Basement are returning to their roots

Once known by peers in their early days as the ‘soft’ band on a bill of hardcore acts, their rising career and placement as arena support for the likes of The Pixies and Bring Me The Horizon would echo how a band with such an eclectic sound can fit snugly into seemingly unconventional spaces.

Whilst guitarist Alex Henery modestly claims that Basement would end up on these shows “out of necessity,” having the likes of More Than Life in the south west of England, Survival in Manchester, Dead Swans in Brighton and Brutality Will Prevail in Wales with such localised support is also where the band felt the most comfortable. “All of us in Basement were going to hardcore shows anyway so it made sense. The people in those towns and cities were the first to accept us and people were happy enough to take us on tour,” he shares.

Having found traction through word of mouth and the DIY UK hardcore punk scene, the Ipswich-hailing quintet would go on to release their first EP Songs About The Weather via London based label City Of Gold in early 2011. Around this time is when their paths would cross with Kingston, Pennsylvania group Title Fight, another band from the same international emo and hardcore scenes that have only grown in popularity online since disbanding in 2018.

Henery recounts how he and Basement’s frontperson Andrew Fisher had ventured out to North Carolina on holiday with family, and found details of a Title Fight show via Myspace. “We saw that they were playing Virginia Beach, which is four to five hours from where we were staying,” he recalls. “So we just got on a Greyhound bus and extended our trip. After the show finished, Andrew explained that we wanted to catch them the next evening in Richmond but we would have no way of getting there.”

On a whim, Henery and Andrew asked the members of Title Fight if they could catch a ride with them in their touring van to the next stop on their tour. Their decision to agree, Henery says, opened the door for the band, owing most of his friendships today to those series of events, including his own move to Boston, MA several years later. “It was a really cool moment. It’s great to see the legacy that they are going to continue to have. It’s a testament to the power that they have, resonating with younger people who unfortunately didn’t get a chance to see them. But, they still have their music and that’s amazing.”

Despite having only been an active band for three years, in 2012 fans were taken aback by Basement’s decision to call it a day due to personal commitments involving their careers outside of music. With their first album I Wish I Could Stay Here garnering the band international attention, with shows at UK festivals and across Europe, their second record Colourmeinkindess was released in conjunction with a bittersweet set of farewell shows at The Well in Leeds and The Camden Underworld in London. US tour mates Daylight (who would later change their name to Superheaven) ended up acting as stage security due to how packed both events were, battling with endless stage divers and crowdsurfers alike. When looking back at this time, Henery emphasises how important non-barrier spaces are for Basement – as it is for environments such as Outbreak Festival in Manchester or Sound & Fury in Los Angeles, where he feels the band are rooted.

However, he’s conscious of the fact that not every venue has the infrastructure to accommodate what he desires in a safe capacity. “Non-barrier shows are rooted in the band’s DNA.  Personally, I would say that I am a no barrier purist!” He smiles. “With my other band Fiddlehead, we make an effort to make sure the barrier is removed where we can. At Outbreak Festival, everybody mostly knows what they are getting themselves in for. If you go to a different venue where they’re less equipped to deal with things like that, people are going to get hurt and it’s not a good idea.”

“I love that non-barrier shows are still a part of our band’s history. I was always drawn to hardcore because to me there was no distinction between the band and the crowd, especially with stagediving and grabbing the mic. It was just total freedom and chaos. Obviously I would love it if everyone that stage dived at our shows got caught and had a great time but sometimes it's just not how it goes. That’s part of what I love about it, a bit of the unknown as you enter a show like that,” he states.

As Basement returned 9 months after their November 2012 London show with a tweet that simply read ‘“Hi.”, the comeback tour sold out shortly after going on sale, easily picking up the momentum from where the group left off.

The biggest change this time around however, was with Henery recently becoming record label Run For Cover’s videographer, which for him meant relocating across the pond. Between touring with Basement and birthing the project that would later become Fiddlehead (with vocalist Pat Flynn of Have Heart fronting), Henery started and continues to document friends such as Turnstile and Angel Du$t across the world.

After releasing two follow up albums, Promise Everything and Be Here Now via alt-rock label Fueled By Ramen, Basement continued to tour across the world until the band entered a second hiatus in 2019. Two years on, the band began the process of writing new demos across various studios, before settling with indie-rock producer John Congleton at his studio Animal Rites in California.

In that period, longtime fan favourite song Covet from 2012’s Colourmeinkindness gained unexpected viral success on Tiktok and Instagram. It was a welcome surprise that Henery appreciated, watching Covet find a “new life” with a new audience of younger fans, and the slow burn, hard-hitting track was also used during a pivotal moment in Steven Soderbergh’s 2024 thriller film Presence. He considers these series of events a “weird little bonus” alongside the timescale of writing new material.

“I don’t have a TikTok account personally so I only experienced it through people sending me memes and Instagram videos with the song on it. It was definitely a new experience for me and I’m glad that as a band we never needed to pander to that sort of success."

During this time, the band also changed their biography on Spotify to read: “Just trying to be honest”, a slogan Basement used earlier in their career. As they approach the release of their fifth album Wired – and first in eight years – Henery considers it to be a “hard reset” of sorts for the band, with Congleton allowing the band to sound exactly how he has always imagined Basement in his head. “He really opened up the floodgates for how far we could take our creative ideas and how we could achieve that.”

For Henery, he notes that in the past it could be difficult trying to figure out what songs he wanted to send to bandmates, especially if song ideas didn’t end up materialising in either of his projects. This time around, there was no doubt in his mind which song ideas he wanted for WIRED, especially the single “Head Alight” that he’s particularly proud of.

“‘Head Alight’ was one of the first songs I wrote with Andrew back in 2021,” he shares. “I am happy it survived all the way to the recording studio. It nearly got cut when we couldn’t fully agree on how it should be performed, but through that we tweaked it and it became a whole new song in the studio. I feel like we took some risks with that song and Congleton helped steer the ship to get it to a really interesting and unique place.”

Sonically as well as lyrically, WIRED in many ways feels like a step back to the gritty, anthemic sound that Basement fostered with Promise Everything, only this time with bigger sounding riffs and retaining the emotional sense of relatable urgency in the songwriting.

Opener “Time Waster” with Andrew’s somber vocal delivery of the lyrics “I just want to get it right / I just want to love you,” highlights a sense of urgency that comes with the passing of time. This could also be looked at as describing Basement’s mantra when creating WIRED. Henery remarks that they managed to write up to 50 demos, taking their time and making sure the final record wasn’t rushed. The legacy influences on Basement’s sound – spanning the likes of Placebo and Failure – are even more apparent on WIRED, especially the angular riff hook on “The Way I Feel”, which serves as the band’s latest single leading up to its release.

It feels like a testament to how inseparable the creative force of Basement is, having retained the same lineup for almost the entirety of their career thus far. Prior to their first break, the band left behind two tour videos of  America, Asia, and Australia on their YouTube channel. Whilst the shows themselves are captivating to watch, it’s the chemistry and general silliness between each member that encapsulates how being in a band with your friends and family should be.

“We had this incredible opportunity for Basement to return to Run For Cover records and make another album, so we needed to make sure we were all on the same page. It was definitely a lengthy process but we were down to experiment a bit more than normal too,” the guitarist explains. “We had never written a song like ‘Pick Up The Pieces’ for example, but if you are a long time Basement fan you might be able to hear how we got to some of these new sounds from past releases.”

Looking to the busy summer ahead, Henery will be playing back-to-back sets with Fiddlehead and Basement in mainland Europe, a daunting challenge that he could not be happier to take head on. He smiles when pointing out that Basement’s drummer James Fisher recently had to do this when his London hardcore band Dynamite opened for them on their last headline UK tour, but Henery is quick to point out that it won’t be quite as easy for him. “James had a gap, and his sets were way shorter,” he laughs. “Don’t get me wrong, he was a trooper and smashed it, but I will be absolutely depleted by the end of each night!”