is personal and about being a stereotypical “man” this song is a different type of personal and lacks any strength. 10 years ago my best friend Ian died of a drug overdose, and this is my goodbye to him. Even though this is my most personal song on the album, it’s also the one I like doing the least. Not because it’s too personal, it just physically hurts to play. For whatever reason, screaming “they now know, what we know” over and over really hurts my head. So much so, recording it in the studio gave me a massive migraine. I also recorded the whole album in one 5-hour session, so I was asking for it really.
Lyrically, I reflect on who Ian was and who he is to me. We were in our 20s yet we did things most people never will, and how I’d hate for him to see how the world turned out. At Ian’s funeral, I apologised to his family because deep down I have always felt a huge responsibility for his death. I get on well with his family and they all love me a lot, so they said I didn’t need to feel that way, but even now, I still feel like I know what I know. My last line in the song, “no one kills my friends quite like I do” reflects that. I always felt a responsibility, like I was the devil on his shoulders that led him to an early grave. No one blames me for it, so I need to instead. Luckily, I had a recording of Ian reading a poem on my computer we recorded one evening, so I thought there would be no better way to close the song/album with Ian speaking for himself. He was always my biggest fan of whatever I did musically, so I know he would be honoured to have made it onto an album in some way.
Daniel: The chorus to this was actually the chorus to an OHHMS song that we recorded for the Exist album, but the mother fuckers kicked me out before we finished recording it, so they wrote a new far inferior chorus. I had forgotten all about it until one practice we were struggling to get something to fit, and all of a sudden it popped into my head and fitted perfectly. I love the brutal honesty of the lyrics in this song
Chainy: Strong Man reflects the duality of the male architect. Male strength is both equally praised and viewed as toxic by opposing parties, and I personally felt there was enough truth in both to write an album based on it. We’re hoping to keep this kind of theme ongoing, with our next album being focused on man’s relationship with God, both good and bad. We’ll keep this going until eventually we run out of ideas and start a new band. We all have to do something till we die.
Daniel: I think Chainy means male architype, an architect is someone who designs buildings.
Strong Man is released April 17th via Faith Healer Records.