Growing up, Pest Control singer Leah Massey-Hay didn’t have any one particular music scene to pin her colours to. She liked all different sorts of music, but she didn’t have a venue or band that felt like ‘hers’. Then, she stepped into the DIY hardcore mecca that is Leeds venue Boom and finally felt like she’d found her place. “It had really cheap drinks, cheap entry into shows and it was affordable to do as someone who was that age at the time,” she tells NME over Zoom.
Venues like Boom – the sort of space that fosters warm, inclusive communities and spawns years’ worth of memories for its regular visitors – are the beating heart of a city’s music scene. It’s informed everything that Pest Control are, giving them their first shows, their audience and their fierce DIY ethics. “We’ve all come to it as lovers of heavy music, but that space has been so open and welcoming for all of us,” says guitarist Joe Kerry. “When new people arrive in the scene, they’re actively encouraged to start getting involved, not just going to shows and enjoying the bands, but making friends with musicians and starting bands as well.”
Pest Control – completed by bassist Jack Padurairu-Aherne, drummer Ben Jones and guitarist Joe Williams – formed in the depths of the pandemic after their members’ previous projects fizzled out. While live music was in a comatose state at the time, they were inspired by the sense of possibility it offered to create the crossover thrash band they’d always dreamed of. After a period of not being able to write in the same room, once they brought their songs to life at a show – at Boom, of course – things popped off. “We were surprised by it,” says Kerry. “It was just something that we’d put together and put out there, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.”
“There wasn’t really any crossover band in the UK that was that entwined with the hardcore scene” – Leah Massey-Hay
They landed on that sound partly as a means of differentiating themselves – “We’d all done hardcore or hardcore adjacent bands before, but there wasn’t really any crossover band in the UK that was that entwined with how the hardcore scene was,” says Massey-Hay – and partly out of the love of making something that could be catchy and heavy, the sort of savagery that would make them want to run through walls. “Previously, when I’d done bands, I really tried to overcomplicate lyrical content and make it really deep and meaningful, and not catchy and fun,” she continued. “I was interested in capturing that fun style of playing and recording that style of music and not coming across as whiny, as like in some of my other bands, I admittedly have done. It was just something to have fun with.”
With the wheels now spinning on their project, Pest Control set about making a name for themselves in UK hardcore. They released their debut album ‘Don’t Test The Pest’ last year and follow it up today with their EP ‘Year Of The Pest’, their first release with Joe Williams on guitar. “It’s a bit of a songwriting shift, which I hope people will be able to hear a bit,” says Padurairu-Aherne. “It’s been interesting to have someone contribute in that way.”
“When we did ‘Don’t Test The Pest’, we’d only had six songs out and we were still trying to figure out what works,” elaborates Massey-Hay. “The evolution came from noticing what parts people liked on ‘Don’t Test The Pest’, what parts people sang along to, and trying to echo that.”
Their crossover approach means that Pest Control sit comfortably in both the metal and hardcore worlds, which has netted them slots at the likes of Bloodstock and Outbreak and shows with bands as far-reaching as Obituary and Scowl. This summer was supposed to see them make their debut Download appearance, but they chose ethics over opportunity when they became the first band to drop out over the festival’s ties to Barclays. Joined by Scowl, Speed, Zulu, Ithaca and more, their efforts led Download to drop Barclays as a sponsor, and they later teamed up with three of those bands and a selection of others for a benefit show for Palestine at Birmingham’s Centrala.
“At first, it was a difficult thing,” Padurairu-Aherne says of the boycott. “Within a day or two of talking to each other about it, it became an easy thing.”
“We feel vindicated about adding our voice to the growing number of artists that were participating in the boycott because the result of that massive movement was Barclays being dropped as a sponsor,” adds Kerry. “Coming from a hardcore world, the impulse of that music is that we want to live in a better world, and in an ideal world. And in an ideal world, musical and cultural institutions, whether it’s a DIY grassroots thing, all the way up to corporate music events, shouldn’t have ties to the things that the boycott was calling against.”
The Download boycott was propelled by the ethics of hardcore, arguably the fastest-growing offshoot of alternative music right this second. As far as UK hardcore is concerned, Pest Control’s home city of Leeds can take plenty of responsibility for its strength. The band have close ties to the likes of Higher Power and Static Dress (the latter more of a post-hardcore band with hardcore roots), whose frontmen Jimmy Wizard and Olli Appleyard starred in and filmed respectively the video for their 2023 single ‘Enjoy The Show’.
“People really want to make the scene successful and make it a good space for everybody,” explains Massey-Hay. “Without places like Boom, the scene wouldn’t be as great as it is, but if anything was to happen to Boom – fingers crossed it doesn’t – there’ll be enough people willing to put the work in to make another version of that. I think that’s what makes it so great.”
With more music about to come out, their future’s bursting with potential. “The great thing about Pest Control is that there’s no end goal, there’s no sort of cynically thought out or calculated plan or trajectory,” Kerry says. “We just love doing the thing that we’re doing, and the fact that we’ve got one foot in the hardcore world, but we also have the appeal to the metal world, gives us more opportunity to take the band wherever we want to go. I just want to keep doing this with these guys and just having fun writing the music that we love, playing as many shows as we can, and wherever that takes us, I’m happy.”
‘Year Of The Pest’ is out now via Quality Control HQ