FEATURE:
Spotlight
IN THIS PHOTO: Olli Appleyard of Static Dress/PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard for NME
that you need to listen to. Static Dress released their album, injury episode, late last month. I will end with a review of that album. However, I will come to some reviews first. In May, NME spoke with Static Dress’ lead, Olli Appleyard. NME note how “the Leeds quartet fight the fast fashion of the music industry with multimedia escapism and unflinching dedication to the art form”:
“The Leeds four-piece laid the first bricks upon their formation in 2019 and have since been called everything from art-hardcore to emo. As people tried to decode them, tracks like 2019’s hazy, Deftones-coded ‘Clean.’ and the throwback 2000s metalcore of ‘Courtney, Just Relax’, which appeared on their 2022 debut album ‘Rouge Carpet Disaster’, helped put them on the British heavy map. Soon, they were opening for Bring Me The Horizon and headlining tours in the USA, a nation whose cities currently dominate their streaming stats.
Such accolades are insignificant to Static Dress. Visionary-in-chief Appleyard is a purist, determined to solely make art for art’s sake. His considered yet dogged approach, where ideas often stew for years, enables the band to flesh out their concepts for maximum impact. Take March’s ‘A Live Death Display’ event: a secret, phone-free gathering in an untouched London cinema, where fans could play the band’s self-made Rouge Carpet Disaster: The Video Game upon arrival. A film was then screened, announcing their second album, ‘Injury Episode’, before the group hit the stage for a surprise gig.
“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people” – Olli Appleyard
Moments before showtime, Appleyard turned to his bandmates – George Holding (bass), Sam Ogden (drums) and Vincent Weight (guitar) – as the four took stock of the fantasy they brought to life that night. He recalls the occasion not with cockiness, but a sense of conviction: “You can be bigger than my band, but you’re never going to do the things that my band’s capable of doing.” Behind the scenes, his desire to make moves of this calibre has been regularly shot down by risk-averse industry figures. But “when it pays off,” he tells NME, “there’s people patting you on the back who told you it was a stupid idea.
“People who work in music will be like, ‘Well, you didn’t hit this metric,’” he fumes, still livid about past experiences. “Measurements which people used to rely on so heavily for value, worth or position of a band now don’t mean anything anymore. The minute the [dominant] app – a creation that someone else controls – changes, the music industry loses all scope, meaning or understanding. It’s crazy how you can have absolutely no grasp on anything and have a job in this.”
ame terrifies Appleyard. It can breed toxic echo chambers – he cites Kanye West’s recent comeback attempt – and parasocial fan relationships. He praises Lewis Capaldi for “authentically” handling his fame, and empathises with Chappell Roan, who’s been torn apart for setting basic boundaries. “Someone will ask something of me, I’ll say, ‘I can’t right now,’ and they’ll scorch you online for not giving them what you wanted,” he says. Exercising his right to a guarded life should not undermine his genuine appreciation for Static Dress’ fanbase. “This isn’t transactional,” he stresses.
“I don’t want to be walked over. We’ve had people in the industry actively try to ruin us before” – Olli Appleyard
Appleyard vents these frustrations in ‘Injury Episode’. The storyline, he tells us, follows two sisters. Representing the perfect form of celebrity, they are objectified, driven over the edge and killed by “greedy” and “obsessive” townspeople. “The people cannot live without them, so they bring them back to life and create this amalgamation of both of them; they go, ‘Oh, that’s not what I want,’ and discard them.” The pair appear circled by paparazzi vultures on the album artwork, all signs of life drained from them.
Appleyard admits he “can’t keep up with the pace of the modern day” on the slow-burning alt-rock of ‘…Hospice’, the preceding lyric “engrave each moment / into a memory” resonating with him even more since his head injury. While many songs explore the wider points we’ve discussed, they also offer deeply personal snapshots of his own life. The ear-splitting ‘Nostalgia Kills’ tackles emotional addiction, the dichotomy of “the used and the user”, and the release he found in letting life take the wheel: “Close your eyes and enjoy the ride”.
The production on ‘Injury Episode’ is human and ugly, often soaking vocals in harsh distortion and capturing the erratic frenzy of four musicians in the room. It reclaims the studio in Static Dress’ fight against the rapid-fire “conveyor belt” of formulaic, polished music. “It makes no sense,” Appleyard mutters under his breath, refusing to name any specific culprits on the grounds that online spats only make problems worse. (He once experienced that first-hand with Machine Gun Kelly.) He’d rather lead by example, proving why the dedication, space and time to wholly serve the art form should be the only end goal.
“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people,” he declares. “I can only resonate with people who try really hard to push the boat [out]. When it’s something built with time, nurture and passion put into it, I’m like, ‘Thank god.’” The album’s closing track nails this mindset, exploring why items made with the care of your own hands trump anything that could be purchased. “It’s finding the value in people’s time, rather than cost, money, or status”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Olli Appleyard for NME
Static Dress want to be the ultimate escapist band. In a world exclusive first interview, Kerrang! spoke with Olli Appleyard “for a passionate and brutally honest deep dive into the importance of staying true to yourself, never compromising on your vision, and keeping the magic of music alive…”:
“In a way, Static Dress can be understood as the antidote to disposable music culture. Their artistry transcends songs and albums; they’ve created an entire universe across lore-strewn, meticulously detailed music videos and a multitude of notably analogue formats from comic books (to accompany their 2021 EP Prologue) to a video game extending the world-building of 2022 debut Rouge Carpet Disaster.
Nothing is ever done the simple way. Instead of sharing a festival line-up on the grid, a task that could take seconds, Olli will print the poster out, tape it to the wall, photograph it, edit it and only then upload it. The band often tease announcements through cryptic puzzles; before telling the world of their album launch event, A Live Death Display (in which phones were banned, and saw fans queuing down the street), they sent fans to a mini-game in which they had to figure out how to walk over to a stack of CRT TVs – a signature of the Static Dress aesthetic – and push a big red button. Indicating that more was afoot, an updated version directed players from that same stack of TVs warning them ‘Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s there’ to another TV and the limousine from the recent human props video. Next to it was a safe with a four-digit code to crack.
In all of this, Olli is creating with pure intentions. When people invent ways to sully art with cheap, prescriptive routes to making money, it feels personal. He wants to lead by example and be the change he wants to see, even though he knows his intentions can be misread.
“In the past, my confidence in what I was doing got confused with arrogance to a lot of people, and I get it,” he says. “That wasn’t what I intended to do.”
Self-importance, this is not – it comes from a place of deep care. This is someone for whom music is everything, for whom it gave sanctuary and community. You’d be hard pressed to find a figure in all of the alternative world who cares as deeply as Olli does.
“For me, music should be about two things,” he suggests. “You’re either spreading awareness for something, talking about real topics – a band like Speed is a great example, raising money for shit, always helping people, and with the Download boycott [in 2024, against Barclays sponsoring the festival and their alleged links to arms companies that trade with Israel], they created real change.
“Or you've got bands who provide escapism. I think about younger me who just wanted to get away from everything all the time. I had a really, really, really horrible time just being myself – somewhere there is the 16-year-old me who absolutely doesn't fit anywhere, hates everything and was scared to go outside – and anything to take me away is awesome.
“The four of us, we all like very different things,” Olli says of his bandmates – guitarist Vin Weight, bassist George Holding and drummer Sam Ogden – “but the one thing we can all agree is the term ‘real band’. When there’s shit happening onstage, you can hear mistakes, you can hear things going wrong, I’m like, ‘Thank fucking god.’ When I turn up now and I see more laptops than members in your band [I think], ‘Oh no, this is just not good anymore.’”
Injury Episode is the antithesis of that. While it represents a refinement of Static Dress’ ideas, it relishes the unvarnished and imperfect, with the same rigorous attention to detail they’ve always had. They spent days just working on guitar tones. Sam – who attracts an enormous level of respect among his peers in the drum world – bulldozed through most of these songs in one take. There was no over-manicured editing on computers and all four members worked as a unit, under the gaze of producer Erik Bickerstaffe from Loathe, who also produced their debut. At some point, we also hear all of them sing”.
“I want to keep the magic of the music alive,” he says, not wishing to override it with his own dirty laundry. “I don’t feel like it’s the done thing anymore because social media [expects you] to lay all your cards out on the table, and it’s like, ‘Oh, are you depressed? You’ve got to tell the internet about it!’ I want to be my own person. I don't want to ever look holier than thou, because, unfortunately, I'm just human and so are rest of the guys.”
He’s spent enough time in the hardcore scene for the idea of band and fan being on an equal level to seep deep into his bones, and as such, it seems anathema to him to make anything about himself. When he suffered a head injury on tour in the U.S. while opening for Dying Wish in November, and had to miss a string of shows, sharing a video explaining his absence was a step outside his usual boundaries, even though he understood it was necessary when people had paid to see them. “That destroyed me inside.”
One-on-one, he’s often startlingly open. He’s strong-willed and unfiltered, resolute in his opinions, frank at all times. He’s funny and kind, even offering to carry K!’s heavy bags halfway across the café. He talks to people on the counters in coffee shops like this one, something he learned from Sam – “Just talk to anyone and life’s pretty good.” He wants to be generous with his time when fans approach and politely say hello. If you’ve ever wondered who the ‘real’ Olli Appleyard is, he’s right in front of you”.
Before ending with NME and their review of injury episode, The Line of Best Fit chatted with Olli Appleyard. It is amazing how Static Dress created this buzz and intrigue ahead of the release of their second album. The Line of Best Fit write how “some lucky fans managed to sneak a peek at injury episode by solving a cryptic mini-game. Winners were invited to an abandoned theatre, somewhere in central London, for a private screening of a self-directed short film. According to reports, the line to get in was a maze in itself”:
“After Static Dress first broke news feeds in 2019, all anyone could talk about were memories from 20 years ago. With a black-and-white wardrobe and dye jobs that deserved the cover of Hot Topic’s mailorder catalogue, the band was widely associated with Gen Z’s Myspace revival. However, press are still splitting hairs over where they belonged in the scene. During the rollout for injury episode, they’ve been called post-hardcore, metalcore, screamo, alt rock, alt-pop, and simply alt. So which is it?
“I disagree with the revival tag,” Appleyard says, settling the debate. “The only thing we are is an emo band. We want to make music that’s emotional, intense, and as dramatic as it can possibly be.”
While intended for more mature audiences, injury episode doesn’t skimp on drama. Like a classic noir, the album opens mid-downpour, replaying the famous last words from Static Dress’ major label debut, “So close to being free, why would I stop now?” Just don't go in expecting a shot-for-shot remake. “It’s a lot darker,” Appleyard says in reference to its visual cues. “I wanted to bring in the sepia tone of a film like Batman Begins. It gives off this horrible dynamic that really shines through.” Once a permanent fixture, the band’s lime green wallpapering has been replaced by granite columns and marble tile. Even their trademark handcam is toned down. In the video for “human props”, flash bulbs pop against soft oppressive lighting, an effect that contrasts nicely with the seamless transition between Story of the Year at their absolute fieriest and the drowning despair of Portishead.
“I don’t want to lose our identity,” Appleyard clarifies. “Using CRT and handcam footage made us stand out. But I don’t want that to be our brand forever. I want everything to keep moving forward.”
“To be honest, at times, it’s pretty hellish,” Appleyard answers when questioned about working within the industry at-large. Before anyone twists his words, let’s be clear: Static Dress don’t take their success for granted. Signing with Roadrunner and now Sumerian presents plenty of perks (like, say, a tour with Poppy?). But given how fast their font size has grown on festival posters, the band are wise to exercise caution. “We’ve seen how fame and celebrity affects and destroys the lives of people we now consider our peers. As much as it’s great, there is a really ugly side to it as well.” Dishonest journos, piggish execs, and other shady inside men are brought to light during injury episode. “There are a lot of callouts on this record,” he says. Funnily enough, Appleyard has the copycats to thank for inspiring “the best song we’ve ever written.” Crafted with equal parts grace and guile, “dull blade disguise” rips away the veneer of artists who’ve followed them too closely.
“We’ve constantly had our style bitten,” Appleyard vents. “I create for myself because I enjoy it, but there are people who take from us to survive because they’re inauthentic. They act like friends, but the second they’re not taking from us anymore, they’re no longer hitting us up. We’ve dealt with a lot of people in the music industry who’ve used us.”
Bad actors behind the scenes aren’t the only ones at fault on injury episode. Static Dress raise issue with today’s assembly-line production. “We’re making robot music,” Appleyard says. “No one is coming up with anything new or original. Everyone’s just getting lower and lower in tuning. It’s gotten to the point where guitars sound like machines.” In splitting with this trend, Static Dress refused to entertain any studio trickery. The album wasn’t played to a grid or overdubbed to death, making it impossible to recreate live without backing tracks. Often, songs were recorded in single takes. “When people refer to us as nostalgic, I think they’re just remembering when alternative music sounded like it was made by real people.” For some older millennials, featuring Underoath recalls the raging hormones of Christian summer camp (okay, maybe that’s just me talking), but “Nostalgia Kills” severs all ties to the past. Riding the rails between math rock, mallcore, and nu-metal, it’s a thrilling ride that ends with the biggest breakdown of either band’s career”.
Reviewing an album that is “deliberately more intense listening experience than their breakout debut”, Static Dress have delivered one of this year’s best albums with injury episode. NME provided a glowing four-star review. At the moment, Static Dress have some U.K. dates coming in July. They then head to the U.S. for a run of incredible dates. Go and see them live if you can:
“Static Dress are easily one of the most ambitious rock bands around today. They introduced fans to second album ‘Injury Episode’ via an interactive art exhibit at a vintage London cinema and have put on a series of pop-up, phone free gigs that go against almost every rule in creating hype. Last week, they shared a terrifying survival horror game that ties the lore of the new record to 2022’s ‘Rogue Carpet Disaster’. “You can be bigger than my band, but you’re never going to do the things that my band’s capable of doing,” vocalist Olli Appleyard told NME recently during their appearence on The Cover.
That unwavering self-belief and creative vision can be felt across ‘Injury Episode’, a frantic 15-track album that drags the scrappy fury of ‘00s post-hardcore into 2026. For newcomers, the genre is a stylistic mix of brutal aggression, melody and tender emotion that inspired early My Chemical Romance, Bring Me The Horizon and Taking Back Sunday records, before they all moved onto something more arena friendly.
Static Dress glance at a similar path with ‘…hospice’. The searing grief-stricken track might pack an emotional gut-punch as Appleyard reflects on loss, but it’s also impossibly catchy and made for cathartic singalongs in festival fields. For the most part though, ‘Injury Episode’ is an unapologetic collection of screamed vocals, crushing riffs and chaotic energy that couldn’t care less about daytime radio playlists or TikTok virality. The album starts with a janky computer keyboard and the whispered mantra “so close to being free, why would I stop now?” that opens the door to the emotional purge and soaring escapism that follows.
‘Nostalgia Kills’ is an unrelenting assault of post-hardcore that features influential scene legends Underoath while ‘Dull Blade Disguise’ echoes Welsh emo titans Funeral For A Friend at their most cutting, with the repeated ask of “Are you satisfied?”. The rugged mosh pit anthem of ‘Questioning’, the playful rage of ‘Classic. Death. Pose.’ and the aching heartache of ‘Adult Diamond’ are undeniably Static Dress.
The band are tighter across ‘Injury Episode’. It’s the first record all four members of the band (Appleyard, bassist George Holding, drummer Sam Ogden and guitarist Vincent Weight) have written on after spending the past few years touring the world together. Appleyard pushes his vocals beyond the expected clean and screamed vocals too. Hushed warnings, distorted yells and guttural roads give the knotted record a theatrical edge.
This is a deliberately more intense, more complex record than ‘Rogue Carpet Disaster’, one that feels like Static Dress are trying to connect more deeply with whoever’s listening. It’s a fearless approach to guitar music that’s more interested in storytelling than mass appeal”.
I shall end things there. If you are unaware of Static Dress, this is a Leeds band that you really do need to know. The phenomenal injury episode is “music made not to be just heard but felt. It’s unvarnished, conceptual, bleeding emotion from every vein. Surely, this has to be a cult classic in waiting”. Those are words from Kerrang! in their review. It is evident that this band are going to…
CONQUER the globe.
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