Scourging second album IO marks the culmination of a decades-long journey out of darkness for ten56. frontman Aaron Matts. Things are better now. But knowing the spiral of abuse, anguish and addiction he’d been caught in is absolutely integral to understanding the music he makes today…
Trigger warning: child abuse, suicide.
Instability and addiction work in vicious cycles. It’s a cruel fact that meant that Aaron Matts didn’t really understand why he’d slipped into a nine-year downward spiral until he’d begun finding his way out. Sitting in the corner of a brightly lit Glasgow cafe before ten56.’s show tonight at the 330-cap Cathouse, the frontman is still fresh from rehab, bright-eyed and open hearted, embracing conversation and baring his wounds with honesty and frankness. Second album IO is the end of a journey, he tells us, but grasping the authentic darkness within means navigating back to the start.
“Aged 15, I was dating my best friend’s sister,” Aaron lays out the story plainly. “Somehow, I found myself in a ‘secretive relationship’ with their mother that lasted almost a year. She got pregnant [with my child] and had an abortion. Then it got really bad. The father of that family spiralled into alcoholism. He became homeless and ended up killing himself, found dead in a public toilet. I felt like I was at the centre of all these bad things, and I was way too young to process any of them…”
For 15 years, the scars of that experience went unhealed beneath Aaron’s surface. Facing the break-up of his own parents’ relationship – and an awkward unwillingness to address a situation of which his mother was well aware – he left home at 16. Teenage friends discussed what had happened with boorish admiration rather than any real understanding. Moving to France shortly after his 20th birthday to take up the mic with Parisian metalcore gang Betraying The Martyrs put geographical distance between him and his past, but he couldn’t sit with it until he started ten56.
“Not to talk shit on any of Betraying The Martyrs,” he insists, “but they had already established themselves before I’d joined, and for 11 years I was always kind of treated as ‘the new guy’ who had to respect their universe that I’d entered. Their thing was to write positive music about positive [experiences]. It meant that I was often pushed into a cage where I had to write about stuff I wasn’t feeling. Mentally, I had my worst years towards the end of my time in that band.”
Aaron was there in the studio when BTM started work on what would be their first EP without him and final release as a band – 2022’s Silver Lining – but he’d already moved on, mentally. Intending to step away from music altogether, the idea was to make something “stupid heavy” that reflected what was going on inside him before he waved goodbye. Confronted by a gnarly composition from ten56. guitarist Luka Garotin that would become formative single Boy (eventually ending up on 2023’s Downer LP) the vocalist reappraised his own most twisted moment with a newfound clarity.
“This woman was effectively grooming me,” he unpacks. “But I held onto a lot of guilt. She would take me out shopping and if I said, ‘I like those shoes!’ then she’d buy them for me. I felt like I’d taken advantage of her. Even years later, living in France, I used to fantasise about knocking on her door and talking to her again. I used to dream that I’d made all this money and could pay her back for all the stuff that she had paid for. Really, she was taking advantage of me, buying my silence. She didn’t want me talking about any of this stuff because what she was doing was illegal. She forced me to name the child after she’d had an abortion, too. I named it ‘Chad’ after my favourite skateboarder in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. That’s how infantile I was at that point.”
Aaron pauses, visibly still processing the trauma, continually learning about its consequences.
“Honestly, I didn’t feel raped at the time. I felt kind of cool about it. But it damaged me and changed the way I approached personal relationships where I wasn’t being loyal, cheating on my girlfriends and stuff. It had become like a messed up blueprint for my future romantic life.”
Diazepam, the other of ten56.’s first songs, chronicled a relationship with substance dependency that Aaron was still working through. Getting to grips meant connecting it to the earlier trauma.
“Before I knew that I had any problems – although, with retrospect, it was pretty obvious – they would manifest themselves as anger: flying into a rage or freaking out at people,” he connects back. “That slowly transformed into anxiety. Moving to France, I was all alone. I was living in central Paris and had to move out because I got to the point where when I left my house just to go to the supermarket I’d come back sweating buckets, white as a ghost. Depression followed. I knew that I was depressed for the first time in 2014 or 2015. It was just this low feeling, like, ‘This is bad!’
“My experience with addiction was very solitary. Most of the things I was taking were prescribed, and paid for by the French government over nine years. Initially, I was given Benzodiazepines for my anxiety. My doctor was a very nice man, but I think he was ill-informed so when I told him I didn’t think they were working any more he would just continue to up and up the dose.”
Getting hooked on synthetic opiate Tramadol was a dangerous next step. Although prescribed as a painkiller in conjunction with a series of surgical procedures – a gallbladder removal due to alcohol abuse, a spinal injury and a hernia – Aaron found that they also worked as a potent antidepressant and would quiten the voices spinning in his head during the silence of COVID lockdown.
“I like to be on my own,” he shrugs. “Opiates made my solitude feel less solitary. I was taking them in secret, not telling my girlfriend, not telling my bandmates – and even the people who had an idea what I was doing didn’t want to talk about it. I would say that I ‘wasn’t able to come out tonight’ but it’d be because I’d be at home eating pills and playing computer games. One memory that stands out from that time is my 30th birthday. All my friends made such a big deal about it and partied ’til 7am, but at midnight I made an excuse to go home and take loads of Codeine.”
Five years since lockdown have gone by in largely in a blur. Going cold turkey worked for a while. Then the collapse of a short romantic relationship with a close friend a couple of years ago – feelings of guilt coming to the fore again – led to relapse. By the start of 2025 Aaron was on a “near lethal” dose: easily enough to prove fatal to someone unaccustomed to the drugs. Through the experience of ten56., though, he was in a place to discuss his issues with those around him.
“When I started ten56. I knew that I needed to write stuff down,” he stresses the role his music played. “I hadn’t done any form of therapy yet but I realized when I was writing the first songs that I had never taken the time to really think about my traumatic experiences and addiction. That was very cathartic. When you sing about something 500 times, you stop reliving it. Since then, I have been to therapy and gotten help. But writing these songs was the first step towards getting better.”
Pondering the title for IO, we ask whether it is an album about the need to go through everything that has happened ‘in order’. Aaron laughs that it’s nothing as complicated as that. After rejecting the idea of doing a self-titled LP at this stage in their career, the band – completed by second guitarist Quentin Godet, drummer Arnaud Verrier and bassist Steeves Hostin – started playing around with the number 10. Placing the digits vertically, they found that they could represent binary concepts like good and bad, light and dark – or on and off, as in Luca’s image of a switch.
“It’s not a concept album,” Aaron explains. “But mentally, we all have ‘on days’ and ‘off days’.”
Written largely in the same timeframe that he was edging towards recovery, but before a pivotal three-week spell in rehab this March and April, the album crackles with a wide range of feelings. There is the uncertainty of still being in the grip of addiction, for sure. But there is conviction to get better. And even the daring to look beyond the current period of upheaval to wonder what will happen to ten56. The title-track – it’s not clear how ‘10’ became ‘IO’ – is a treatise on Aaron’s need to find inspiration in the very darkest of subject matter even if it’s not grounded in his own reality. ‘There’s some things I can relate to, some things that I can’t,’ he spits on the opening verse, ‘Tryna write about somethin’ else but death and pills, but I can’t / Been back on those for about two years, wanna put them down, but I can’t / Pen hits paper, same shit pours from the heart…’
Serendipitously connecting with French “celebrity psychiatrist” Professor Laurent Karila was pivotal. Someone familiar with the world of rock and metal who knew of Aaron before they ever met, Laurent was able to communicate in the frontman’s own language, and he understood the need to arrange treatment between band commitments. ten56. filmed the still-to-be-released music video for IO itself at the rehab facility.
Aaron credits the experience not just for turning his life around, but also his openness about what he’s gone through: “In therapy you have obligatory group sessions with people from all walks of life with lots of different issues. You realise that this can happen to anyone: from homeless people to bankers making crazy money. A large part of telling your story is letting go of your ego. That’s something I had to do in accepting it was better to be a big part of something small than a small part of something big leaving Betraying The Martyrs for ten56., too. Plus, I’ve realised that it’s the secrecy that makes addiction feel really seedy. That’s where it can badly affect your self-esteem.”
Nine years since the substance issues set in, and 20 since the affair that rocked his foundations, Aaron sees it all like a bad dream in which even those nearest to him didn’t share. Looking forward, the singer admits his music and message is more about catharsis and harshly reminding himself what can happen if he too freely strays from the path than helping others in the same boat. But if someone can find solace or direction in his experience, he’s more than happy. And although the band was originally supposed to be one-and-done, they’re going nowhere fast.
“I’m not giving up now,” he smiles. “Initially, I never thought ten56. would work out but it’s become my whole life. The guys in the band have become my best friends. I couldn’t leave it behind. As for what I’ll write about in the future? I have wondered about how difficult it could get if my life was all gravy from here on out. I guess we’ll see what traumatic events come my way…”
IO is out now via Out Of Line
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