The #1 public enemy of Metalcore Twitter: Greghall.

Some may know him as a photo and videographer , working with bands such as Long Goodbye, Cauldron, and Poison the Well, others may know him as an opinionated individual on Twitter, finding himself in the firing ling regarding his involvement in the ever growing discourse surrounding real vs false metalcore. I simply know him as Greghall, someone who times me out on discord for calling him old or making fun of his hair, winding him up on the internet to the point where it’s been questioned as to whether we genuinely hate each other or not, and being told I have awful music taste on a daily basis as if every day is his last on Earth.

Whether or not you have a preconceived opinion of him, Greghall is loved by many and hated by few - it’s definitely the other way round - and he’s passionate about Metalcore, his local scene, keeping grass roots venues open for undiscovered talent to have a stage, and pissing the internet off on a regular basis. Watch the full interview below and you might just see a different side to the person that everyone perceives on the internet.

He still hates your favourite band though.

Hayls: People are going to fucking love this, by the way.

Greg: Why?

Hayls: Just us arguing for an hour and also hearing Greg Hall say the stuff that he wants to say, that he already says on the internet, but.

Greg: I'm already here by like, obligation because I tried to prove a point and it backfired, so like.

Hayls: Exactly. Because people, I think there's probably people that want to see what you look like in real time as well.

Greg: Yeah, I kind of just look the same, to be honest.

Hayls: Ehh.

Greg: Okay.

Hayls: Right, don't worry about what’s going on.

Greg: Is that any brighter? Is that?

Hayls: No, because oh, fuck.

Greg: Nope, that's not. Okay, what about that?

Hayls: I'm going to leave all of this in.

Greg: Why? Why is that entertaining?

Hayls: Because it is.

Greg: “Funny.”

Hayls: Watching Greg Hall struggle.

Greg: Right. You're not recording already, are you?

Hayls: Yeah. I record before I even join in here, so I know that I don't miss anything. I'll just edit it.

Greg: Right. Okay. So you just, you don't even give your guests warnings or anything. You just fucking do it.

Hayls: Sorry, do I need to read out a fucking privacy policy? Would you like that?

Greg: Yeah, this is GDPR. I could just decide that I do not consent at the end of this whole thing, so.

Hayls: Actually, you did because we’ve already been through this and you agreed. So you are giving me consent to use your mug on the internet.

Greg: Right. Okay. What do I do? We're here.

Hayls: Yeah, and I'm going to grill you for however long it fucking takes because I know you're a yapper.

Greg: Oh, wait two seconds. I'm off.

Hayls: Okay, bye. You good?

Greg: Oh, is that what I look? Yeah.

Hayls: Is that what you look like? Yeah, that is, unfortunately.

Hayls: So I want you to tell me the differentiation between real and fake or false metal core, which is what you like to preach a lot on the internet.

Greg: So we're not doing any sort of introduction or anything. This is just a video that goes up with my face.

Hayls: Everyone knows you mate. Everyone knows you. You're Greg Hall. You're a bellend on the internet, and you take photos sometimes.

Greg: One of my friends is currently tour managing a band in Europe right now, and she's in Barcelona, and she messaged me to say that she met a really, really nice Catalan man. And since she's from the UK, the guy was like, "Oh, you probably know Greg Hall from Twitter then."

Hayls: See. You're known for Twitter.

Greg: I'm a celebrity in Barcelona and the Basque country. We love that. Right. Okay. What is the difference between real and false metalcore? Fake metalcore is bullshit, by the way. I never said that. That is something that that side of Twitter came up with by themselves to try to make the argument seem a lot stupider than it actually is.

Like, you know when people are just like, "Oh, I listen to bands that have a million listeners. You only listen to bands with three listeners called castrated baby metal shite, whatever." Yeah, that's what that is. But okay, real metalcore, real metalcore is essentially what revivalcore is based on right now. So the sort of things that EPHYR and The Coming Strife are currently putting out, Yetza Harrah is doing the same thing as well. And the idea with revival core, first off, is that it's basically like a revival of what original real metalcore was in the early 2000s and even stretching back to the late '90s.

So, what makes real metalcore real metalcore is when you actually have elements of metal and elements of hardcore, and the two of them actually come together to create what is metal core, and that is actually what the genre is. It's not this watered-down commercial bullshit with clean singing choruses that are meant to replicate what you could hear on the radio. It's actually the real elements of hardcore and the community and the ethos that drove to make hardcore what it is today. But it also has those elements from metal.

And at times, there's thrash that can come through in that, and then there's also even elements of death metal and shit that can come through as well, like melodeath, like your, At The Gates, Slaughter The Soul sort of shit. That's where you hear all those really nice woodily noodly leads, the things that you like that you would call wee woods.

Hayls: Wee woos. Oh I bloody love wee woos.

Greg: You still actually get to experience that in real metalcore. So that's what real metalcore is, if that gives you a brief little history lesson.

So your bands that are actually real metalcore, for example, your ones that would be on the top that would be considered as your gateway to real metalcore, that would be bands like It Dies Today, Bleeding Through, Zao, Prayer for Cleansing, those sorts of bands, actual entry-level good shit. It's not a million listeners entry-level shit, but those are your main bands that people would usually start with to actually get into metalcore as they did back in the early 2000s. 

Fake metalcore, I could talk about this shit all day because it actually fucking bothers me so much.

Hayls: Because you love it so much.

Greg: Essentially, what false metalcore is, right, is that, I'm going to take full credit for this because the only reason people actually talk about what false metalcore is and recognise bands as being false metalcore is because I push that shit so hard on socials because back in early 2000s, late '90s, there was a band called Liar.

Liar were part of the whole H8000 Belgian hardcore metalcore movement and Liar had these hoodies where they had their logo on the front that just said Liar, but then on the back, it had a picture of a guy holding a sword in the air, and underneath it, it said “Death to False Metal.” So this is already a thing that has already happened.

Hayls: That's where it comes from. You haven't coined that.

Greg: Exactly. Death to False Metal was something that was originally pioneered from the Belgian hardcore scene H8000, like your bands like Congress, Reprisal, Liar, Blindfold, those sorts of bands. That's where the whole Death to False Metal comes from.

But then Death to False Metalcore is something that I pushed because what people call metalcore nowadays is completely and utterly not fucking metalcore. It's manufactured commercial bullshit that is essentially a branch off of what people would call warped tour metalcore or warped tour emo and punk.

Imagine what Warped Tour was like in the early 2000s up to 2010 and that. It was your bands like Pierce the Veil, Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance and stuff. So those are all bands that people would call emo. But then there is actually a lot of people out there that would never call those bands emo. But the reason there's people out there that call them emo is because it's the offshoot of what the main commercial thing, Warped Tour in this example, has made people believe what emo actually is. Does that make sense?

Hayls: Yeah.

Greg: You totally follow.

Hayls: Of course I do.

Greg: Yeah, exactly. You know exactly what you're doing. This is why you asked me to do this for some strange reason.

Hayls: Yeah.

Greg: And what we see people call metalcore nowadays are bands like Spiritbox, Invent Animate, Silent Planet, what else is out there? Your Bad Omens, Bring Me The Horizon and stuff like that. They're bands that people call metalcore nowadays. They're bands that all share very, very similar elements where they're very commercialised, they’re heavily marketed. 

They all follow the exact same sort of structures, and they all have their front and centre person that is pushed forward because they are the marketable part of that band, like your Courtney LaPlante, your Oli Sykes. The fact that everyone from Invent Animate all wears the exact same H&M beige outfit, that is their thing that they all push forward.

Hayls: They look cool.

Greg: And yeah, they do the thing. Fucking, Celestial Floods was a brilliant song when it came out on the blue album forever ago. And yeah, so false metalcore is essentially this whole heavily commercialised thing where it follows the exact same patterns. It's heavily, heavily marketed, and it doesn't have any sort of connection to hardcore. And I'm not meaning that it doesn't have connection to hardcore in the way where it's your hardcore breakdowns, the vocals that you think are terrible, and it doesn't have two-step parts or anything like that. What it is that it doesn't have from hardcore is that it doesn't have that ethos and that sense of community. 

The only sort of community that actually comes from these false metalcore bands is fandoms on the internet, which are basically just little groups of people that are obsessed with these bands, and they basically exist to fund these bands. There's no community whatsoever. It's just people on the internet that talk to each other. There's no shit of, yeah, community in the sense of, let's go out and put on shows for false metalcore bands, let's release zines for false metal core bands. You don't see that sort of shit because that marketing side is already done by big music, big industry.

Hayls: Big record labels.

Greg: You don't see people making zines or putting on shows or having fundraisers or anything to keep their scenes alive because they don't need to, because false metalcore bands have no connection to their scene whatsoever because they're so big and the only thing that they need a connection to is their label because their label does everything for them.

There's no elements of DIY or community or anything from hardcore. And all the things that they're actually taking from metalcore and metal is that they're just phoning in the things that people find very accessible that are very easy to listen to, the likes of that horrible fucking djenty guitar tone that everyone has, that Neural DSP plug-in where it's just like, shit, awful, terrible. 

They all send the exact same. And then it's got your front and centre person that sings that everyone thinks is brilliant and lovely, and it still follows that verse chorus verse, bridge or breakdown, chorus but a little bit higher, and then it goes into that shitty breakdown outro, and you're like, “This is so heavy. Oh, I'm going to make a stank face. I think this is so stinky.” Oh, but it's garbage. It's bullshit.

Hayls: Some of them are good.

Greg: See, when you've been involved in music scenes at a grassroots level for so long, you kind of start to not enjoy those things as much because it doesn't feel as organic. It feels very manufactured, and you start to notice these things a lot more, that everything follows the same pattern, everything has the singy chorus that everyone can make a 30-second TikTok out of. 

I can't remember who it was that I read about recently. Oh no it was a thread on Reddit that was, who's a musician that fucking hates their fanbase? And I know that Doja Cat is one in particular, and Doja Cat actually shares the same hatred for her fans that some of the biggest alternative rock bands and stuff. They share the same reason. And what it is, is that people only know their music from really short excerpts that have essentially been made into TikToks.

So people will sit through a 60-minute set, but they'll only know the words to 30 seconds of it, and that is a false metalcore element in itself. You write a hook that can go and be marketed and go viral, but the rest of the music doesn't matter. They just need that one thing to push and market. See what I mean? I could talk about this forever.

Hayls: Yeah, I know you can.

Greg: Because there's so much to talk about. And I think it's quite interesting to talk about because there are so many different elements and things that tie in that kind of make sense.

Hayls: Yeah. I mean, I want to go-

Greg: Fuck you.

Hayls: Okay. Yeah, you too. No, I want to go back to something. You mentioned something while you were yapping about, you only touched on the bigger bands, and that's why they were classed as false metalcore is because of the marketing and following the same structure, blah, blah, blah.

So would you still class the smaller bands that maybe still follow this same structure, but they've not got that marketing? They've not got that follow one formulaic structure of writing a song, but they're not quite what you would class as real metalcore? Would they then still fall into false metalcore?

Greg: Ah right okay.

Hayls: So they’ve still got the false metalcore sound, but they're not marketed, and they're not doing any of this gimmicky stuff that you seem to characterise with it.

Greg: I would say that they would still fall into that false metalcore thing because those sorts of bands are not the ones that you see playing at local level. They're the ones that are trying to use the tools of TikTok and other social media to basically boost themselves to the point that they're trying to basically become the opening band on a big tour.

They don't give a shit about their community or their scene or anything like that. They want to basically fast track themselves into becoming career musicians. There's no interest in community. There's no interest in their local scene. They don't want to take their friends with them. They just want to earn this thing that they have passion for, but they want to turn it into something that is marketable and profitable.

And I think that that's the thing that ties them in with being a false metalcore band because they're essentially trying to be a false metalcore band, which I actually think is more embarrassing than actually being a false metalcore band because you're essentially doing all the shit that these big bands do in order to become something and make money, but you're not making any money. You're not making something that you love and give a shit about, and you've not written something that you actually care for. You are writing something for people to monetise. And yeah, yeah, they're still false metalcore bands, absolutely.

Hayls: That makes sense. Okay, so let me ask. Okay, let me change that question up a little bit then. Let's say they follow real metalcore, the sound, not the commercial sound. I'm trying to find a loophole or I'm trying to see how doubling down you actually go. So let's say they sound-

Greg: You're trying to find the thing that undoes me because this is the thing where it's like. “So if the building was on fire, would you stay inside?” It's like, yeah, essentially.

Hayls: Yeah, cool. Okay, great. I'd leave you there. But no, okay, so let's say they sound like these real metalcore bands that you mentioned earlier, and they're small bands because clearly that's just where they stay sometimes. But they're being TikTok bands. Let's call them TikTok bands. But they sound like all of this real metalcore. They've got it down to a T. What are they then?

Greg: They're a TikTok band. They're shit.

Hayls: Okay, but they sound like everything that you love.

Greg: Are they contributing to community? Are they part of their scene? Are they actually interested in bringing their friends with them, or are they just trying to fast track themselves to becoming career musicians that can make money?

Hayls: So it seems like the real pinpoint characteristic of the differentiation between false metalcore and real metalcore is the vision kind of thing and how you put your band into a scene, whether you take the route of TikTok monetisation and get 50p for every video, or you start at a grassroots level and don't pay 300 US dollars for some YouTube reactor to listen to your single.

Greg: If you're paying a YouTuber to react to your music, then you're a fucking idiot straight off the bat.

Hayls: Hence why I'll never make anyone pay.

Greg: That's vile. Yeah, exactly. Squeeze that into your video.

Hayls: So that seems like where it is. It's less to do with sound, but that's still a part. And it's more to do with, like you said, the ethos and the vision of the band.

Greg: It's ethos, community, scene and that. Yeah, for example, Knocked Loose is the perfect example. They're still off making different bands. You've got Weapon X, you've got Inclination, you had Heartstopper, which I'm devastated doesn't exist anymore, but they went off and all made different bands.

Trey plays in Gates to Hell. Yeah, he plays in Gates to Hell as well. And they're actually not just playing, they're not just opening for Metallica this year, then that's them. They're still putting on for their friends. They're playing smaller shows. They're actually giving back to their community. And they're not just changing their sound to become what is currently marketable and profitable. They're not following what the industry is telling them to do. They're doing shit in a very DIY way. They've just managed to actually monetise on that.

I have no issue with bands making money because I think that if people want to monetise their passion, fire on and do it. It's not for me to say you can and can't do that. But I think that once you have that, say if you started with a DIY ethos and you went down the route of actually still managing to make money like Knocked Loose have, if they had managed to do that, but then completely switched up to just becoming very industry driven and changed their sound and everything to become more profitable and more marketable, then that's when a band stops being DIY and stops being actually interested in giving back. That's when they kind of stop being real in that sense.

The passion's gone. The passion is being completely and utterly replaced by the need to make money. And I think that if you don't have respect and love for your craft throughout what it is that you're doing, then I don't think you're doing your passion and your love justice.

Hayls: So, Bring Me. So, like Bring Me then? Because obviously you saw the full 180 and what Bring Me did. Bring Me started off-

Greg: Bring Me's a really interesting one. Yeah, Bring Me's a very, very interesting one because I remember when Bring Me The Horizon opened Shedfest and Malevolence were further up the bill than them, and this was like the early 2000s.

Hayls: Oh yeah I forgot you’re that old.

Greg: And I still remember that ugly as hell grey poster in Bring Me The Horizon in tiny little font at the bottom. No logo, nothing fancy, just Bring Me The Horizon in fucking Times New Roman. They definitely came from a DIY background. You've seen people finding out about Womb 2 Da Tomb right now.

Hayls: How have people not known that Womb 2 Da Tomb was a thing?

Greg: Well, this is the exact same thing as people finding out that Joji is Filthy Frank and Pink Guy. Nobody actually realises that these are real people behind these things. But no, going back to the point, Bring Me's a really interesting one because they did start off as a DIY band.

And I think that they're a fantastic example of doing what you want for a certain amount of time and then just completely losing the sauce of what it was that made you what you are. They're still doing what they want. I still think they're absolutely doing what they want with the likes of fucking Medicine and shit like that.

I still think that's them writing what they want. But I think that there is so much of them that just doesn't give back anymore, and I think that that's what kind of stops them being real to me, if that makes sense.

Hayls: Less about their sound and more about just them.

Greg: Scene driven, DIY, giving back. That's the things that make a difference. Also, Count Your Blessings is the best album they ever put out, and it's never going to be topped.

Hayls: Yeah, Count Your Blessings is fucking sick. It is just a weird one with them, with how different their entire discography goes and you can just see it happening.

Greg: You see how hard it gets watered down and how much the band at that time were exploring something different because you can see in Suicide Season, for example, that's when all the high-pitched orchestral stuff starts to come in, and you see it get embraced even more in Sempiternal. I don't know. I quite like that they went through this gradual change. And it seems to a lot of people that they changed very bluntly, really quickly in that. But I think if you go back through the discography, you'll realise that the band kind of switched up very gradually over time, similar to what Turnstile have done and similar to even what Architects have done.

They went from good and just went down a slippery slope to terrible over a very long time.

Hayls: Yeah, because it's not like they made one album of what are we going to call it? What are we going to call Count Your Blessings? Deathcore? I would have called it Deathcore back then when I was listening to it.

Greg: Count Your Blessings is a Deathcore album. Absolutely.

Hayls: Yeah, it's not like they've gone from Count Your Blessings to Amo. It's not like they did that.

Greg: Yeah, there's a gradual change.

Hayls: You can see them doing that. And I think maybe part of that was to do with vocally, Oli couldn't stick with what he was doing because he was doing it wrong, and everyone who has been a fan of Bring Me for that long knows that that's what happened to Oli.

So, I think kind of they maybe in a little sense were forced down the route that they've been in, and then they've just kind of taken it from there, or they were forced at least out of their Deathcore era.

Greg: It's a solid theory. Yeah, but you could take While She Sleeps, for example. Loz completely fucked his voice, and rather than switching into a different lane to try to continue doing something whilst Loz's voice was fucked, they just waited and became a merch core band for a number of years, and then they came back and kept making the same music.

Hayls: Arguable. While She Sleep's fall off needs to be studied. While She Sleeps was so good up until You Are We, and then they went massively downhill. Their sound didn't change-

Greg: I'm going to disagree.

Hayls: -No, their sound didn't change drastically. We're not talking like Bring Me or Architects change, but I feel like they fell off so hard after You Are We. You can't even ask me to explain that because I don't know why.

Greg: I'm not going to ask you to explain it. I'm going to just say that they've always sucked.

Hayls: No.

Greg: Crows was good. Crows was fantastic. The North Stands for Nothing was great. Fun fact, the first time that they played in Scotland, I played that show.

Hayls: Oh, yeah, I'm going to bring that up. Well, not that in specifics, but a piece of Greg Hall lore. I've let you waffle about that. That's fine. We're going to move on. We're going to get more interesting.

Hayls: I want to know, in your opinion, why do you think that you've been labelled as such a controversial person on Twitter? Do you think it is solely down to the false metalcore versus real metalcore and your opinions on that, or do you think it's something else?

Greg: I think it partly comes down to the fact that I'm very honest. I'm not trying to sugarcoat things or spare people's feelings or anything like that.

If I don't like something, I'll always just say it because I don't see the point in being, I just don't see the point in sparing feelings over art because I feel that art is something that you should feel and just be honest within itself. Art is a very visceral, raw thing that can really make you feel things, and if you're not able to express that in the way that it makes you feel, then I think that you're not doing yourself justice at all. You're more concerned about how you're going to be perceived by others, and you're worried that people will think of you differently because this is how you feel about it. It's a control thing.

I think it's a little bit of a control thing. You want people to perceive you in a particular way so you don't actually be as honest as you possibly can. And I think that that's something that I've always tried to do, is be as honest as I possibly can.

Yesterday, for example, I had I think it was that someone sent me music, and they were like, "Hey, this just came out today. You should totally check it out." And the person that sent me this music, it was his band, and he was like, "Oh, yeah, this banger just dropped." And I'm like, "Great that you think it's a banger,” but I listened to it, and I didn't give it 30 seconds. I didn't give it 15 seconds. I listened to the whole thing through. And I just replied to him, just being like, "I don't like it. I don't like that overproduced gent guitar tone and that. I don't really care for radio rock. I think it sucks, my guy." 

Hayls: I saw that.

Greg: And people are liking it, and people are liking it and messaging me. I'm like, "Oh, you got him. You got him. You roasted him." And I'm like, "I'm just saying what I think and how I feel." And if I didn't say it in that way because I wanted to spare his feelings or anything like that, or I wanted people to perceive me in a particular way, then I don't think I'm being myself. And I think I've always tried to be myself as much as possible, and I think that that rubs people the wrong way. Brendan Murphy and Craig Reynolds.

A fair few people in the music industry have not had a particularly good impression of me because of how honest I have been about the music that I talk about using my platform. But it's good to see that people change their tunes very quickly once they realise that people's word carries weight or they have a particular following or anything like that. People change how they feel about things because they're worried about how they'll be, again, or worried about how they'll be perceived by other people. So they try to keep everyone on side, and that's, yeah.

Hayls: Yeah, you're public enemy number one for false metalcore side of Twitter.

Greg: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Hayls: Because like you said, and I noticed that the longer that I was on that side, I still am on that side, to be honest, but-

Greg: Unfortunate.

Hayls: Hey, some of it's still bangers I can't even lie. But yeah, you see that they take it so personally. And I remember you saying that to me in the beginning. I was like, "Why do you hate this stuff so much?" And you said, "I don't hate it. They're just the easiest people to wind up just by telling them."

Greg: And it's funny.

Hayls: Just by telling them that what they're listening to is not metalcore. It just gets people so upset.

Greg: Exactly. And it's sometimes, not even sometimes, actually quite a lot of the time. If you interact with particular pockets of the internet, whether it's fandoms or if it's select communities and stuff, they're going to take the thing that they love and feel passionate about seriously when someone doesn't feel about it the same way that they do because they take it personally.

And I think that's partly why fandoms have kind of ruined a lot of the live music experience and why their inclusion in these online spaces has kind of ruined how bands can actually interact with their fans because people just take it too seriously. And I think that if you're not able to get over someone else not liking what you like, then I think you're ruining the whole experience for yourself as well because no one's going to like everything. It's impossible. It's not even possible to hate everything. It's not even possible to dislike everything, but it is absolutely possible to know what you like and what you dislike. And I think that you should absolutely honour that.

Hayls: So then why can't we just let people enjoy things if you know that not everyone's going to like everything and there are some people that like the radio rock and the commercialised metal? Why can't you just let them enjoy it?

Greg: I think the controversial thing with letting people enjoy things is that it's being said as a means to basically just end the conversation, just to drop it there and then. “Let people enjoy things” is closing the doors on the conversation going any further. And I think that if you're able to express why you don't like something, whether you're expressing it in an eloquent way or whether it's even just a couple of words, if you're able to express that, I think that's fantastic. And I think that the people that are saying let people enjoy things should be able to understand why people don't like the thing that you like.

We can let people enjoy things, but my whole argument against the “let people enjoy things” thing is that since that statement is used to essentially close the doors, it's stopping those people from actually discovering different things. 

And I always feel that if there's people that are saying let people enjoy things and it's purely false metalcore, then those people are closing the doors on allowing themselves to discover community, how they can give back to their scene. They're so used to consuming music at this high-level thing where they'll buy a £50 coin and that, but they won't spend £3 in a zine for the bands in their scene that make their city the reason bands come here.

Hayls: Okay, fair enough. It wasn't just-

Greg: I think if you close the doors.

Hayls: If you use it as a way to avoid conversation and discovery. You're not completely dismissing that you can let people enjoy things. You're not the music police or the genre police saying, "You can't listen to this. You can't enjoy this." 

Greg: No.

Hayls: Fucking could have fooled me.

Greg: And then that always comes down to, it comes down to how people interpret things on the internet because since a lot of shit is in text, you can interpret that any way that you want. And if you see someone saying, "I think Spiritbox suck," then there's going to be people that will be like, "Well, you don't like women. What's wrong with you?"

Hayls: Oh, that's exactly what they said to me.

Greg: It's like it comes down to interpretation. It's the same as being like, "That band broke that woman's camera, so that means they don't like women and they don't like black people." And it's purely down to interpretation and how you take things. And I think that if you invest so much of your emotions into the bands that you like, you're going to feel a lot rawer and a lot more visceral when it comes to people saying negative things about the things that you like.

And I think that's where fandoms completely and utterly fall apart because they can't deal with people disliking the things that they like because they care about it so much, and they've not been able to allow themselves to disconnect from that.

Hayls: Well, you fucking saw what happened to me when I said that I didn't like Kaonashi. You'd have thought that I'd went for Taylor Swift or something.

Greg: Well, that's because you're wrong. Kaonashi rule.

Hayls: No. I'm sure they're great. They were great to me in DMs after that. They were so cool.

Greg: Yeah. Great band. They put on a brilliant show, but I can understand why people don't like them. It's the same reason that some people don't like certain bands because of the vocal style. You don't like hardcore because you think all the vocalists suck.

Hayls: Vocalists, yeah, get rid of them all. They all need to go back to their day jobs, to be honest.

Greg: And then in the exact same way that I think false metalcore sucks because they all use that same djenty neural DSP guitar tone. I think that sucks because of that. But you like it, and that's fine.

Hayls: Yeah. Yeah. It's the same way people don't like Knocked Loose because of the vocals. This is exactly what I said about Kaonashi; was riffs are hard. Instrumentally, they're so hard. But because the vocals are the thing that I'm hearing, that's the thing that I'm going to join in with if I'm vibing with a song.

I'm going to start singing along to the lyrics. But if the vocals are just not sitting well in my brain, it's got to go. And that's what I said. I could have said that maybe a little bit, instead of just saying, "Oh, they fucking suck," because that's literally just what I said. And yeah, yeah, you would have thought that I'd done crimes against humanity with the way that Twitter came after me for that one.

Greg: Yeah, you did.

Hayls: They should have just, I was letting people enjoy it. They could enjoy it. That's fine.

Greg: You should have went to the show. You should have went to the show.

Hayls: It was a Wednesday. I had my child. I don't know what you wanted me to do.

Greg: I don't know. Take child with.

Hayls: I'm not taking her to one of these underground basement shows. That's unsafe for a toddler. It's unsafe.

Greg: It's debatable. Children should play in basements more often, specifically bars.

Hayls: Jesus. If there was a pool thing-

Greg: Where alcohol is.

Hayls: -She would have loved it. 

Greg: But yeah, shout out Kaonashi. Fantastic band.

Hayls: Shout out the people. Yeah, they're cool. Right.

You said earlier, and I wanted to interject, but I thought, "No, I'm going to let you yap." You went on about the names in the music scene. You only said two. You said Craig Reynolds and Brendan Murphy, about not liking you because of maybe certain things that you've said, how you've said it, and blah, blah, blah. We obviously know there's more, but this could be a short and sweet, simple answer. How did you feel when you got called a melted ice cream by Ronnie Radke? I can't lie, he cooked with that.

Greg: No, it was excellent. I couldn't even argue or anything. I was just like, "Fuck, that's good." But it was probably the fastest screenshot I've ever taken in my life, the fastest link I've ever copied. I sent it to everyone. I was like, "You will not fucking believe this." I had people that I haven't spoken to in years get in touch with me, and they're just like, "Oh, my God, what did he say? What did he say?" And I'm like, "Here's the link. Go on. Funny, man."

Hayls: Did he do a whole video? Because all I know about that instance is what he called you and the screenshot. What was that even? I don't think I knew you at that point.

Greg: He did a whole video on it, and the reason for it was because Ronnie was going through a moment, maybe about a year and a half, two years ago or something like that. It was around the time that Slaughter to Prevail had the front cover of Revolver magazine, and everyone was very upset about it.

And I can remember it was also around the time that the whole Architects transphobia thing kicked off as well. And people were basically just coming at Ronnie relentlessly online and just generally just tagging him and just being like, "You're a stupid cunt," and that. And Ronnie would just go out of his way to just make fun of them in return. 

But like people like that do, they love to just go all out on it. So, he was saving people's profile pictures or going through their Twitter media tab and just saving their photos, quoting them, posting that, and just being like, "Yeah, you look like a magician crossed with a sex offender." He was just saying shit like that about people, and it was great. But he quoted me and replied to me maybe three or four times or something, and then that's when he DMed me.

But he had replied to me so many times because that was when my account was starting to kind of pop off a little bit, and I was talking about how, yeah, it was around the whole Architects transphobia thing. And I made a post being like, "Since people are finding out that a band has links to transphobia, can we start making a thread of LGBT+ friendly, inclusive bands?" And it was like thousands of bands were getting sent in and stuff, and it was a huge thread. But he kept replying to it, and he kept tweeting it, just being like, "This is gay. This is bullshit. What the fuck? Listen to what you want to," and stuff like that. 

And I would end up just getting to the point where he messaged me, and he was like, "Do you think that the guy from Slaughter to Prevail is a Nazi? What's fucking wrong with you?" So I just sent him back a photo of me out with my friends at the bar, just sticking a middle finger up at him. And then he responded to me saying, "Fear." And that was the very point where I screenshotted it, and then I just quoted him saying, "Alexa, reverse the curse." And then that went viral. And then I think that was the point where my account really took off. 

And that was when and then that's when the TikTok got made because it was maybe a couple of months after my birthday, and he screenshotted a photo that I took on my birthday of me holding two cans of Dr Pepper outside the shop. And he was like, "Look at this fucking ugly idiot," and that, and I was like, "There's so many photos you could have taken, and you chose the one that I took to basically mock myself." I’d got up at like 8:00 in the morning to go get two tins of Dr Pepper for my birthday. And I was like, "I don't really care. It's funny." But he was asking people to bully me and shit. 

And you know what that fan base is like. They don't know how to bully people. You've got people that are white, unwashed, they have dreadlocks. Come on, pick a struggle. And you've got just fucking stupid women that are saying shit like, "Oh, I don't care that he hit his partner. I would let him hit me." And I'm like, "Okay, cool.” Morons, honestly. But yeah, yeah, it's see, let people enjoy things, right? This is what happens.

Hayls: Yeah, you absolutely should. I think there's a line. There's definitely a line with that. Let people enjoy things within reason. Yeah, absolutely. There's stuff being put out in the creative industries that absolutely shouldn't be enjoyed. And you shouldn't be public about you enjoying that. You shouldn't even be secretive. If you have morals, you shouldn't be enjoying that kind of shit.

Greg: Hot take. It's not even a hot take. But you can listen to cancelled bands as long as you just do it on your time. You don't need to publicise it. You don't need to make a big deal about it. If you want to listen to cancelled bands-

Hayls: Greg listens to cancelled bands.

Greg: Greg Hall listens to cancelled bands, Greg Hall is a Servitude stan, and he always will be.

Hayls: Oh, are they cancelled? That's not from my neck of the woods, so I don't know about them.

Greg: No. Yeah, I can say these band names on your channel, and no one will have a clue. It's fine.

Hayls: Yeah. No, all of your little fan boys and girls will know who they are. And I'm just like, "No, I ain't got a clue." Obviously, we all know that I'm a Johnny Craig truther. I always will be. But I'm public about that, so.

Greg: Yeah, which is totally fair because the man has gone through therapy. He's gone clean, and he's sorted his life out.

Hayls: And he's got custody of his kid now. Was he a fucked up human?-

Greg: And see what the great thing is,right?

Hayls: -Yeah, absolutely.

Greg: Is that I could have went down the path of being like, "You're cancelled because of something this guy did forever ago." Or I could be like, "You know what? I could read. I could do a Google. I could find shit out and then actually make an informed opinion." But it's the internet, and that doesn't happen.

Hayls: No. Obviously, if you'd have brought up years ago when he wasn't sorted, wasn't on the straight and narrow, wasn't fixing himself, nah, you probably shouldn't have been public about loving Johnny Craig or anything that Johnny Craig's been in because he wasn't someone that you should be giving promotion to or giving your time to. 

But since, nah, absolutely. Even in the, because he's not in those eras anymore, so I can listen to him in Emarosa and the two songs of Dance Gavin Dance from when he was there. I'll listen to that, even though he was a piece of shit then. But he's not now. Big up Johnny Craig. Honestly, until this world produces another Johnny Craig, I'm a Johnny Craig truther. Don't care. And you've said one, so I'm sure people are going to be singing your fucking praises like, "Hell yeah, Greg Hall, you're so cool and awesome. Wow." For liking that cancelled band.

Greg: Yeah. I'm sure that'll be the case.

Hayls: Yeah. Well, you're going to have so many people going, "I love that band too. It's so awesome that Greg Hall loves it.”

Greg: Hey, if this podcast gets, or whatever the fuck this is, gets people into listening to H8000 bands and edge metal and shit like that, then I've done my job. That's good.

Hayls: That's cool. Or if they see that, who knows? Like you said earlier, sometimes people see you in a different light once they actually talk to you and not just assume you're a bellend on the internet. But you are. But two things can be true at once. You are still a bellend. But hey, we get along, and we're complete opposite. I'm like your worst nightmare in terms of music taste.

Greg: Yeah, you suck.

Hayls: Exactly. That’s why I’m called Haylsucks, come on, it's on brand. 

Hayls: There was another question, but I think we kind of answered it earlier. Do you think that modern metalcore, or as some people like to call it, octanecore, or as you like to call it, false metalcore, do you think it's gone down that route because of how accessible social media is to monetise and push it and shit like that? Do you think that that's the reason that so many of these bands are big right now?

Greg: Yes.

Hayls: Or that is such a big part? And people don't- how do I want to put this?

When people see these big bands, they see metalcore, and they're ignorant to the fact that, no, there is actually something called metalcore, and it's not this. Do you think that the reason that so many bands follow this kind of mainstream radio rock is because of modern marketing, chasing the bag?

Greg: Essentially, yeah.

Yeah. They're chasing the bag. And I think a lot of people that listen to these bands, through no fault of their own, they're not aware of bands at any other level because this has been their gateway, and they've been marketed so heavily into thinking, "This is it. This is music," that it stops people from actually thinking, "You know what? I could actually go and discover shit. I could learn my history into what metalcore actually is, where it came from, who coined the term." 

There's so much that you could do, but when you're marketed to believe that this is it, this is music at its best because it's popular, because it's heavily marketed, and it's got that sound that made people believe that metal and rock was cool because it was the counterculture that was going against what's mainstream and that, even though these big popular bands are essentially the mainstream part of what people believe is metalcore now, like your Sleep Token and your Bad Omens and that. They're the exact same fucking thing. Just one's got a distortion pedal, and the other doesn't.

But yeah, I think that chasing the bag has stopped fans from actually seeing bands at grassroots levels, from seeing what local shows are actually like, seeing where bands actually come from because they don't know any better because that's what's been marketed to them. That's what I think it is.

Hayls: And do you think that's why there's a lot of bands that chase that sound now? Is for the bag and for the, what would you call it? Eyes on them, the publicity, or the potential for publicity.

Greg: Exactly. And there's bands that want to be like that because that's all that they're being exposed to. And they think like, "Oh, I want to be like that. I want to be playing massive stages like that." So they try to feed into the same blueprint and the same design that all these bands are following, but they're not able to do that because they're experiencing the same thing that bands at grassroots levels and at local shows are experiencing, which is that there's next to no money.

And the same people that like all these massive bands that are playing on huge stages and that, they're not at local shows supporting these bands that want to be like that because all those fans are not aware of these guys down here, and all these guys down here want to be up here, but they can't be up here because they don't have the people that only know that that shit exists.

Hayls: Fair enough. That makes sense.

Greg: And that's how they get into that cycle of wanting to be your commercial radio rock metal core and that, and they're trying to push themselves on TikTok and stuff like that, but they're never going to break through in the way that all those industry bands do because they don't have the money to do it. They don't have the people following them religiously. They don't have the ability to mass produce merch because they don't have the money or the funding that industry and labels and shit do.

Hayls: Yes, it's expensive.

Greg: Yeah, it is.

Hayls: Touring is expensive. From speaking to my friends in bands who have done tours, particularly around America, insane. I genuinely didn't know because, obviously, you know me. I'm a stadium, and I'm an arena goer. If it's not at the Hydro, I'm not going. But knowing the bands that I do and having the people that I know in bands out in America, I was so unaware of what actually went into local shows or smaller shows.

Greg: A lot goes into it. A lot goes into it. And I think a lot of people are not aware of that because people think big shows have got light shows. There's crews and stuff like that that come with each band and stuff. You've got all your visuals and shit, and you've got to pay your security, your people on the door, the staff of the venue, and everything like a normal fucking business.

But then people think that at local level, "Oh, yeah, you don't have all that. So you must be making more money because you don't have to make those things and that." And it's like, "No, because you don't have the same number of people coming through the door. You're not charging people anywhere near the amount that you would pay for an arena show." And you've got local people, literally just people like you and me paying for venue hire, paying for backline. You're paying multiple bands and that, but you're only able to pay each band a certain amount of money to continue touring and playing shows because it's all dependent on people actually coming to your show. And you're not going to get all your people from arenas and all your people that have discovered bands on TikTok going to these shows because they don't know any different.

And if you don't have these massive fandoms actually going to local shows, then all the bands that are trying to tour and make their dream an actual reality, whether that's chasing the bag or it's just playing shows to fuck around and enjoy themselves, then they're not going to be making much money in it in the first place. There's no industry sponsor. There's no fucking Jackson Guitars paying you to play their guitars or anything like that. There's just no money in it. And you're trying to factor in how little promoters can actually pay these bands. 

But then you're also considering how expensive fuel is. Where is the band going to sleep that night? How far are you travelling from venue to venue and that? You've got to pay for food. You've got to be able to look after yourself and shit like that as well. And not every band is paying for hotels and stuff. And that's usually because touring is so expensive that you have to sleep on someone's floor, and they essentially can't afford to stay at a hotel or anything like that. It's not as glamorous as people think it is.

Hayls: No, I genuinely thought they were just slumming it in shitty Airbnbs and stuff like that. But no, they'll just hire a really small minibus, and they'll all just sleep in there. And sometimes you have to share gear. I'm not saying they’re doing that stuff. Sometimes you have to share instruments with other bands.

Greg: No, genuinely. That's a thing that absolutely happens because, for example, we're putting a show on in July, and we're bringing two or three bands over from Europe, and in the emails back and forth, one of the bands was like, "See, to save us having to spend loads of money to bring all our gear over, to fly over to the UK and go through customs and pay all these heavy luggage fees and that, can we just use some of the other band's shit?" And that saves them money because they can't afford to do that because travelling and paying shows is expensive enough as it is.

Hayls: Yeah, flights are mad.

Greg: But it's just the way that it is. There's a huge gulf between DIY and playing in small shows and stuff like that compared to your industry bands that are all at the top that have the money, the sponsorships, the merch income, whatever else that is that they're doing.

And yeah, there's just a huge gulf, a huge difference. And a lot of the people that only know about those big bands on top because of TikTok are not aware of what all these little bands down the bottom are doing just to get by. 

I can think of touring Europe, and it was a two-week run, and I think we slept in, I think we paid for accommodation once. And for every single other date, we had to sleep in the van. I can't even remember what the name is or what you would call those things. But in Europe, there's places where it's undocumented housing, and essentially, it's where people that are homeless and stuff would go and stay. And the way that they get by is just-

Hayls: Oh a squat.

Greg: Yeah, it's a squat. Yeah, that's the one. I remember we slept in the attic of a squat multiple times, slept at the side of the road in the van and that. Yeah, it's not as glamorous as people think it is.

Hayls: Not why, but how important is it for people to go to local shows? Because of everything that we've just touched on, how these bands that do tours around their own country, they know that they're never going to make a profit, or that making a profit is, they don't even aim for that, they aim for breaking even because that's a plus to them.

Greg: Yeah, that's the way to do it.

Hayls: That's a plus to them.

Greg: Yes, absolutely.

Hayls: So how important is it to you, and how important is it for other people to support their local scene?

Greg: I think to kind of put it in the simplest way possible, right, is that if people don't go to local shows and they don't actually pay in or pick up merch or anything like that, bands are less likely to want to come to your town or your city because they know that they're not going to get a good turnout. They know that going to your town or your city is a loss, so they'll completely skip going there.

And if there's no shows, then there's no bands. And if there's no people that go to shows, then the promoter can't put anything on. The bands won't want to actually go there because no one's going to go to the show. It's a bust every single time. You're going to a city to lose money. That's essentially it.

You should support your local scene, not in the way of being like, "You should support it no matter what," because sometimes your scene can just have some dogshit bands. But then that creates the incentive that if your scene has dogshit bands in it, then go make a band. Make a band that people could actually enjoy or start inviting the bands that you like to the town that you're in so you can actually put on the show that people will actually come to.

I think it's so important to actually kind of give a shit about your scene because if you're seeing venues and stuff closing in your town or in your city, then I think that's partly down to your scene is not doing as much as it possibly can to keep these places going. So it's part of keeping live music alive. If you're just going to be travelling all the time down to fucking Manchester because you don't like that there's no shows in your town, then why don't you just start putting on shows? Why don't you just start putting on shows and inviting the bands you like? There's so much that people can do, but people are just fucking lazy. I think it's important.

Hayls: Cool. I'm sure plenty of people will agree with you on that one.

Greg: Also, I think it's really interesting that if you actually start giving back your scene, you never know where that's actually going to take you and what's actually going to happen. I went to school with a guy that used to put on shows in Inverness up in the Highlands. Inverness has never had a good music scene. It did for a very, very short period of time when Bring Me the Horizon used to go up there when they were quite small, and Enter Shikari played a 20-cap Ice Rink bar. That was an excellent show. Or when Gallows actually played that same bar and the show got stopped halfway through because Neds kicked the back door in-

Hayls: Valid.

Greg: -so the show had to stop because the Neds were battering all the goths. It was funny.

So up in Inverness, there was a boy that was in the year above me, and he used to put on shows because he was like, "No one's doing anything. I'm going to start putting on shows and inviting bands." And that's how we used to see bands like Flood of Red and Enter Shikari and stuff come through. But he just kept doing that. And then he eventually moved to Glasgow, then he moved to London and stuff, kept doing the exact same thing, putting on shows, giving back, making zines, whatever. 

He used to go on tour with bands and stuff as well because he became friends with all these people, and he ended up becoming guitar and drum tech for While She Sleeps and then Architects, and I think now he techs for All Time Low. You never know where you're going to go. I know we can make faces about all these bands and stuff, but this is the point I'm trying to make is that you don't know the route.

Hayls: While She Sleeps aren’t cancelled, but the other two.

Greg: No.

Hayls: I wouldn't put that on my resume.
Greg: No, but it's something that actually worked out for him.

Hayls: Yeah, in terms of numbers.

Greg: Yeah, it's something that you can turn into a career. It's something that can open doors for you. It's just how it is. There's so much that you can do in your scene, and you don't know where your scene's going to take you. You can be taking photos one day, and then the next day, a band can ask you to come out with them to document their tour.

There's just so much, but you're not going to get that if you just go to arena shows, and you're like, "Vessel, take me on tour."

Hayls: Fucking love Vessel. Right, let's talk about your band.

Greg: Okay, yeah, which one?

Hayls: Which one? I only know of one.

Greg: Right, okay. Which one do you know of?

Hayls: Is it called Northern?

Greg: Yeah, Northern was my last band, my favourite.

Hayls: Yeah, the one that we watched in Discord, and I thought it was fucking hilarious. It's so weird seeing you like that. Why did you call it Northern? Is it because-

Greg: We called it Northern because the-

Hayls: -Because you're Northern.

Greg: We called it Northern because the guitarist liked that name, and it also looked really good in a particular font because he's a designer.

Hayls: I'm going to insert a clip, by the way, of you in a band.

Hayls: That band, Northern, when did you start it? Why did you start it? And why did it fall off? Why is it not going anymore?

Greg: The reason that that band fell apart is because that was before-

Hayls: You were shit.

Greg: -I no, no, no, no. I was a terrible person, actually. I near enough brought that band to an end because it was back when I wasn't vegan. I wasn't straight edge.

I was generally just a completely different piece of shit way before I actually decided to do a proper 180 and sort my life out and stuff. And it was before I could actually properly express why I didn't like or like things. So we would go to practice and that, and I would just be like, "Nah, that's shit. Nah, that sucks. I hate that. I'm not interested. It's crap."

Hayls: You're still the same.

Greg: And I wouldn't show up for practices. I wouldn't show up for  sound checks and stuff like that to shows. Effectively, I kind of fucked that band by just being a piece of shit. And eventually, I got kicked out of it. And then the guy that kicked me out, he got kicked out of it, and I got invited back into the band, and then we tried to make the band work. I knew people, so we were getting shows. We were managing to sell merch and stuff like that, but the heart wasn't in it, and the passion wasn't in it anymore, and there was a lot more grief for people than anything else being part of that band. So it just didn't work in the end. It didn't work.

Hayls: Do you think you could do that again or nah? You're too old now. You're like 50 something, so kind of past your prime.

Greg: It's kind of funny because the majority of your big musicians on top and stuff and the ones that still play local and that are around my age and in their 30s anyway.

Hayls: Yeah, you're just a pathological liar because you’re pushing 50.

Greg: I would love to go back and make music, but my only issue is the times that I've tried to go back and make it, times where I've practiced with bands to see if I would fit the part and that. And I don't know, it's never felt good, it's never felt right. I've tried out with two or three bands and that that have asked me, "Yeah, let's start writing together,” and that, and then I'll do one practice with them and it's never felt right. I always come away feeling like shit, thinking like, "This is not what I want." I want to be making music, but I want to be making the music that I want to as opposed to just making music that I don't know, making music for the sake of playing shows. I think the only way that I'm actually going to be able to do it is once I actually manage to have enough money to just buy a guitar, buy software, and just write a whole EP myself.

I think that's the way that I need to do it, similar to how Colter has done that with Killing of a Sacred Deer and how PSYCHO-FRAME and shit came about and how a lot of projects generally come about, how Frontierer came about as well. It was all just two people to begin with, and then it blossomed into this full-life band thing.

So I think that's the only way that I would be able to do it if I really, really wanted to because I know what I think would work and what I think would be good, but I feel like I would need to do it myself.

Hayls: I think you should make a Sleep Token tribute band.

Greg: There's already a lot of people on TikTok that are already doing that where it's like all those horrible videos being like, "This is what Sleep Token sounds like to me." And it's like, "Ho ho ho." It's like Elvis Presley shit. Yeah, I'll go back to music one day, but it's something that I've been kind of toying with for six years or something like that.

One day, it'll happen. I've made full bands twice where I've had a position filled by everyone, but then we've just not been able to carve out the time to do anything. We've made the group chats where people send riffs and stuff like that in, but it never comes to fruition because it's just, it's obviously just not meant to be. It'll happen one day.

Hayls: Oh, maybe. Don't worry. I'll put a react clip on TikTok when it does. I know you'd love that.

Greg: Yeah, but you charge like 300 quid, so I'm not.

Hayls: Yeah, I do. Yeah. I charge more than that. I had to put it up. Inflation, come on. 375.

Greg: You've got to deal. You've got to compete with the baldies that wear snap caps and don't wash their beards that react to the worst shit, don't you?

Hayls: Let's talk about 2026, Greg Hall. What are you doing this year? What's in your diary for this year so you can show people that you're not just a very, very opinionated bellend on the internet that talks a bit too much?

Greg: One thing that I realised that it's actually quite sad is that, every year since I've picked up a camera, I've done one tour a year. I always do one tour a year, and that's it. But this is the first year that I'm not going to be able to do that because I have so much shit booked. I actually can't physically go away for two weeks at a time with a band.

So, stuff that I've got on, I'm going over to California in three weeks to go work for Trustkill Records and photograph at Hellfest West. So, that's in California, the first one that's there. Hellfest is back after 20 years' absence, and it's really, really cool that I get to photograph fucking Day of Suffering and Turmoil and Kickback and stuff like that. So, it's really fucking cool to be part of that. And then following on from that, actually, two weeks on from that in March, I go to Ieper Winterfest to go work with my favourite friends in Belgium, Incendiary and Shattered Realm are playing that, so I'm going to get to see them, which is ace, and photograph that. In April, I go to Bangkok and Thailand for Concrete Jungle Fest. I got invited over for that, which is ace.

Hayls: CONCRETE JUNGLE.

Greg: Yeah, yeah, fucking Bad Omens Fest. That's the one. I got invited over for that and when I said yes to coming over for it, I got a message back being like, "The straight edge kids are going to be so happy that you're coming over." And I was like, "Yeah, my people." So, I'm going over for that. Fuck, who's all playing that? Recognise, Whispers, Hellrazor are playing. Forewarned from Australia are coming over, which is really fucking cool. So yeah, I'm super excited for that.  Next month on from that, four weeks on, I'm going to Berlin in Germany for the second edition of Cakewalk Fest. I got invited over to photograph and film that. That's, Death Threat are coming over for an exclusive Europe show. And then a month on from that is Outbreak Fest. I'm hoping that I can just jump on to one of the dates with one of the bands again for that like I do every year.

Hayls: Oh, wait, we're doing Outbreak together?

Greg: Maybe. Depends. We'll see what happens.

Hayls: Come on.

Greg: And then a week after Outbreak is Hellphyra in New Jersey, I got invited back after how good last year went. So yeah, the lineup for that is yet to be announced. I'm super excited for it, but it should be any moment now that it gets announced because Josh at Trustkill was telling me that after FYA has been done for a week or two, then the lineup's going to go up. And it's been one week since FYA. And then following on from that, that brings me up to July because it's like that guy in Mortal Reminder that gave me shit for saying that I was booked all the way up until June. I'm actually booked all the way up until July now, so.

Hayls: Jesus. That's my friends.

Greg: I think me and the two guys that I put shows on with, Ross and Harry that play in Lights Out, and we put on shows under the name Shattered City in Glasgow, we're putting on so far, we've got four shows booked. One's in April, one's in July, one's in August, and then I can't remember where the other one is, but yeah, we're putting on shows. We're taking photos of shit.

Hayls: Am I gunna like any of them?

Greg: Probably not, but you're going to go because you need to support your local scene because you say you live in Glasgow, right?

Hayls: Yeah, I do.

Greg: Yeah, cool. So yeah, support your local scene.

Hayls: Yeah, but I don't like the music.

Greg: Make it so more bands want to come.

Hayls: How can I support something I don't like the sound of? Why would I?

Greg: I don't know. You can just let people enjoy things and shut the fuck up.

Hayls: Well, no, let me enjoy things. And I'm not going to go and subject myself to an unenjoyable experience. What is this?

Greg: Well, I already agreed to do this, and it's a pretty unenjoyable experience, so.

Hayls: Yeah, but you're having fun. So I don't know why you're lying.

Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to clip me and shit like that. I'm super excited about that.

Hayls: Edit it down to make you say shit.

Greg: Yeah.

Hayls: Like you love Ronnie Radke or something. Yeah. I'm going to get you another quote retweet with Ronnie Radke.

Greg: Oh, make it happen. We've not spoken ages, but yeah, I'm doing loads of shit this year. This is probably the busiest I've been, and it's real nice. Also doing this at the same time as working a full-time 8:00 till 5:00, five days a week job. It's tiring as fuck, but when you love something, you'll do anything for it.

Hayls: There you go. So that's your indicator that you're not just a loud mouth on the internet, which I'm sure there's probably bare people that think you are and that you don't do anything for the scene that you claim to ride so hard for.

Greg: Yeah, that's true.

Hayls: Or you're just a shit photographer, and you don't get booked in for anything.

Greg: Yeah, I'm definitely a shit photographer if I'm booked out till July, but it is what it is.

Hayls: Right. We're not going to get personal or controversial anymore. We're past that. I think I've let you be controversial enough. I just want to know, we just want to know good stuff now, so.

Greg: Okay, good stuff.

Hayls: Oh, wait, no, that one would make you be maybe controversial. Fuck it. I'm going to ask you anyway. It doesn't matter whether I'm going to know them or not. You don't need to explain them to me. Explain them to the people that know them. Give me a band that you used to ride so, so hard for, but they fell off.

Greg: See, after the first EP and the first album, they went massively downhill, and I thought it was absolute dog shit. But it was a band that actually, I found on MySpace because they friended me on MySpace, and that's actually how I got listening to that band. And I still kind of listen to them to this day because the EP and the album are both fantastic. But I used to ride really, really hard for Escape of Fate.

Hayls: Dying Is Your Latest Fashion is a fucking brilliant album.

Greg: It's a fantastic album.

Hayls: I will die on that hill.

Greg: It's really, really well written. It flows brilliantly, and it has what is quintessential warped tour, Las Vegas post-hardcore, and I think that those are things that work really, really well together and the whole glam rock aesthetic and everything that they had going on at the time when scene was really popular. I thought they were, I thought they were really, really onto something, and I rode for them really, really hard. And I think that when Ronnie turned out to be an absolute waste of space, I think that's when I actually thought, "You know what? Looking up to musicians is a bad idea."

Hayls: Yeah, especially ones like that. Especially ones like that.

Greg: I'm trying to think if there's any other bands that I used to ride for pretty hard, but then they actually turned out to be dog shit.

Hayls: I wasn't expecting you to say Escape the Fate, to be honest. I think it's a very, across-the-board people will appreciate, we all say, "Fuck Ronnie Radke." It's fuck Ronnie Radke, but he absolutely cooked and served with that album.

Greg: He did. No one sounded like him. No one was doing that kind of warped tour mall post-hardcore in that way. They were cooking socials the way that people cook them now, where they were just rinsing MySpace for everything that it had. And they were doing Ernie Ball guitar tournaments and shit like that. They were opening the Taste of Chaos tour in America. They were doing every single thing right, and it worked, and then just all kind of fell apart. 

See, another band that I actually used to really, really ride for as well because the EP was fantastic, and the first album was brilliant, and that was Emarosa because Relativity is a fantastic album.

Hayls: Yeah, but you know I bloody love Emarosa. Hey, hold on, you told me that you didn't even, that was the worst one, Relativity.

Greg: No, Relativity is probably the only one that I actually recognise.

Hayls: That's my favourite. That's literally the first one that I listened to. That was because, obviously, bear in mind, I'm a spring chicken. I'm way younger than you.

Greg: Yeah, you're like a year younger.

Hayls: Fuck off a year younger. Yeah, if you were 31, mate, which you're absolutely not.

Greg: Who else fell off? I feel like Metallica fell off as well.

Hayls: Yeah, but you know my thing with midtallica.

Greg: They had an absolutely fantastic run. I feel that Finch kind of fell off a little bit as well. But then again, that's just going back to 2005 when Say Hello to Sunshine came out, and it wasn't as good as what it is to burn. There's so many.

Hayls: You can talk about bands that I’m not gunna know because you might ruffle some feathers for the people that do know it.

Greg: I think Saosin fell off after this is personally what I think. The Beatle album is fantastic because when Cove took over when Cove took over from Anthony Greene, it was obviously a very, very big change for people. But the self-titled is a brilliant album, and it was my introduction into that whole Taste of Chaos universe where it was Saosin, Senses Fail, Thursday, Sunny Day Real Estate, and that. And the likes of Translating the Name and stuff that had Anthony Greene singing on them. I feel that the albums that followed well, they had two albums that followed the self-title. 

They had In Search of Solid Ground that still had Cove singing for them. It was a massive dip in quality, and then after that, Anthony Greene came back for the album that came out in 2019 that was Along the Shadow, and that was meant to be “Saosin are back to their prime where they've got Anthony Greene. They're going to do Translating the Name sort of shit again,” and it just didn't hit. It just wasn't good. It was like the EPs were brilliant, the self-titled was brilliant, and then they could never top it, they could just never beat it.

From First to Last were the exact same as well. After Sonny Moore left, it just kind of stopped being as interesting. That's Skrillex for spring chickens like you.

Hayls: No, I was going to say that you should probably not government name him because people would be like, "Who the fuck is that?"

Greg: Okay, here's a controversial one for your friends and stuff like that. I think Counterparts massively fell off after the Tragedy album, but they've kind of clawed it back a little bit with that new EP that came out. But then again, that's because the new EP sounds like END. It sounds like END, that's what makes it good. But yeah, there's so many different bands that are great. Oh, there's another one, Varials fell off as soon as Trav left.

Hayls: Okay, so I know a lot of people do agree with that because, yes, after Trav left, you had that weird album that came out. Fuck, who was it with? Who was the vocalist again? Shit, I was talking about him the other day.

Greg: It wasn't your man. It wasn't your man from Cell because he's in it now.

Hayls: No, it's not Skyler. You had Travis, and then you had..

Greg: Oh, the guy that told people “not to push pit because moshing’s for pussies” or some shit. Yeah.

Hayls: Yeah, he turned out to be a piece of shit anyway.

Greg: Yeah, he's a dork.

Hayls: Yeah. No, even I can agree that that album was fucking horrible after Travis left. Or maybe the two, I think they did two. I can't remember. But you need to trust me, even though it's not Travis and it's Skyler, they've cooked with this album. It's not going to sound like it did with Travis, of course it's not, but it's not the shit that it was before Skyler joined. Way better.

Greg: Yeah, that's bait. I'm not believing that. Trav Varials was where it was at. The Ghost Inside fell off. They absolutely fell off.

Hayls: Oh, see, I was never a fan.

Greg: You know what's the interesting thing about The Ghost Inside, right, is that they are a prime example of HXC hardcore.

Hayls: I always forget what the fuck this X is.

Greg: HXC is hardcore for what people call hardcore that are not actually into hardcore.

Hayls: Me.

Greg: Yeah, you would call hardcore HXC the same way that there's people that call metalcore Twitter MXC Twitter.

Hayls: I just thought that was just an abbreviation, short way of saying things.

Greg: No, no, no, no, no. It's a very real way of actually recognising that things are different. And it's a really, really good way of actually kind of differentiating between the two. You've got HXC as the The Ghost Inside and Lionheart, but then HC is Backtrack and Rotting Out and Terror and Death Threat and stuff.

Hayls: I don't know any of them. 

Greg: Of course you don't.

Hayls: I genuinely just thought it was just a way of shortening the words hardcore and metalcore because if you were to just put MC, you're going to either think motorcycle club or you're going to think an MC on the mic. So I genuinely just thought that when people were using HXC and MXC, it was just a way of saying metalcore or hardcore. No, didn't know that.

Greg: It's like people saying the names of straight edge bands but pronouncing the Xs at the start and the end.

Hayls: Oh, you're not supposed to?

Greg: No. Okay.

Hayls: You genuinely not?

Greg: No, why would you pronounce them?

Hayls: Well, because they put it in their name, aint they?

Greg: What, are you calling them X weapon X? Are you saying X consumed to satisfy X?

Hayls: Yeah, if I was to see it.

Greg: You're saying X magnitude X, X one step closer X.

Hayls: If I actually cared about these bands, yeah, I would be saying it like that.

Greg: Jesus Christ.

Hayls: Well, they put it in their title. Obviously, I'm not straight edge, am I?

Greg: Yeah, that's so you know it's a straight edge band.

Hayls: Well, can't they just tell us? They ain't got to put it in their name. Or is that for people that want to discover straight edge bands? They can just type in X, and it's going to give them all on Apple Music.

Greg: That's a way of doing it. Yeah.

Hayls: Fucking hell. I don't want to get into straight edge discourse because that'll bore me. Good on you. Do what you want. That's cool. Great. Not for me. Don't want to hear about it.

Greg: Right. What else do you want to know?

Hayls: Give me a false metalcore/octane band that you actually like because I know there's one, so don't lie to me.

Greg: I actually really liked- I'm not as interested in them anymore.

Hayls: No, no, no, no, no. I need, you like them now.

Greg: See, that kind of ruins it because I don't think there's any.

Hayls: Yeah, there is. I know there's one.

Greg: Nah.

Hayls: That still exists now.

Greg: Why don't you just tell me? I don't know.

Hayls: It's Polaris. I know you like Polaris.

Greg: They're not false metalcore, though.

Hayls: Are they not? See, I wouldn't have put them in as real metalcore because they don't sound-

Greg: They're absolutely not. They're not real metalcore, but I wouldn't even call them false metalcore.

Hayls: Well, no, because they're not pushed all over social media in that sense.

Greg: Yeah, I do like Polaris-

Hayls: Good.

Greg: -and I had a solid year where I was really, really locked into the album with the fire on the front of it that had Landmine and stuff on it. I really liked that. I genuinely did. It was one of the, it was one of the few bands of that kind of style that I was interested in because I actually really liked the cleans, and I don't feel like they were doing anything majorly different from other bands that you could consider false metalcore. But I don't know, I felt like they were kind of doing enough to keep me interested. 

They weren't doing the Silent Planet thing where they do the whole hotel books thing where they do all the spoken word bits, and it's like, "We love the climate. We love being leftists and that." And then there also wasn't the whole Architects thing where they're trying to work in as much orchestral shit as possible. There was no gimmick. There was no message that was forcibly pushed your way or anything like that. Polaris are just a group of people that were writing that style of metalcore, and you could tell that they enjoyed doing it. It just worked. It was just good.

Hayls: I'm glad you could appreciate Polaris because they're fucking sick.

Greg: The album that came after, Fatalism, I think is quite good as well. I feel like it's a much darker album than the fire one, but I still think the fire one is probably the best one. It's probably because that's the first one that I actually gave a chance and enjoyed.

Hayls: It was a good album.

Greg: If you want to get into more albums of that style that I actually liked, I'm a big fan of Thornhill's “The Dark Pool”. I think that's one of the best albums. 

Hayls: 10/10 album.

Greg: It's one of the best albums I've ever listened to. I'm majorly into fucking H8000 metalcore and shit like that, and I love hardcore, but Dark Pool's an album that really speaks to me because I just think it's so well done. It's not overproduced. Songs actually mean shit, Lily in the Moon was one of the best songs ever written. And another album that I actually really, really enjoyed.

Hayls: Cool. I'm going to let you be a hater again. Most disappointing release of 2025?

Greg: That Orthodox album.

Hayls: Yeah, I knew you were going to say that.

Greg: Meh, I don't even need to think about it. It was a massive disappointment because everything that made that band great on their come-up was all the weird ambience and what you would call wee-woos and shit. They were doing something that was genuinely really interesting and unnerving, similar to what Mortal Reminder do really, really well with Behind a Locked Door or Beyond Locked Door or something, whatever that fucking track is, the one of the three good songs in that new album. Orthodox were doing that same sort of thing, and they were fantastic at it, and I loved the way that they were able to kind of weaponise that in their music.

And ever since that new album came out, I feel like they've just over-engineered their sound, and they've gotten rid of most of what it is that made them good, that ambience, that uneasiness, the shit that actually makes your ears pick up. You're like, "Holy shit, is that what that is?" Or it makes you scroll back in the music to be like, "Did I just hear what I think I did?" Similar to what Vein's latest album, This World Is Going to Ruin You, they've done the whole horror element beautifully, and they've managed to properly own it and weaponise it and I feel like Orthodox have just removed any element of that from their new music, and that's what makes that album suck. And that's why so many people like it because it doesn't have that defining element anymore. It just sounds like everything else now, and that's what makes it accessible.

Hayls: On First Listen, I was like, "Yeah, nah, this is good." But then coming away from it, I had a massive purge of my entire Apple Music library because there was just shit on there that I'd never play anymore. So I'd sat through thousands and thousands of songs. I was like, "What do I not listen to anymore?" I'd listen to whole albums, and instead of just having the whole album downloaded because obviously I'm a downloader, I'll download shit, I'd go through and I'd pick which songs were good. Out of that album, I'd left with two. But on first listen, I really did like that album. 

Hayls: What are you looking forward to releasing this year? Or what are you okay, so here we go, two-parter. What has already been announced and you're looking forward to it dropping? And who do you hope drops this year?

Greg: What I'm looking forward to that has been announced? I'm looking forward to Converge's new album, Love Is Not Enough, because the two singles they put out so far, I think personally, are great, really, really good. And it's a little bit of a throwback to some of their earlier stuff. I'm not super hyped about the Poison the Well album that's been announced because the track Thoroughbreds that they've dropped is nah, it's not really my thing, but I'm going to stay on top of it and just actually check it out and see what it's like.

I can't think of anything else that's actually been announced. A lot of the stuff that I'm actually interested in and stuff, I usually just get the email being like, "Yo, this dropped today." And I'm like, "Cool, love that."

Hayls: Moodring. Moodring. Moodring. Moodring.

Greg: Yeah, yeah. I've actually not listened to the new Moodring yet, but.

Hayls: You haven't listened to Masochist Machine?

Greg: I'll get around to it. No, I've not listened to it yet. I know what Hunter's vision is. So I respect it, and I have good faith that it's a solid track. The last one he put out, actually, that sounded like the first Resident Evil movie, that was very good.

Hayls: Cannibal.

Greg: Yeah. Was it that one? I don't remember. Or it was Body or something like that. I can't remember.

Hayls: Eh? No. The two singles.

Greg: Something about it. I can't remember.

Hayls: The two singles that are out, well, the three, it went Half-Life, Cannibal, and now Masochist Machine.

Greg: Yeah, Half-Life. That's the one that I'm talking about. Yeah.

Hayls: Yeah, Half-Life.

Greg: Yeah. So yeah, say that I'm looking forward to that as well. And things that haven't been announced that I would like to see new music from, I would love to see a new Contention album. I think that would be great. Something, anything from World of Pleasure would be great because I think it's been three or four years now since we had something from World of Pleasure. Wwho else have we got? I would love to see another, I would love to see a five-track or something from Fear of Sin and also from Once and For All.

And I would love for this band that is local to me that I absolutely adore and I go out of my way to photograph them every single time I see them, Mind Invasion. They're a melodeath thrash band. They're so fucking good. They're all 17 years old, and they're more talented than anyone in the scene.

Hayls: Jesus.

Greg: They're just brilliant, and everyone kicks off for them. But if Mind Invasion could actually record and release something, I'd be over the moon about that.

Hayls: There you go, kids, on you get. Record it on GarageBand, on a MacBook. It'll be sorted.

Greg: Yeah, yeah, do that. I can't think of who else I would want to see music from. More straight edge music, more vegan straight edge music. Yeah, the good shit.

Hayls: Okay, here's, not a question that I had on there, but it's a question that I've wanted to pick brains about and in your Discord as well, but I can't be dealing with so many people giving their opinions and stuff. So I'm just going to go straight to the source. You see, so your real metalcore, and then for argument's sake, we'll say a band like Bad Omens, we'll just put Bad Omens against that. Do you guys who like hardcore and real metalcore just not like to have a sing-along? And don't say that you can go to other genres for that because that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, do you not just like a little pop-rocky song where you can sing along to a catchy chorus and not have to think about the logistics of it?

Greg: I think this is where your lack of knowledge on hardcore and real metalcore and shit comes from because-

Hayls: There’s no singing!

Greg: -there's so much shit that people sing along to. For example, Have Heart played Outbreak two years ago or something like that, and everyone was singing every fucking single word to Same Son, and I Rise, and there's dog piles and everything, and everyone wants the mic grab and stuff.

Hayls: Yeah, but I'm on about actual melodic. I'm on about actual melodic singing. What hardcore vocalists-

Greg: Oh, you're-

Hayls: Yes, I'm not on about shouting the words. That's not singing. I need to be pedantic here, and I need you to follow the pedantry. It's not about shouting the words back. No.

Greg: You're not talking about hardcore bands and metalcore bands having dog piles and sing-alongs and mic grabs and that.

Hayls: Because it's not singing.

Greg: You're purely talking about- it absolutely is- but you're purely talking about people that have trained to become singers singing radio rock choruses.

Hayls: Yeah. Do you find no fun in singing along? And like I said, don't say. You can go to other genres,

Greg: I do, but not to that sort of shit.

Hayls: Okay, so you would go to-

Greg: Not to that sort of shit, no.

Hayls: -other genres for a sing-song.

Greg: I would look to other genres for that, or I would continue listening to what I already do listen to, and I would hear all the stuff that people sing back or go for mic grabs and that.

Hayls: They shout back.

Greg: Or I would listen to or I would listen to the likes of Age of Apocalypse who have a singer that can actually sing in a hardcore band. 

Hayls: Okay, so I would assume okay, so the better way to put it is clean vocals. There we go. 

Greg: Yeah, you're talking about clean vocals, yeah.

Hayls: I'm not talking yeah, I'm not talking about harshes because you just shout those back. That's all that is, is shouting or screaming. Depending on which kind of band you're.

Greg: You've got bands that have cleans like Age of Apocalypse, One Step Closer- 

Hayls: Oh, can you give me a band that I know?

Greg: -Anxious, and stuff like that. You just told me that I could talk about bands that you might not know.

Hayls: No, that was in one of the other questions. I didn't give a fuck then. Now I care.

Greg: Yeah, Crowquill is a good example because everyone wants a mic grab on Family Faucet. Everybody wants to sing that.

Hayls: Great fucking little, ugh, brilliant.

Greg: Exactly. Stuff like that works. Yeah.

Hayls: Yes, so that's what I’m saying, you enjoy-

Greg: You can absolutely do it. So the answer to your question is yes.

Hayls: -you enjoy a little sing-song sometimes.

Greg: I do like it. Everyone does. Just because it's not the radio rock kind that you like doesn't mean that people in hardcore and listeners of real metalcore- fucking real metalcore has so much clean singing in it. Have you ever listened to Bleeding Through?

Hayls: No, because you'd bigged them up so much. It's another 7 Angels 7 Plagues. I'm not listening out of spite.

Greg: Absolutely kills me that you will not listen to these bands. You've got bands. You've got Senses Fail. I love singing along to that. That's great. 

Hayls: Oh I know that band.

Greg: Of course you know who that band is.

Hayls: Yeah, duh.

Greg: Jesus Christ, you're so bad at this.

Hayls: We all used to sing along to a little bit of Slipknot when we were 3 years old. You were 30 at that point, but.

Greg: Cool. So what does that make you, 29? Yeah.

Hayls: Yeah.

Greg: Great.

Hayls: Yeah, so singing along to that, it's just fun to have a sing-song, isn't it?

Greg: Yeah.

Hayls: That is just one of my big pet peeves though..

Greg: So then you've even got like., you've even got the, what about metal bands and stuff that people grew up with before they actually got into the niches they liked, bands like fucking Trivium and All That Remains and stuff like that that do have clean vocals? Would you class that as a completely different thing?

Hayls: No, they're sing-songs. They're cleans.

Greg: Yeah, they're sing-songs. Exactly. Yeah.

Hayls: If you have to actually get into different registers to hit the notes, maybe not well, but in order to do it, if it's melodic, it's a sing-song. They're cleans.

Greg: What's a hardcore band that you like?

Hayls: What's a hardcore band that I like?

Greg: Yeah.

Hayls: Bodyweb. Bodyweb are Hardcore, no? It's the closest I can get.

Greg: Bodyweb are a UKHC band.

Hayls: Yeah, so they're hardcore.

Greg: I would put them down as a UKHC band where it's nu-metal made by hardcore kids.

Hayls: UKHC, UK Hardcore.

Greg: It's a community. There are bands in UKHC that are part of the UKHC scene but are not hardcore bands.

Hayls: Oh, that's the closest I can get. Oh, wait, wait. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, there's one. Fuck. It's three letters. Shit. It's three letters. They're British, English, and TRC? Is it TRC?

Greg: Just end the podcast here. Just shoot me in the head. No, it is TRC, yeah.

Hayls: Is it?

Greg: It is.

Hayls: That's one that I came across, and I was like, "No, do you know what, actually? This isn't terrible." And it's because the vocals weren't shit.

Greg: Yeah, because you liked that there's, as The Guardian put it in their article when they spoke about hardcore being revived in the UK for the millionth time, they said that “TRC is a band that blends hardcore and grime.” That's probably why you like it.

Hayls: Oh, I wouldn't have said that. Oh, definitely wouldn't have said that.

Greg: Yeah, but you know what these you know what newspapers are like. Currently, hardcore is going through another revival right now, apparently, when it never went away, but it be like that.

Hayls: I don't know. Is there another one? Bodyweb's the closest that I think I'm going to get. TRC, I really only liked one song. There's not been another hardcore band where I've listened to one song and thought, "Yeah, now this is good. Let me go and listen to more and see if they track throughout the whole-" Nah. It's just not for me.
The vocals are just- I get it because you explained it to me. That was one of our first conversations where you'd given me a 21-minute voice note on hardcore because that's the one genre that I could never differentiate or I could never identify because I didn't know what it sounded like because I'd never listened to it.

Greg: Yeah, because you never got it. Yeah. It was never on your radar.

Hayls: Nah. And you then just went into- that's it, one of our first conversations, literally, was you 21-minute voice noting me, and you said that-

Greg: It helped.

Hayls: Yeah, because now I know what hardcore sounds like, unfortunately. Not enjoyable. Is that they're focused more on lyricism than vocal technique.

Greg: Yeah, totally agree. Yeah.

Hayls: Yeah. They don't care about being the best vocalist or being an impressive vocalist. They don't want to impress anyone with their vocals.

Greg: Yeah, because it's more about the lyricism and how you're delivering the message. Because the vast majority well, it's not the vast majority. It's more a case of that if you're in a hardcore band, your lyrics should mean something. You should have a message. You should give a shit.

Hayls: See, you had fun.

Greg: Yeah, it was great. I had a lot of fun. Time of my life.

Hayls: I'm not even going to give you the opportunity to backtrack on that, right? I'm going to do some audio editing and make that seem more sincere.

Greg: Okay, cool.

Hayls: Alright, sick.

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If you’re interested in keeping up with Greghall and his photo and video bits, as well as his never ending hate for modern metalcore, you can follow him on Twitter and Instagram - @tofeelhealed