Militarie Gun: ‘creativity in punk and hardcore is thriving’

In 2023, hardcore punk is having a moment quite unlike anything that the scene has ever seen before. The likes of Turnstile are selling out multiple nights at venues like the Roundhouse in London, while scooping Grammy nominations too – a world away from the furious basement gigs where the scene first emerged.

But few have managed to deliver a sound and perspective as unique as California’s Militarie Gun. There’s shades of the bands where frontman Ian Shelton cut his teeth (he’s also in Regional Justice Center), but a love of melodic indie shines through too.

For Shelton, the scene also provided a place of solace and acceptance during a tough childhood.

“I started going to shows when I was 15 and it was everything I needed at the time. To go see bands like Ceremony and scream “I’ve got problems, I’m a fucked up kid” with a bunch of other weirdo people was the best feeling in the world,” he explains.

Now, their debut album Life Under the Gun has arrived and offers the most fully formed look at the hardcore heroes so far. You can read our Q&A with Ian Shelton below.

Your label and Loma Vista and Roc Nation might not necessarily seem like obvious bedfellows with hardcore. Why them and what have they offered to your sound?

Both Loma and Roc understood what we were going for so it seemed like the best fit. Blaze at Roc Nation heard the ‘Life Under The Gun’ demos and really understood it and cared about helping us execute what we wanted. Similarly, Loma heard the first mixes and got involved officially from there. Sonically both parties really pushed us to get the best mix possible for the LP, which ended up being a really important part of the process.

US hardcore is having a real resurgence at the moment. Why do you think people are really pricking up their ears to the scene, and why now?

It’s just a time where creativity in hardcore and punk is thriving, everyone is pushing themselves to write as great of songs as they can and people are connecting with it. During the pandemic, hardcore went from largely being a live experience to having to be something you listen to at home, when that switch happened the songs had to get better. Luckily that impact has extended past the pandemic and people are just further pushing themselves further in their song writing.

Can you tell us about your own links to the genre – Ian, I believe you said you found a sense of community after trouble at home?

I started going to shows when I was 15 and it was everything I needed at the time. To go see bands like Ceremony and scream “I’ve got problems, I’m a fucked up kid” with a bunch of other weirdo people was the best feeling in the world. The power of HC is to make people feel less isolated in their messed up experiences and provide a community surrounding it.

Where does your debut album take your sound? What’s the story behind it? Where next from here?

As the writing of the album progressed we realised how much bigger the songs sounded than our older material. Because of that we decided we needed to record in a bigger studio, which ended up being Dave Grohl’s Studio 606. It’s all rooted in the same stuff we’ve always been interested in, anything from Fugazi to Rolling Stones to Guided by Voices, but now we were more capable of executing our vision.

It’s tough to say what’s next from here – we just want to tour as hard as we can to get people to listen to these songs!