Follow Your Gut: Introducing South Wales Noisemakers Inerrant
Tuesday, 08 August 2023
Written by Laura Johnson
There was no escape. As limbs flew and people young and almost-old barrelled into each other in the tight confines of the Cab in Newport, a one-year-old venue that has quickly become a hub for the local hardcore scene, a single can of beer met its end. Crushed between bodies, its final act was a spray of lukewarm liquid as Inerrant threatened to tear the roof off the place.
Set on an artery running away from the city’s dwindling centre, the Cab is a repurposed office building that is unmarked from the outside. Inside, you’ll find floor to ceiling curtains, fans screwed to the walls either side of a Welsh flag in an attempt to cool the heat created by thrashing patrons, and a makeshift bar tucked away in the corner serving cans.
It’s the perfect setting for Inerrant’s debut show with a newly solidified line-up: DIY and no-frills to match the DIY, no-frills brutality served up by the band. Despite whispers of nerves beforehand, their performance is a wholehearted, chaotic display of noisemaking.
“I don’t want to say the ‘no fucks given’ thing because it’s a cliche, but the second the music starts my head switches off,” explains co-vocalist Paul Fortescue, discussing his approach from his current hometown of Bridgend a few weeks before the show.
“I’m not me on stage,” he continues, having cut his teeth in similarly robust bands Anything That Moves, Hogslayer, and Shaped By Fate. “The second the music starts I become a different person, and I don’t know what that person’s going to be.” It’s a point of view that his co-vocalist Ben Woosnam understands. “It amplifies that Jekyll and Hyde feeling in everybody,” he says.
As they both stalked the well-scuffed dancefloor at the Cab, laughing between guttural screams, Woosnam’s teenage son looked on proudly, his smile cracking beneath a bloody lip, while his former Hondo Maclean bandmate Gav Burrough, currently guitarist with Funeral For A Friend, joined in with a quick scream-along after a mic was shoved in his face. Cerys Jones’ drumming drove the chaos, stirred by the heavy yet meticulous work of bassist Mal Evans and guitarists Tom Perret and Gareth Rowley.
Inerrant were showcasing tracks from their recently released third album, ‘Life Or Deaf’, where they’ve truly honed their own sound, bringing together a hip hop-esque flow, the energy of hardcore punk and intensity of metal. Its full bore assault is all the more remarkable due to their piecemeal approach to recording, where they opted to track everything at their respective homes before releasing it independently.
It’s a process that’s worked for them before — that’s largely how Fortescue and Rowley constructed Inerrant’s debut LP, ‘Incarceraging’, during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020. With Fortescue handling vocals and lyrics and Rowley everything else, they followed it up just two weeks later with ‘Unindividual’, and two further EPs using a similar model.
“Gareth would write the song in the morning, I’d get it by 12, I’d sit out the back, headphones on, while my little one’s in the sun, and I’d just write whatever came out of my head there and then,” Fortescue says. “There was no thinking about it, just involving whatever was going on at the time. I’d go upstairs into my bedroom, set up my stuff, record it, send it back to him, he’d mix and master the song, and throw it up on the internet by tea time. We did that every day for 10 days, and we had an album.”
Fortescue and Rowley first met in a bubbling heavy scene that spread throughout South Wales in the early noughties, when the former was fronting Shaped By Fate and the latter was playing with Johnny Mental. With Inerrant, in the absence of other members at the outset they called on their contacts in the current scene to get fresh blood involved with their new project. The first LP ended up featuring James Joseph from James and the Cold Gun, Jimmy No Whammy from Pizzatramp, Rachel Kate of Devil’s Cry, and Tommy Andrews from Chains of Hate, among others.
Woosnam, who previously fronted Hondo Maclean and The Future, was notably absent. Sadly, it just wasn’t the right time — pandemic, home schooling, all that stuff — but it wasn’t long before he entered the fray, contributing vocals to ‘Unindividual’ track Bohemian RatCity, a breakneck hardcore stomper with tag-team yells that will leave you breathless from one listen. That was enough to get him hooked, and he, Fortescue and Rowley soon began a musical friendship that has since flourished into an eclectic and commanding cacophony.
Having gone through various line-up changes since they began, Inerrant are now a formidable unit. Their influences range from more contemporary bands such as Knocked Loose and Turnstile to established acts such as Terror, Slayer, and Rykers. Woosnam’s first Inerrant experience followed a similar script to Fortescue’s. “He [Fortescue] sent me a track over on a Friday night, I listened to it, and wrote a load of shit down on a piece of paper,” he recalls. “I sent him a photo of the shit I’d written and he said, ‘That’ll do, when are you free?’” The next day, armed with a box of Viennese whirls, they took the first step towards what would become the current iteration of Inerrant.
Musically, everything on ‘Life Or Deaf’ was written, played and recorded by the prolific Rowley. The vocals always follow, with the two singers taking a much more laissez-faire approach, often putting the world to rights over some beers and fried chicken, then gearing themselves up with some old school hip-hop before heading into Woosnam’s bedroom to track the vocals. There is a common goal that unites them, though, and that’s following your gut. “We’ve said from the start that whatever comes out of your mouth on the day is what goes on, and when you’ve recorded it, you’re not changing it,” Fortescue says, explaining that it’s usually a one and done situation, even if they allow themselves three strikes to give Rowley options.
“That spontaneity keeps the tracks exciting,” Woosnam says. “And that’s not to say that we don’t put work into it, we put a shitload of work into it, because we’re so focused when we’re doing it. There are a few songs where I look at them and I’m like, ‘How did we come up with that in the space of a few hours?’ I’d be proud if I’d laboured over it for a month.”
Rowley’s take on the band’s creative dynamic only reinforces the vocalists’ sentiments. “The main intention is to do something that gives you that gut feeling, which is a weird thing to describe, but if I don't get that, then it doesn't get used,” he says via a Whatsapp follow-up. “The process can differ. Usually, I'll just jam and see what comes out. Sometimes, I know what kind of vibe I want, and try to capture that. They hardly ever turn out how you envision them, though, sometimes for the better.
“Sometimes, they come from nowhere, like the main recurring riff in Bojo Yolo, which just popped into my head while I was having a piss, and then I quickly figured it out and recorded it. Dafukami, Dead Sea Scroll, and Corpse Taint were all written out of frustration while trying to write other songs. If I'm trying to write and it's just not quite working, instead of wasting the day, I'll lay down a simple drum beat and write a simple song over the top of it just so I have something to show for it. The good thing about having Foz and Ben in this band is that I can literally throw anything at them and no matter how strange or how simple it is, they always find a way of bringing it to life and making it much bigger than it was. It's a blessing.”
Capturing that lightning in a bottle is no small feat, but it has become second nature to Fortescue and Woosnam. “We’re angry bastards and this is a form of communication and expression that we’ve always been very familiar with, and it’s what feels natural to us,” Woosnam says. Fortescue agrees.“If we’re singing about the Tories ruining the country, it’s because he’s [Woosnam] just been through a postal strike in his day job, or I’ve lost my job,” he adds.
Outside their creative relationship with Rowley, Fortescue and Woosnam have developed their own bond, leading to a lot of hive-minding and some out-there ideas, such as the Gregorian chant-esque vocals on Disciple Trap. Conversationally, they bounce off each other like brothers. It’s clear these guys have fun together, and that’s all they want. “We like to have a laugh,” smiles Fortescue, and Woosnam agrees: “We giggle non stop.”
Despite having a fierce commitment to making hard-hitting music, Inerrant don’t take themselves too seriously, which is also evident from their humorous song titles. ‘Life Or Deaf’ track Corpse Taint is about Fortescue’s time at the Derbyshire metal festival Bloodstock, while Bojo Yolo was written the day after the news broke of Boris Johnson’s Partygate scandal. “It’s kind of that thing that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry,” adds Fortescue. “The world is so fucked up, that if you don’t add a bit of humour with it, you’re off the cliff.”
With all of its members teetering around 40, and having played in other bands previously, it’s fair to say Inerrant have been around the block. They’ve learnt a few things along the way, too. They refuse to be pigeonholed and insist on making music on their own terms, which is why they chose to independently release all of their music to date. “We’d love to be able to make a living off it, but that doesn’t necessarily need labels,” explains Fortescue. “What it needs is love from people. I think that’s what gets misconstrued with the whole fucking music industry, is it doesn’t need the industry part.
“It helps if you’ve got management, and it helps if you’ve got people pushing you in directions, and if they’ve got each other’s fingers in eachothers bumholes. But at the same time, if the music’s good it speaks for itself. And I’m not saying that our music is good, I think it’s alright.”
“I think it’s banging,” interjects Woosnam. “Are you trying to fill a hole in a market, or are you trying to be creative for your own fucking expression? If you’re trying to fill a hole in a market, then just hit that nail on the fucking head and do what you want. But if you want to be free, expressive and creative, then you mix all of your personal influences. Put it all in the pot and stir the shit out of it.”
Inerrant's 'Life or Deaf' is out now.
Inerrant's next gigs will be in Newport supporting No Choice on August 25 and Cardiff on August 26 supporting Johnny Mental.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
