With their new EP ‘If There Is A God That Is Judging Me Constantly’ on the horizon, Up River’s frontman Harry Huntington has recalled the band’s history to date and decided to share their story. From humble beginnings, performing in local bands to the relentless and seemingly unstoppable force they have now become.
“I find myself sitting here, trying get my brain to jog its memory of the history of this band. I guess it all started in Brighton when all four of us started out under a different name. Whilst three of us had already been playing in another band, we weren’t fully into it. We wanted to get our old vocalist involved to write punk and hardcore songs influenced by the US melodic hardcore/punk sound, so we booked a rehearsal room at Brighton Electric and we all just exploded upon this one riff our guitarist Tom had written. The first song we wrote was ‘Rough Ground’. We came away from that practice feeling like we had something special, so we just kept writing and writing until we could work up a set. I knew a promoter around town and we had already recorded our debut EP by this point. We didn’t have any label backing to release it, but the promoter saw we had something going on and wanted to be a part of it. He managed to get us some really cool shows and helped us spread our name.
We finally managed to have a physical release with Pinky Swear Records, a small label based in Leeds. They released our demo on a cassette tape and to this day, I still don’t own one, I even got out-bid for one on eBay!
We started to play some weekenders with some other like-minded bands; Bastions, Polar, Palm Reader and Feed The Rhino. This helped break our band further than Brighton and we’d drive up and down the UK in our old singer’s Ford Fiesta with so much gear on top of us that it eventually destroyed the car’s suspension. A lot of the money we made from these shows went on Alex’s car. We would play anywhere, even if we had to get out of work early or had work the next day at 6am, we’d bundle into the car and drive to play for 20 minutes. Over time, we managed to make friends with a bunch of awesome people who helped the band spread further.
We soon got an email from Anchors Aweigh Records in Italy who wanted to release our EP on a 7″. We literally lost our minds, this meant we could do a proper tour. We had a close friend that helped us book a two week UK and European tour as we’d never expected to do anything like this. We were fairly young at the time and we were naive with how to prepare for tours. We’d watch footage of bands on the internet doing it and just went with it.
There were a few stand out moments on that tour which I won’t forget. Lots of people had come out to see us in Dordrecht in Holland, they were singing along to the songs and were coming on stage and losing their minds. It was insane! Another crazy show was in a bar in Belgium, a guy passed out on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Paramedics had to come in as he’d actually slipped in his own beer and knocked himself out. There’s also footage of that same show somewhere, where a drunk old French guy in a kilt was carried away by a bunch of people after he started smacking the wall and hitting our drummers cymbals with his walking stick.
We crashed our van at the Polish border on this tour after skidding on some ice whilst travelling about 5mph. Probably the slowest crash in history, but it caused our van to hit a tree and we ended up sideways in a ditch. It was weirdly scary but thankfully we managed to get to the show.
We played in Stuttgart for the last show of that tour and it was incredible! We played with some bands we really look up to; Horror Show from Philadelphia and Dead Swans from back home. They were awesome guys and gave us some advice how to go about stuff. It was this tour that we realised what had just hit us. That this was all we knew and all we knew was that this was the best thing in the world. We really took it in and started to plan what was to happen next for us.
We started writing again and playing some more shows. Back to playing everywhere and anywhere, being in and out of work and putting in all we had to make it work. This then led to our second European tour with our friends Rough Hands.
When Up River started out, Rough Hands were there playing shows with us. It just made sense to bring them on tour with us and it was a great summer playing shows around Europe with them. One memory that stands out is at the Croatian border. We were all held up at gun point after we all bowled out of the van needing the toilet. We couldn’t believe what was going on but thankfully they let us through and we continued the tour.
We had lots of material we’d planned to record and release, but after that tour, Alex decided to leave the band. I switched from bass to vocals and we started again, reinventing ourselves. Our sound developed to an extent, and we became lot ‘darker’ and a lot more melancholic. We just kept touring and playing shows whilst members were moving up and down the country, trying to find stable jobs to fund the future of Up River.
We took a year out to write what became ‘Undertow’. We always wanted to be on Holy Roar Records too as we believed they had a unique appeal to the hardcore scene in the more recent years. As a label they were fairly eclectic with the bands on their roster and it was a great platform to release a record on. We had always admired the longevity of the label, they were putting out great records and believing in their bands, something I felt the UK scene was missing. When Holy Roar contacted us to tell us they wanted to release our record, we lost our minds (again)! We were so excited for our music to be released with a label that we’d always wanted to work with.
In between releasing Undertow and playing shows, we brought in a new bass player and a second guitarist. The first show we played with them was with Code Orange and Twitching Tongues at Camden Underworld, so no pressure…
Our original guitarist Tom became a father and could only play selected shows with us, so we decided to carry on as a four-piece. When we announced we were playing Hevy Festival, our drummer announced this would be his last show too. Two of the founding members were pretty much leaving the band. Whilst Tom was still involved with creating our new EP, it’ll be his last involvement in Up River for a long time. So with a new lineup in place, the only original members left in Up River are me and Harry (Rawson).
Our new record, ‘If There Is A God There Is A God That Is Judging Me Constantly’ is out on 25th November and I’m very excited to show everyone what the new Up River sounds like.”
‘If There Is A god That Is Judging Me Constantly’ is out on 25th November via Holy Roar records and available to stream here.