No Compromise: Employed To Serve Make Their Mark On 'The Warmth of a Dying Sun'

There’s a man wearing novelty cufflinks. He’s not actually reading the copy of the Financial Times in his lap, but his eyes are glazing over at the pictures. A woman has brought her entire house onto the train carriage like an urban hermit crab. Children are screaming. Someone’s shouting the details of a banterous night out with the lads down a phone. This is a daily commute. This is hell.

“You’re just sitting on the train at rush hour in London, watching everyone staring blankly into space, like, ‘Urgh. I’ve become one of you.’”

In reality, though, Justine Jones doesn’t stand a chance of becoming one of them anytime soon. Employed To Serve’s vocalist is describing the meaning behind the title of the band’s feral second album, ‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’. And its message is really, really simple: don’t fall in line.

“Being in a band is expensive,” she says. “You’re tired all the time and you’re constantly strung out, but it’s really important in case you get to that point later in life when you’re like, ‘I spent my whole life working and doing what everyone else wants me to do.’ This thing is really great, but how long is it actually going to last?”

So far, Employed To Serve have lasted six years. Born in 2011, the band began as a two-pronged studio project helmed by Jones and guitarist Sammy Urwin. They put out several EPs of grind-inflected metallic hardcore and made some noise before a live unit was assembled. The band’s debut album, ‘Greyer Than You Remember’, arrived in 2015 and Employed To Serve have been kickin’ ass, tearing throats, skinning faces – the lot - ever since. On stage, they are one of the most abrasive, enthralling bands in the UK.

But it’s a weird situation they find themselves in right now. Speaking the night before the record streams on the Independent’s website, Jones is in two minds about ‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’ landing in the hands of an intrigued fanbase.

“Obviously I want people to like it,” she says. “But there’s a part of me that hopes someone will say, ‘Oh, it’s not as good as the first album.’ Because that means it’s not just my friends listening to it – actual people with opinions will be listening to it, even if it is negative.”

Actual people have been paying attention for a while, though. Jones is being humble here. Employed To Serve have received pretty ridiculous receptions on support slots with everyone from Funeral For A Friend to Rolo Tomassi. And they arguably stole the show at last year’s Damnation Festival, an event primarily dealing in doom, death and black metal. In July, they’re tagging along on pop-punk rising stars Milk Teeth’s UK tour. It’s an odd coupling that, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. Rock music is in disgustingly rude health of late, so why on earth wouldn’t you exploit that?

“Because of the social media age really booming, and podcasts like That’s Not Metal, it just makes it more acceptable,” Jones says of Milk Teeth’s choice to have the sound of impending doom support them. “At the end of the day, we’re just bands of a similar age touring together. In our heads it makes sense, but I guess it doesn’t on paper. The thing is, people start off on things like the Pixies and Nirvana. Then they get into the heavier stuff, so if you’re a music fan, you can appreciate both spectrums.

“I like the fact that not everyone’s going to be into our music. Your casual music listener – not even a fan, a consumer – won’t be into it. When I go to a big show, there’s loads of people on their phones not necessarily there for the band. They’re there because it’s cool and they want to post about it on social media. I’d never want that for this band. I’d never want to be in a band that’s ‘cool’. It’s not that we don’t want to be big, we want to play bigger venues, but we don’t want people there who don’t appreciate the music. We don’t want to be the ‘in’ thing. I like that it’s hard to digest, because it weeds out those people.”

And if ‘those people’ should chance upon ‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’, they’ll probably have a bit of a hard time. This record is brutal. Building on the reckless post-hardcore flailing present on ‘Greyer Than You Remember’, Employed To Serve have just made everything heavier. Weightier. More suited to crushing heads. Jones’ screams are enough to strip paint, skin, you name it. And her vocals sit atop a colossal heap of angular noise that stabs at the jugular like a salvo of Gojira tracks being played by Converge. Christ, it’s horrible.

But there’s respite. ‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’ culminates with Apple Tree, where dark, acoustic guitars build against softly spoken clean vocals. It weaves between electric waves of power, steadily building, until...nothing. Like a dying sun it winks out of existence – gone. It’s an abrupt climax to an abrupt album; it almost denies you the ending you expect in favour of the ending you deserve.

“We wanted to be heavier, but to be heavy you have to have that dynamic,” Jones explains. “As much as I love bands like Nails, if you listen to them for 40 minutes, it’ll probably lose its impact. In order to keep that dynamic, you have to throw in songs like that to set it apart from the rest. Bands like the Deftones do it a lot and it really makes a difference.”

When talking about Deftones, Jones is lost in wide-eyed admiration. She grew up watching them on Kerrang! TV before school and describes them as “a brand that you can trust – not to dehumanise them or anything”. And that’s what bands should strive to be. That’s what bands need to be.

In 2017, a new band can’t afford to leave an 11-year gap (and counting) between albums like Tool. The internet is a harsh bastard and new acts need to establish themselves fast. The reality is that they don’t always have time to spend a few albums finding their sound. Appropriately, ‘Greyer Than You Remember’ was pretty flawless. ‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’ is even better, and they’ve already started drafting a few songs for album three. This band is not messing about.

The album art’s an absolute beauty, too, which has become something of a badge of honour for their label, Holy Roar, where Jones also works. You’d have to own this on vinyl even if the music ended up being shite. Gary Ronaldson of Bite Radius Designs has penned pieces for Napalm Death, Rotten Sound, Misery Index and now he’s set the scene for ‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’. The copper-stained cover depicts bolts of lightning flanking a gaunt, starved sun, glaring over metropolitan normality one last time before shuffling off this mortal coil. Ugh. So metal.

“We were really inspired by tarot cards,” Jones says. “We saw one with a sun on it, and this particular sun was haggard. In a metaphorical way, it’s nice to have something so bright and prominent in your life, to just see it decaying.”

It’s mad to think Employed To Serve will unleash an album of this quality and not immediately become the biggest rock band on the planet. But that’s the world we live in – a Steps reunion can sell out arenas. That’s just the deal we’re getting. But there’s no point staying salty about this stuff. Employed To Serve aren’t.

They’ve only been together for half a decade and have come such an extraordinarily long way. It’d be crass to consign them to the toilet circuit for eternity purely based on the mainstream negligence rock music’s suffered in the UK for some time. But even that’s changing. While She Sleeps, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and Creeper all scored top 20 albums earlier this year. People are paying attention. Bands can dare to dream big.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have met our first goals,” Jones says. “The very first one was playing a show with a full line-up, because we were originally a drum machine project. Then it was signing to Holy Roar, and that fortunately happened very quickly. And just touring with bands we really admire, like Funeral For A Friend and Rolo Tomassi. And playing festivals to more than five people. Each time, you just try and push yourself and see how far you can go with it.”

Fuck it. ‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’ deserves to go down as a moment in hardcore history. Whether that moment ends up being ignored like Refused were the first time around or lauded like Gallows' early stuff depends on if you want to be a part of that moment too.

‘The Warmth of a Dying Sun’ is out on May 19 through Holy Roar.

Employed To Serve Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:

Fri May 19 2017 - LONDON Old Blue Last

Click here to compare & buy Employed To Serve Tickets at Stereoboard.com.

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