Mallory Knox On Anxiety, Technology Addiction & Making Their Best Record Yet

Back in the early to mid-00s, guitar music dominated the airwaves. By the end of the decade, however, things had changed.

New bands weren’t getting the support they needed, and a string of identikit bands started flooding in, unable to truly express themselves. A thousand dreary think pieces about the death of guitar music were promptly published. A lot of jokes about The Pigeon Detectives were made, too. The music industry truly is a brutal, merciless machine.

But as this decade (the teenies? Ugh, kill me…) starts moving into its final few years, guitar-wielding groups with a sense of energy and – most importantly – something to say are reaching new heights.

Case in point: Mallory Knox. This five-piece rock band from Cambridge have the tunes to get people screaming and moshing, yes, but they want to have a conversation, too.

The group’s massive single, ‘Giving It Up’, released back in November (their first new track since 2014’s Asymmetry) tackles our collective addiction to technology and the fake, blemish-free version of ourselves that  we present to others online. “[It’s about] the idea of disconnectedness and selfie culture. The fast-paced culture, the short shelf-life culture that we exist in,” frontman Mikey Chapman tells me.

But it’s Mallory Knox’s latest single that really hits home. ‘Better Off Without You’, all punching drums and screeching guitars – with a soaring chorus to boot - is inspired by several band members’ experiences with seeking treatment for anxiety.

“That's the thing with mental health, it doesn't sit in a group, and it doesn't have boundaries or borders,” Mikey said. “It reaches different people in different walks of life, different creeds, financial scenarios, and all that kind of stuff, just as hard as it does anyone else. It's not discriminatory in that kind of way.”

‘Better Off Without You’ seems to have struck a chord with Mallory Knox’s fans. “It's been very enlightening and very heart-warming,” Mikey said, “to see just how...well I've been sad to see just how many people it affects...but heart-warming that people are willing to put themselves out there and share the burden with other people.”

Considering how personal the subject matter of ‘Better Off With You’ is, did the group’s members struggle with getting this track out there?

“We went into this record with much less fear than we ever have done with records. We've never been particularly conscious of 'does everybody like us' and all that kind of stuff,” Mikey said. “But we've always been a little bit sensitive when it comes to talking about ourselves.”

“With this one, it was like, ‘you know what, this is how I feel. It has a big part in our lives.’ There was no real reservation about putting it out in that way. It's about putting out the right kind of message, that's being put across in the right kind of way. That's the main thing.”

“You have 3 and a half minutes to write down what it is essentially an issue that takes up pages and pages and pages of writing. So the fear, for me, is that people may misconstrue what's trying to be conveyed. I'd never want people to take it in a negative way - that we were badmouthing someone, or speaking ill, particularly of stuff like the NHS. I think the world of the NHS. And I'd hate people to think that we were critiquing them. “

Mallory Knox’s third album, Wired, is coming out March 10. I asked Mikey what else we could expect from the record.

“These are the best songs that we've written as a five-piece before. They're a big, positive step forward for us in terms of style, performance, the technicality behind it all and the thought that went into that.

“The ethos, the message, the points that people seem to be picking up on…there's a slightly underestimated factor of the record that I'm even more excited about, because I know there's a few other points on this record that I think that people are really going to be able to identify with and fall in love with.

“The record is just a straight up f*cking rock record. It's a brilliant representation of where we are right now. That's what we set out to do and what we've achieved.

“Learn the words and be sing them back to us at a show sometime.”

Wired is out March 10th on RCA. 

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