You can’t talk about Nottingham rock moggies Haggard Cat without first making mention of the band they came from. The infamously chaotic, hardcore four-piece HECK were best known for their destructive, sometimes A&E inducing performances. “There were certainly several trips to the hospital,” says vocalist and guitarist Matt Reynolds. “I thought performing as a duo with Haggard Cat would be nerve-wracking, but it’s not, perhaps because there’s less of a sense that I might die!”
Not so much rising from the ashes of HECK, but emerging from the sidelines, Matt and drummer Tom Marsh have decided to make Haggard Cat their full-time project. “We actually formed way back in 2011. Heck had been going for about a year, and our bass player had left to go to Copenhagen for a few months, and we were bored stiff. We were sat in a pub one day, and someone asked if we wanted to play around the corner at Nottingham Rock City. Of course we wanted to play Rock City! So we winged it, and that’s how it all began.”
“Haggard Cat became this little Easter egg – we didn’t go out of our way to play gigs, but if someone in our hometown who knew we existed asked us to play, we wouldn’t turn it down. We never took it that seriously until the last couple of years when it got a little out of hand, and we realised people actually liked what we were doing, so we decided to put our all into it and we’ve made an album we’re really proud of.”
It’s a blessing for listeners that the duo decided to finally unleash the beast that is Haggard Cat upon the world. Their album ‘Challenger’ is a glorious aural assault of bluesy rock ‘n’ roll, a down and dirty stormer of a record that is just as powerful and passionate as anything HECK produced. “I think we still manage to convey the same energy that HECK did, but it’s more subtle, and that’s what excites me now,” explains Matt
‘Challenger’ was first teased last year with the unveiling of single (and album opener) ‘The Patriot’, a rollercoaster ride of fuzzy garage rock energy and face-shredding riffs. Appetites were whetted further with the release of foot-stomping call to action ‘American Graffiti’ in January. ‘Challenger’ technically isn’t Haggard Cat’s debut album, though their first offering, ‘Charger’, was very much a DIY affair.
“We released it ages ago, we’ve never advertised it, we just had a bunch of songs and decided to go into the studio for a day on two hours sleep after playing a gig with HECK the night before, and just put it on Bandcamp for free. For ‘Challenger’ we decided to go into a much nicer place, and we spent a week at The Nave in Leeds with our friend Matt Peel perfecting the songs. When we’d done it, we realised ‘right, this isn’t a joke anymore, this sounds like a real band!’ It all suddenly felt very real.”
Things got even more real for Haggard Cat when they signed to the legendary Earache Records. “They tend to be associated with more extreme metal bands, they signed the likes of Napalm Death and Evile, they’ve got such a big history, and they’re from Nottingham like us. We noticed over the last few years they’ve signed more bluesy, rock‘n’roll acts, bands like Blackberry Smoke and The Temperance Movement that we’d fit on a bill with, so we thought maybe they’d dig what we’re doing. Luckily they loved it, and they’re incredible people, so we’re very happy.”
Haggard Cat has also given Matt the opportunity to be more real when it comes to lyrics, particularly when it comes to the political environment. Just from name alone, it’s apparent ‘American Graffiti’ is probably going to reflect upon the current state of world affairs. Whereas HECK lyrics tended to explore “relationships and not being a very nice person”, this is a chance to express a different kind of frustration.
“‘American Graffiti’ was written at a time when (now) President Trump was running for office which just seemed absurd! The fact that anyone was taking him seriously and the fear that it might become a reality, and now here we are. Weirdly enough, as we recorded it, that’s when the Brexit vote came in, every instance in that song rang true with all these bonkers things happening in the political world. It seemed like we should actually pass comment and this felt like the right time to get it off our chests. There’s some serious cosmic imbalance!”
“Lyrically there’s definitely a sense of futility to ‘Challenger’, a frustration at feeling powerless, but there’s also backwards love songs on there, songs about infidelity, not getting what you want, it’s a little bit of everything that made us tick the two years we were writing it. We write about what we know; it blows my mind the amount of clichéd lyrics bands write because they’ve heard it in another song and think it’s cool.”
So how are Haggard Cat finding the experience of playing just as a two-piece, without the death-defying stage antics? “With HECK, the red mist would descend during a show, and you’d come off and be like ‘what the hell just happened?!’ But if we’d kept doing that we’d have started to resent it and resent each other. We had an amazing time, but we had to burn out bright and fast.”
“I like the idea of making Haggard Cat songs as powerful as we can, and an audience going home and remembering the songs we’ve played, remembering the choruses, and actually listening to the songs, as opposed to just watching the chaos unfold on stage.”
Taken from the April issue of Upset – order a copy or subscribe below. Haggard Cat’s debut album ‘Challenger’ is out 20th April.
