We sat down with Cardiff’s genre dismantling Astroid Boys to discuss their journey to debut album ‘BROKE’, out on September 29th.
Signing as the flagship band for the relaunch of Music For Nations back in November 2016, fans of the band have been waiting with bated breath for their first full length record to drop.
Benji, Phil and Del are lounging about on sofas in a creative room at Sony, it’s been a full press day and you would expect that by 6pm they’d be a bit fed-up with it all, but they’re not, or at least, they don’t let it show if they are.
Joining Sony’s classic rock and metal label was an interesting choice for the band that delivers grime rhymes with lashings of punk attitude all laced up by classic metal riffs. It was a bold statement that said Astroid Boys will not be defined by what has come before, they’re carving their own path, straight down the cavernous gap that exists between grime and rock.
Benji is keen to talk about why Music For Nations was the right fit. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he speaks with undeniable similarity to the same way he sounds on record. “It’s exciting. As a label we feel they understand our ethos and the kind of DIY side of things a little bit more than some of the other labels may have done. It’s exciting to be working with people who we feel understand the direction and are willing to give us some, well, all, of the creative freedom.”
Phil explains that with it being the first album, they tried hard to show everything they were capable of doing. Astroid Boys is a democracy, a fine balancing act of all their influences from rap, grime, metal and beyond. “We just thought, let’s have a good balance. I think I would have leaned a bit more on the rap stuff, personally, but it was just a balance out of everyone’s opinions,” Phil says.
Benji takes the reigns on how that balance works and how Astroid Boys ended up cutting from their own cloth. “When we started off we were rappers and grime MCs, and I think when dubstep came about some producers were using guitar riffs and remixing metal tunes with dubstep, so then it brought metal to 140bpm. We didn’t like it, we didn’t think that was necessarily the angle.” Benji animates the room as he explains how it all comes together. “When we were then making our own stuff, because the way we performed at the time, we came across like a punk band, but we were just spitting grime tunes and rap tunes. So then I think it was just a natural evolution that we started to have when we had live drums and live guitars. I think it became a natural progression that 140bpm, the metal guitars, drums, the punk attitude and the mindset of being suffocated; that all sort of just unravelled to this point.”
An unravelling of sorts is such an interesting way to look at what Astroid Boys are doing. Rather than considering themselves to be building something new, they’ve just been pulling things apart till they reached this point. Not just their music, but themselves too. This group of young men are incredibly interesting individuals; fiercely loyal to Cardiff, for Phil in particular, this endeavour isn’t just about his own success. It is so much more.
The debut record features guest artists and each selection was thought about on a deep level. It was as much about helping those individuals as it was about making the best music possible. “Having Sonny Double 1 on Foreigners and Mace on Soonish on the album means more to me than you all would ever realise,” Phil explains. “The Endz [in Cardiff] can be a slippery slope and anything I can do to pull up my boys, I’m doing it. We all go back years and years till when we were yoots [youths]. We’ve been through some tough times together, and having us come together on anthems like ‘Foreigners’ will always have a deeper meaning. It’s all about uniting the community.”
Tracks like ‘Foreigners’ have become instant classics for the Astroid Boys set. It represents them as a group so clearly. With global, racial unrest, it’s bubbling to the surface in a new way. People are more aware than they normally are. “For us it will always be relevant, at times maybe more so than others, and it might appeal to some people more than it does to others. The other day this kid came up to me pissed and was like “why don’t you like the foreigners” and I was like, “what are you on about? You’ve got the lyrics wrong bro.” It’s “YOU don’t like the foreigners.” Then I went to Wok-to-Walk and all the boys were in there from the Endz and they were like Yo! Put ‘Foreigners’ on, and they were all in there like “this is our anthem”. Things might be blowing up now in the media but for the community this has always been an issue and we wanted to say it. I think it’s going to be in our set forever, it’s my favourite song to perform live.”
Looking at where they’ve come from, Astroid Boys have achieved incredible success. They’ve made it through not only cultural adversity, but also through Benji serving a prison sentence and a subsequent period that saw them only able to play matinee shows due to his ankle monitor. There were times when Benji worried that he wouldn’t have anything to come back to when he got out of prison.
“The boys worked hard to be make sure that when I came home I had something to work on. And immediately when I came out I was on that tag. 7pm every night I had to be in my house, so the boys would just turn up at my house and we would set up the studio and that’s how we made ‘CF10’. My time was occupied while I was on the electronic tag and whatnot, and ever since I’ve just had the boys holding me by the back and we’ve been running with it, you know? Now I’m in a place where I don’t feel like that part of my life is relevant anymore. I’ve moved on from that, we’re doing good.”
