Cage Fight make angry music for angry people. Here’s why we love them so much…
Cage Fight are the ultimate hybrid of hardcore and thrash metal. They have the sort of sound that makes it seem like they’d beat up your favourite band and then steal their lunch money. With TesseracT’s James Monteith on guitar and Rachel Aspe (ex-Eths) on vocals, it’s no wonder they sound so massive.
They've just dropped their brutal, self-titled debut album. If you’ve yet to be sucker punched by it, here are five good reasons to let them give you a good duffing up–
Cage Fight were born out of lockdown boredom. James and bassist Jon Reid started writing material for fun, before enlisting the talents of drummer Nick Plews. The finished instrumentals were mixed by Tesseract guitarist Acle Kahney – but that was as far as things ever went. Until February last year…
“I was scrolling Instagram and the cover that Rachel did of Statutory Ape by The Black Dahlia Murder popped up in my feed. I was blown away by it,” explains James. “It was really an amazing performance, and a really interesting take on the track. I clicked on her page, it said ‘looking for a band or looking for a project’. So I dropped Rachel a message. She said, ‘Email me a track.’ I sent her an instrumental, and then within 24 hours, she sent back a demo. We knew very quickly then that we were onto something. We basically got going from that point onward.”
When she’s not growling like a demon, vocalist Rachel is an incredible tattooist. In fact, the album cover of Cage Fight emblazoned across someone’s palm is a real tattoo that Rachel inked on a volunteer.
“I posted that I was looking for someone, and this girl I don't know said, ‘I'm up for helping you guys,’” Rachel tells us, “We sent her a copy of the album and I’m still in touch with her. There’s a scorpion on the vinyl copy of the album and on our T-shirts which I’ve tattooed also. I will make all of the guys get that at some point probably!”
Eating Me Alive is a track on the album that features guest vocals from Trevor Strnad. The album was released just two days after the tragic news that The Black Dahlia Murder frontman had passed away…
“It was a massive shock," James says. "The news broke that he passed two days before release. We had a video planned for release day, but we pulled all the promo, just out of respect for his family and band and friends.
"It was obviously incredibly tragic, and it put a really weird twist onto the album release. But the song itself is actually about struggles with anxiety and mental health issues. And that was, I think partly, maybe the reason why he was quite keen to work on the track. Well, the main reason why he was on the album was because Rachel and I connected by her Black Dahlia Murder cover. And I think he really liked that story and so he ended up coming on the album because he was a whole part of our band story.”
From June 12 to 15, Cage Fight will be playing alongside Sepultura and Raging Speedhorn. They’ll then be hitting the road with Cro-Mags from June 21 to 30, before making an appearance at this year’s Bloodstock.
“It’s all just happened so quickly,” smiles James, “It was February last year where it suddenly it all came together. And then between February and July, we wrote pretty much 70 per cent of the album. To go from that to suddenly playing loads of gigs and having an album released and getting an amazing response, it's just been a bit of a whirlwind. I haven't really had a chance to think about it. It's just happened so quickly. But I think I'm really humbled and overwhelmed by the amazing response.”
It’s called A Vulgar Display Of Privilege and it’s fucking awesome. Buy it here.
Cage Fight's self-titled debut is out now via Candlelight
