Meet Birmingham punks Flesh Creep, ‘friendly people that make unfriendly music’
With new EP ‘Glimmer’ out now, the hardcore band discuss putting positivity in the world, band practices becoming therapy sessions, and starting a heavy band in the “home of metal”
Six years on, most lockdown projects have gone one of two ways. For every sourdough starter and yoga mat sitting untouched in a cupboard, some spur-of-the-moment creations from that period remain fruitful today. One of these is Flesh Creep, the raucous Birmingham hardcore band who delightfully describe themselves as “friendly people that make unfriendly music”.
Forming out of the ashes of a host of other bands in the Birmingham hardcore scene, vocalist Tom Bienkowski, bassist Jack Miles, guitarists Sam Bishop and Matt Trollope and drummer Jim Fletcher started a band built on atmosphere over ability. “I actually didn’t know if Matt was good at guitar or not,” Tom smiles. “I just knew that he owned a guitar and I liked him.”
The band’s debut album, We Need You to Bleed, saw them crash through 11 bone-rattling songs in just 22 minutes, putting the world to rights with uncompromisingly political lyrics and music that was just as potent.
The band have now released follow-up EP Glimmer, pushing their sound forwards to encompass both their heaviest and catchiest moments so far. It also sees lyricist Tom lean towards personal messages to interact with his political ones.
In our interview, the band discuss their formation and why it has stood the test of time, why they are intent on putting positivity into the world, their practices often evolving into therapy sessions, and the loaded context of starting a heavy band in the city known as the “home of metal”.
Read our Play Next interview with Flesh Creep below and listen to their music via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.
What was the ethos when Flesh Creep started? It seems like it was a reaction to what came before…
Jack: The idea with the band was, ‘Let’s just surround ourselves with people we actually want to spend time with, and who are good people’. We’ve all played with [people] who are maybe phenomenal musicians, but the personalities might need a bit of work. People get better at their instruments, whereas to get better at personalities can be more of a fight! The rule from day one was: no idiots.
And what has made it stick when so many other creative endeavours picked up during that time have fallen off?
Tom: When we started, I really wanted to do something really dirty and abrasive and loud. I was cribbing off all these classic Japanese hardcore bands. I think the reason we’ve stuck around is because we’ve let ourselves veer from that. If you’re too glued to your own mission statement, it becomes a very rigid thing, and I think we’ve allowed ourselves to follow various rabbit holes. That’s kept it fresh for us.
What makes the independent music scene in Birmingham unique, and what has it given you as people as well as musicians?
Jack: Historically, there’s always been good bands from Birmingham. It’s gone in waves though, and when it’s coined as the ‘home of metal’, it doesn’t always represent that. Off the back of lockdown, people were so fervent for something. It very much sprouted this hardcore scene, which was super DIY. It didn’t rely on the current promoters too much, and was very much made by the people, for the people.
Sam: I’ve been around the scene for… I don’t even know how long to be honest, but forever and a day. Since I was a kid, a lot of touring bands have always missed out Birmingham and the Midlands, and I think that drives local people to do their own thing a little bit more. Not everybody has got the ability to travel out of town to see shows, so it drives a more homegrown, organic, local scene.
Matt: It’s a bit of a rejection too. We’ve got five O2 venues [in Birmingham]. I don’t want to go and pay £9 a pint, so I’ll go to Centrala or Muthers and see what the DIY scene is doing.
If you form a heavy band in the Midlands, you’re immediately putting yourself in a lineage of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest and more – is that a blessing, a curse or both?
Jack: It’s one of those things that you have to be careful with and skirt sometimes. Me and Sam in particular are big fans of stoner rock and doom, and obviously Black Sabbath is the precursor to a lot of those bands. We don’t want to lean into it too much and end up parroting something or even parodying it though. It’s definitely something that you want to be proud of, but you want to do something where you can be like, ‘No, we’re not just about the past, we’re about the here and now as well’. Appreciate the ground that has been paved in front of you, but what is the new ground you can tread yourself?
Is it a history you feel proud of, when you grow up there and also like heavy music?
Sam: Birmingham people are famously known for being self-deprecating. We don’t shout anything from the rooftops around this way! When I was growing up, you knew [which bands were] from the area, but it was never a monument that towered over you.
Matt: I think that understated nature of Birmingham and the West Midlands is probably an influence in itself. We’re not ones to be all flash about that kind of thing. You put the work in and you deliver the results, rather than having this platform we can stand on because of what came before us. Conditions in Birmingham are probably not that dissimilar to how they were back then. We’re the second city, but what do we have to show for that? It’s an uphill battle to prove our worth. It probably comes across in our fire, but not in the way that you might think initially.
The lyrics in Flesh Creep songs are one of the band’s defining characteristics – did you discuss this political element to things when the band formed?
Tom: Not once ever have we had a conversation like that. It’s all from the heart. We’re shooting from the hip constantly. There’s more introspective stuff on the EP, but previously it’s been aggressively political. I was always conscious of this punk rock trope of just being like, ‘Sod the government’ or whatever, and I didn’t want to be reductive or sloganeering. I wanted to present an argument. I’m not reinventing the wheel, but perhaps I’m showing a side of things that people haven’t seen before.
The new EP really stretches your sound in both directions – how did you land upon that approach?
Matt: I wanted to do something we hadn’t done before. I was trying to explore both ends of our sound and push the boundaries on what we can do. During lockdown when we started the band, it was a very stripped-back punk band. I didn’t want to use pedals. I just wanted to play. Now, we’re expanding that sound. It’s not so scary to have a bit of a pedal board going!
Jack: I have OCD, and I have to find balance in things whether I like it or not. Sometimes it comes from a compulsion, and when Matt had done something which was so much softer than anything we’d done before, I was like, ‘Well, if we go really soft, we’ve got to go the heaviest we’ve ever gone as well!’ You are expanding yourself, whether it’s through things that you have to live with on a day-to-day basis which are very uncomfortable, or whether it’s down to other influences which are maybe less taxing on your day-to-day life.
That’s such an interesting point. When musicians talk about mental health struggles or conditions they live with, it’s often about using music to escape that rather than channel it. Can you explain more?
Jack: Having some of those challenges can make you very in tune with the more negative aspects of your psyche, which you can tap into sometimes, as well as the positive sides. It’s a testament to the band that everyone is very vulnerable with each other as well, and that comes from a level of trust. When we’re having practice, it’s not always just writing, writing, writing. Sometimes it’s like a pseudo therapy session. When you can express those things, you can tap into them not just on an individual basis, but as a collective, and help each other get through those challenges in life.
So sometimes you’ll just put the instruments down and talk about your feelings?
Jim: Jack does [therapy] for a job, and is very, very good at it. Jack’s been a personal therapist for me in rehearsals. This band, compared to a lot of other bands, has opened my eyes to a lot of things. I probably used to be quite one-dimensional with the things that I thought, and my beliefs. Putting points across in a way that’s compassionate, kind and understanding goes a hell of a long way. It opens people’s eyes, and it certainly did to me. All the other guys in the band are just really, really good people to work with. They’ve helped me out not only musically but personally as well with a lot of things in my personal life like mental health, addiction. I thank them all for it very much.
It seems like positivity is at the heart of the band internally, but you’re also an aggressive hardcore band with often angry lyrics and you named yourselves Flesh Creep – how do you make sure that positivity comes through externally as well?
Jack: It’s about how you treat people. Our ethos in the band has always been to treat the people well who put you on. The promoters, the sound technicians, the photographers. Without those, it’s extremely difficult to do any of this even if you’re fully DIY. If you want to be asked back, make sure you treat people well. But also, it’s easier to be kind to people. It really is, and it doesn’t cost anything. That’s how I was brought up, and I know everyone else in the band was brought up like that. It’s simple to have manners, and it’s harder to be a dickhead.
Tom: As a counter to that, being a dickhead comes very easily to me! As a person who’s had my own set of struggles and can be a bit misanthropic at times, I constantly have to remind myself of not only the relationships that I’ve had with the people within our band, but there are so many people in my life now that I know through music. It’s a blessing, and you’ve got to take notice of it.