Gigs Gigs Gigs - Swine Tax

Gigs Gigs Gigs is a brand new feature where we catch up with the bands and talk about the one thing we're all missing most: Gigs! Check out what some of our favourite artists have to tell us about their three favourite venues which they can't wait to play again after lockdown!

In this first edition we speak with Newcastle based post-punk band 'Swine Tax' ahead of the release of their upcoming single 'Screensaver'. They've been described by 'Louder Than War' as "loud and intense." We wanted to know their favourite places to be "loud and intense," so we asked them. Read what they had to say below:

Bobiks, Newcastle upon Tyne

It’s canny surreal writing about these venues at the moment, thinking of all the rammed rooms and people sweating over each other. One of only two gigs we did get chance to play this year was a class sold out show at Bobiks with our mates bigfatbig, to celebrate the release of our track ‘Browsing’. Bobiks (as endorsed by Tom Robinson) is a relatively new addition to the North East live music scene. The space is quite intimate but it’s got a cool high ceiling and a big screen to project onto, which gave us the opportunity to incorporate some absurd visuals into our cacophonous post-punk set.

Pop Recs Ltd, Sunderland

Illustrious mackem establishment run by Frankie & the Heartstrings. They sell records and coffee, host some cool gigs and art exhibitions, and have a good crack on over at their Facebook page. Pop Recs is also home to a lot of good works and interesting community projects, such as the Young Musicians Project. We haven’t played there in a while, but we still have Dave’s hi hat stand that he lent us for our gig with The Futureheads last year so we should maybe return that one day.

Vera, Groningen

Vera was one of the highlights of our tour in the Netherlands last year. It’s up there with Europe’s most historic rock clubs, having hosted bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth and The Fall. All the greats. We got there about 8 hours too early for our midnight set when we played, so we ended up sitting around eating tons of curry and watching back to back Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson films before the show. What a fantastic gig that was - big up Groningen!

'Swine Tax' release their new single 'Screensaver' onto all streaming platforms on 4th June. The track brings together a tighter version of the classic 'Swine Tax' sound, catchy yet somewhat raucous riffs that you just can't get enough of. You can pre-order a CD of this single, it comes along with bonus tracks of their previous releases: 'I'd Like', 'Browsing' and 'Tory Water'. I've ordered this CD and I certainly recommend you do too: https://swinetax.bandcamp.com/album/screensaver. As well as this you can pre-save the single on Spotify, this only takes a few seconds and is really helpful for the band. It also makes Spotify push their single to more people: smarturl.it/f43y4r