Celebrating a Decade of MMXV, Gigs & New Music Releases in 2025

Hello world in 2025, hope this year has brought you all that you’d hoped for from the year. We have been quiet on the blog front, this is actually our first of the year but a lot has been happening behind the scenes so it was well worth sharing it with you as there’s been some great moments in the year already (if you hadn’t heard we managed to support the mighty “Oh Hiroshima” for three dates of their UK tour which were easily some of the best shows we’ve played in years.

Start Of The Year

From the moment we ended our shows last year with Luna Kiss we had the April shows with OH in mind. The early part of the year was split between working on the new tracks that have been in motion since January 2024 without any formal plan.

Practice was a lot more prolific and fun as we had four big shows ahead of us (including a charity show we played in Ascot), both audiences were arguably very different so it made us ask the question what is our best set which started a journey into our back catalogue.

MMXV 10 Year Celebration

Part of this journey began as we realised during last year’s tour that 2025 was the 10 year anniversary of our first album MMXV. Yes, our line up and sound has changed markedly in that time, but we realised that we play no songs from that album and recently very few from “Hopelessness “ ("Of People") our second album from 2018).

MMXV was recorded as a 3 piece with a 4 piece in mind. That is to say it was Tom Cook on drums, Pete Agnelli on bass and me on Vox and Guitars as I am today. The only difference is we added an extra guitar part to every song with the intention of filling that slot with a fourth member. After recording the album we worked with a fourth member (Grant Magnus). He features in the first two single’s videos : “Living A Lie” & “Never Let Go”

We played a good few shows with Grant after having cut our teeth as a four piece in 2010/11 and ’12 as a quartet, we had slimmed down in that interim period as it made the most sense for rehearsal and to create our sound, rather than moving with every new member we met which may influence the band in one direction or another and we might never get a release completed (was the fear at the time)

We always preferred the space having a fourth guitarist offered along with the added energy, vocal harmonies and size of the sound. It was a no-brainer to add a fourth member as soon as we could!

Grant was super enthusiastic and fitted in well. He seemed to have the experience he demonstrated and referenced in his auditions and we liked him. I think the culture of our band was jarring for him at the time as we treated it as close to a job you didn’t get paid for at the time in terms of practices and other things.

Unfortunately a time came when Grant had to leave unexpectedly due to family reasons. We got the impression it was a huge loss for him too but it defintely impacted the release, the impact the album made, along with “what” and “who” the band were. In hindsight we would have released MMXV as a trio but hey-ho

With all that in mind and the fact that we immediately changed bassist and released an EP the following year in 2016 (Broken Strings), it meant that we quickly moved on from many of the songs we loved ad refocused on a new endeavour instead.

The truth is there are a half dozen songs that have been dead off MMXV for nearly a decade, partly as we recorded it as a three piece and never had the “stems” for the live show as Matt Hyde had helped us make for the music we made together, and partly due to Simon and I being the band these days, so made little to no sense to go so far back when the sound had also changed so much.

During the November dates I started to look into making stems ourselves as we had at least been smart enough to get some version of them back in the day and that started a two month process of trying to get what we wanted out of the older tracks versus the new ones and what was going to be possible. It was actually so exciting and brought us both more joy than we expected recreating songs that for all intents and purposes felt “dead” and as we played them it made no sense in the least that it took nearly ten years for some of them to live and breathe again.

We aren’t there with them yet, but we did play two on our most recent set of dates which I’m coming to next. Either way there’s more to come here, watch this space. We loved 7,8 songs from that album and a few are a natural to us with a slight twist from the recorded versions. We’re going to do something in the summer to celebrate a 10 year anniversary, watch this space! We will have more on this coming soon :)

Gigs : Charity show & 3 Dates With Oh Hiroshima

Without question the biggest focus for us from the start of the year were the few shows we had in the diary with “Oh Hiroshima” a Swedish post rock band that “Bad Apple” booked us on. The Cities were Bristol, Leeds and London, so we were guaranteed to see a load of the UK one way or another.

Our set was to be 45 mins which isn’t a challenge as we had so much material but was definitely not something we are used to on the circuits we play. It was well worth practicing as much as we could as 45 still isn’t long as gigs go, but you need serious stamina to play our 30 mins set, so it was safe to say we needed serious work to make sure we could deliver.

We planned 12-15 for each set as you never know what the feel or buzz is on the night. Better to have more than less! To be honest, we needed them as every single show presented its own challenges, so having so many songs in the locker really helped. It was a huge learning curve

What really helped was the lads, Oh Hiroshima were great! A great band and bunch of lads to be touring with. They did great on their numbers too considering it was their first set of UK shows, we learned a lot watching them. They fit these three dates in between an otherwise “European” tour

The highlight of the three shows was unquestionably the London show as we both planned to actually play the “New Cross Inn” in 2020 just before Covid before it had to be cancelled along with most of the rest of what was happening in our lives at the time, but it transpired to be our first London show since our tour in 2019 too - 6 years! Far too long for a show in your “home town"

A huge thank you to Oh Hiroshima and Bad Apple for having us on board and especially each and every one who came to see us, said hello, bought something or gave us time. It means more than you can know

I am attaching a pile of advertising pics / photos we took for that period / gig shots too. Loads of media was happening

LIVE PICTURES : Carley Dale and Dylan Rogers

CROWD PICTURES

SOME POSTERS

New tracks

As we had been eluded to last year, we have been working on new tracks for over a year. Initially there wasn’t really a plan or planned outcome for them, but we have an idea that has been forming since the new year which we are yet to announce. We promise we will be making an announcement in the coming months about it and what to expect - watch this space :)

Attached are a few pictures from the last few months of laying down tracks trying to find the right answer and direction.

We likely have the name of the next release, the tracks and track names…even some of the artwork is sorted. Just need to finish and tidy up some aspects of the songs themselves