Indie legends Los Campesinos! have forged a path to cult status by doing things their own way, and with their new album ‘All Hell’, they’re looking to set an example.

Words: Martyn Young.
Photos: Juliette Boulay.

"The question of 'Why does the world need Los Campesinos! in 2024?' is one we were asking ourselves," reflects Gareth Campesinos! as the alt-pop legends gear up to return after seven years away. Later on, Gareth alights on perhaps the best explanation. "We're a fucking good band, and we do things differently." Indeed, staying true to the spirit and passion established 18 years ago, the flame for Los Campesinos! is burning brighter than ever as the once-cult heroes are capturing a whole new generation of fans while providing salvation and sanctuary for the people who have been with them from the start. 'All Hell' represents both a rebirth and validation for a band whose legacy continues to grow.

The doubt of whether they could do this again after so long away was real, though. "There was a real sentiment of, 'What do we have to give?'" ponders Gareth with characteristic honesty. "There are loads of people in bands like me, so what can I offer that is different? What does the world get from a Los Campesinos! album? There was a sense of worrying about that for a long time. We realised, hang on, we were always going to do another record. It's time to stop finding excuses not to do it."

As the band examined their place in the world, they began to focus on all the reasons why Los Campesinos! have always been special. They still feel vital. "We realised that there aren't many bands like us anymore that have been doing it for close to 20 years and, I believe, have avoided being a nostalgia thing," says Gareth. "We get offered quite a lot of festivals where clearly we're being booked as a nostalgia act. Turn up, play 'You! Me! Dancing!' and bring a glockenspiel, and everyone will have a good time. We've resisted that. We've always said no to that. We could make a decent money, but we've never wanted to be seen as a nostalgia thing."

At this point in their career, the band are entirely self-sufficient, which is allowing them to forge an ever closer relationship with their fans - a fanbase that is growing all the time without the band seemingly having to do anything at all to encourage it. "We've done this the opposite way around in that we used to have relatively big management, huge record labels, big PR campaigns and marketing teams around us," explains Gareth. "That's what it was for the first couple of records. Objectively, we weren't the commercial success that the people who invested in us wanted us to be. We've found ourselves in the situation where we don't have management. We don't have PR anymore. We're doing it ourselves and working directly with people. We are playing the biggest shows we've ever played. The UK tour in September is another example of us getting things wrong, in a way, as all the gigs are going to sell out. In Manchester, we're playing to 1200 people, which will be the biggest UK show we've ever done outside of London. It's testament to the songs that people are getting into them without any marketing push."

Gareth charts how people have grown up with the band, from the youthful exuberance and angst of their early albums through to the more mature themes of their last record, 2017's 'Sick Scenes'. Their comeback feels like the natural peak within a glorious story arc as the band's chronicling of modern existence comes to a head. "'All Hell' has this grim dystopian worldview of everything is fucking awful," says Gareth. "It shines a light on the terror of living these days but also the small details and minutiae and glimmers of hope and minor inconveniences that we experience day to day. I hope these are relatable sentiments, and I think that's always been at the core of why people like LC! - they connect not only with the songs but with us as people as well. We try to be quite approachable and realistic and we try to remove hierarchical structures between band and fans, and that leads to a situation where we have the old heads seeing us for 18 years, people who were maybe into us at the start and drifted away and coming back excited and this new swathe of literally 13/14-year-old kids whose favourite band are Los Campesinos!. It's nuts."