Blaenavon: “This ain’t no fancy snowman, we don’t fuck around.”

“Everything we’ve said so far isn’t allowed to be printed” is the perfect way to sum up a chat with Blaenavon. The full throttle trio are well and truly enjoying their moment to shine, like there ever was any doubt it was going to come.

How many bands can say that they were signed by an influential label at the humble ages of 15? It definitely makes a GCSE look insignificant. Yet that’s exactly what happened to Blaenavon, scooped up at the tender age by Transgressive Records and thrown straight into the critical limelight with debut single ‘Into The Night’ sending music writers into a frenzy they were only able to calm by expressing just how young these guys really were. Almost five years later, and it’s something the trio are still picked up on to this day.

“I think we’ve tricked people into thinking that we’re still young,” observes frontman Ben Gregory. Joined by bassist Frank Wright and drummer Harris McMillan, it all came together covering Muse tracks in the early years of their fabled education, something that’s evolved and mutated into a haunting indiepocalypse sound, summed up by ‘I Will Be The World’, a driving descent into chaos that shifts from melancholic breezes to unhinged fury in a second.

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“Yeah, up to a year ago, all of our press said that we were still 16 and ‘hotly tipped’,” interject Harris. “That we’re still doing our GCSEs and recording in half term when in reality we’ve been living at home for two years!” This definitely isn’t the “staying at home watching Jeremy Kyle” type of reality that may be pictured, this is a band fully jumping into their sound - working on unrelenting, melodic anthems that both pull you closer and punch you in the gut at the same time.