Blood-Visions Arrive With Caustic Single

“‘01604ever’ is about the repetitive drudge that office jobs and bartending can overwhelm you with, and the role that, for better or worse, alcohol tends to play in relation to that” says Blood-Visions frontman Joss Carter.

To see Blood-Visions live is to see the usually reserved, self-confessed depressive come to life in a burst of movement and un-paralleled energy; the vocalist possesses an extraordinary ability to unite a room of strangers and friends alike in a sweaty mess of pure joy and kindred spirit. The emerging band have announced the release of a brand new single, the first taken from their forthcoming self-titled EP to be released on their new label True Friend Tapes on November 29.

A collective of often revolving live members, Blood-Visions have been at the centre of the Northampton punk and arts scene since their teens, playing their first show when they were just 14. Now in their early ‘20s, the band have made colossal strides, recently supporting Drug Church, Single Mothers, Jeffery Lewis and more. Alumni of Northampton College where they were classmates with fellow local artist Slowthai (who name-checked the band in a piece for The Big Issue), vocalist Joss Carter writes about the suffocation of being a young person in a small Midlands factory town with a lack of prospects, alongside the warmth that can be found in the community that comes with it. ‘01604ever’ is a spin on the dial code for Northampton.

“Northampton tends to get a bad rep for primarily being office buildings and Bridge Street (a row of cheap bars and nightclubs renowned locally for being the epicentre of late-night brawls) but playing this song in some of the pockets in town where you can get away from that really helps alleviate the strains I personally feel when dealing with small-town-life. We realised that we could just write punk songs about what we knew. Why posture and pretend we haven’t driven in to Wellingborough for the fifth night running, thinking “fuck this place and the job I come here for?” That’s the stuff I find to be worthy of writing songs about because it’s a visceral reaction to something” said Carter.

Taking cues from classic US punk, Blood-Visions conversely remain a British alt-punk outfit at their core with little regard for convention or desire to slot into a conveyor line of cookie-cutter punk bands that take themselves too seriously. A live Blood-Visions show is something to behold - never the same twice, never conforming to pre-conceived expectations of a young punk band and always bristling with excitement and energy.