For most of High Vis’ existence, the band was not a full-time endeavour for frontman Graham Sayle. Instead, it fitted in part-time between his day job teaching design technology in an independent school, touring in his breaks. Now, a new academic year is in full swing without him – the hardcore band has grown to the point where there’s no room for the classroom anymore. As much as this might be the career progression most artists dream of, the ever-passionate musician admits that it’s “fucking terrifying” to rely on something that “you put so much of yourself into” for an income.
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“Everything feels a bit tense at the moment,” he tells NME over Zoom from his living room in Brockley, south-east London, in mid-September, a month or so before the release of their upcoming third album, ‘Guided Tour’. “I’ve spent the past week in an existential crisis of being like, ‘Well, what the fuck do I do now? I don’t have to go to work. What do I do?’” Yet, Sayle and High Vis recently put some of the time he’s gained to good use and did something nearly unthinkable in the culturally and economically tumultuous world of 2024: a free, cross-genre gig.
On September 7, during an overcast Saturday afternoon in Gillett Square, East London, the band hosted a genre-hopping five-act bill without the barriers of cost, class or subculture at an event called Society Exists – a space that could have been anyone’s. No police presence, no giant corporations getting their grubby hands in the mix and pints reasonably priced at £4. It’s almost utopian.
“I definitely would never have thought I’d be in a band that signs things for people”
Following sets from riot-grrrl-turned-R&B musician Delilah Holliday, dreamy alt-rockers Hello Mary, dub poet James Massiah and political hip-hop artist Jeshi, High Vis take to the stage and tear through a 45-minute set. The punters down the front bark the words back at Sayle at a distance from which they could comfortably hold a conversation with him. A swirling mosh pit opens up for ‘Altitude’, and ‘Talk For Hours’ is a massive shout-along moment worth straining your vocal cords for, but there are more sobering moments, too.
‘Mob DLA’ is a seething indictment of stone-hearted authorities forcing people to jump through hoops to get the help they need. “I’ve got a brother with autism and cerebral palsy who is assessed every year to see if he is as disabled as he’s always been,” Sayle tells the crowd. Meanwhile, ‘Trauma Bonds’ is a moment of solemnity that sends people screaming along, captivated by how much resonates with them: “We normalise the maddest shit. It’s not normal for people to get stabbed, to see people overdose, to see people kill themselves.”
It’s music that’s corrosive but emotional, with Sayle’s impassioned yell often expelling deeply buried feelings – but as hardcore goes, High Vis’ discography is more accessible than most. There are hooks and delicacy as well as aggression; they’re almost a hardcore band for people who don’t like or know hardcore – a gateway to a world of two-stepping and self-referential mosh calls.
‘Guided Tour’ finds High Vis almost trying to beat themselves at their own game, vying to see how hard, huge and – more so than ever – hopeful they can go. Of course, they’re far from running out of fury, but there are also moments made to spark the communal joy a live show brings, like on the title track when Sayle sings: “If you need some help, I’ll be your guided tour.”
When asked what gives him hope, Sayle points to shows like the one in Gillett Square. “[That’s] the thing that makes you feel connected to people, feel part of a community,” he says. It reminds him of his roots in the culture of hardcore that he loves as High Vis expands and increasingly shows the potential to outgrow small, sweaty venues and take over the band members’ lives. “I don’t necessarily want the thing that I love doing to become work.”
High Vis’ expansion has taken them a long way from when they formed in London in 2016. These days, alongside Sayle, the band is made up of drummer Edward “Ski” Harper, guitarists Rob Hammeren and Martin MacNamara, and bassist Jack Muncaster. Off the back of their 2019 debut ‘No Sense No Feeling’ and 2022’s ‘Blending’, the band’s post-punk and indie-flecked hardcore became more and more in demand, taking them from underground favourites to scene heroes.
‘Guided Tour’ builds on those roots: it’s bolder, louder and places its heart more readily on the table. Every so often, the cracks in its gritty facade end up being filled with light such as on the epic ‘Feeling Bliss’, which soars to a cinematic high for its swelling chorus. “Are you feeling bless?” Sayle asks, which could almost be misheard as ‘bliss’ in his accent and as such, the phrase almost has an unknowing, pleasant duality about it.
Elsewhere, early single ‘Mind’s A Lie’ highlights some of the album’s more experimental quirks, sampling South London vocalist and DJ Ell Murphy and embodying the same gritty, cross-cultural energy that ‘Society Exists’ possessed. “Ski sent me the demo and was like, ‘I don’t think it’s a High Vis song’, and I was like, ’No, it is. Let’s do it’,” Sayle tells NME. “We just sort of pushed it. It turns out I love it.”
Lately, the High Vis frontman has been feeling the love from plenty of other people, too. Already today, he’s spent hours signing posters for their merch store. “I definitely would never have thought I’d be in a band that signs things for people,” he says with a slightly incredulous laugh. The band’s growth in popularity is still an adjustment – he admits that talking about himself in interviews doesn’t come naturally to him and attention from other artists they’ve watched for years makes his head spin. When Paramore’s Hayley Williams shared their music on her Instagram story, he wondered: “How the fuck has she heard it?” “When I was growing up, they were a band on the telly,” he says. “[Her knowing who we are] is just fucking weird.”
Like High Vis, the UK hardcore scene they’re part of is thriving. Although sometimes overlooked in favour of its US counterpart, it’s a breeding ground for a host of bright new names, from Leeds’ Higher Power and Pest Control to Southampton’s Grove Street, the Manchester-based Going Off to Birmingham bruisers Cauldron.
Over the course of High Vis’ journey and beyond, Sayle has seen hardcore go through peaks and troughs, but to him, its exponential growth in the last few years doesn’t feel like a phase. “I’ve seen people get a whiff of success and then change their sound because they do something that they feel like they should,” he observes. “Now there’s people coming out of the hardcore scene and into the mainstream [but] still feel fundamentally like a hardcore band. Speed, for example, look and sound like a hardcore band and they’re uncompromising, but they’re also playing these massive shows. It’s fucking sick.”
It’s no wonder, then, that Sayle wants to hold onto the genre that he loves. It keeps him grounded, even as High Vis get elevated onto bigger stages. There’s a sense as he speaks that the scene is where he wants their roots to remain: “On an existential level, hardcore shows are really exciting spaces and moments.”
“I don’t know any other kind of music that [puts you in] those situations where you’re like, ‘I could get hurt, but I’ve signed up for this’,” he says. “A lot of my friends are hardcore kids. I stay in touch with everything. I still try and buy records, I still go to shows. I benefit so much from it.”
High Vis’ ‘Guided Tour’ is out on October 18 via Dais Records