Alter The Press! Presents: Pick Your Weapon

Citing their influences such as The Vandals, NOFX, Hot Water Music and Latterman, Birmingham pop-punk rockers Pick Your Weapon have took the US DIY punk sound and coated it with a hint of hard working British ethic. The quartet just released a two-track 4.72" vinyl-cd with handmade artwork and sees the band producing two superb slices of hardcore pop-punk, with driving guitars, hooks and gang vocals. With the genre making somewhat of a resurgence in 2010, Pick Your Weapon are worth giving a listen.

For Fans Of: Such Gold, Rise Against, Latterman, Hot Water Music, Transit and Iron Chic.


Interview with Nick Moreton

Alter The Press: Why should Alter The Press! readers check you out?
Pick Your Weapon: We're all about the hooks. Big hooks. But we're tired of all this so called "punk rock" music that is flooding the airwaves at the moment that sounds like the band have never actually heard a punk rock record before (naming no names). We try to make hard, aggressive music that is still full of melody and gets stuck in your head. We grew up on 90s US punk rock bands such as NOFX, No Use For A Name, and The Vandals, as well as Brit rock bands such as 3 Colours Red, Idlewild and The Wildhearts, and I think we bring these influences together in our music.

We're a little older than many of our contemporaries, 2 of us live with girlfriends, and I am married, so we don't really write songs about sitting in our room pining after girls. We write songs about friendships, both strong and lost, leaving home, and being grown ups when we wish we weren't so grown up.

The bottom line is, if you like songs you can sing along to, loud guitars and gang vocals, we might just be the band for you!

ATP: What's the story behind the band?
PYW: We are me (Nick Moreton) - vocals, Chaz - guitar, Jonny - drums and Gav - bass. We have been playing together in various forms for years. Myself and Jonny have been in bands together since we were 12, and we just can't seem to get rid of each other. When we hit 18 we decided to make a real go of our band, Have A Go Hero, and we achieved a small amount of success before getting our fingers burned. Now we are just happy making music together that we love and getting it out to people.

ATP: Single highlight as a band so far?
PYW: This will sound like nothing to most people, but there is a small NY based webzine/collective called Brooklyn Underground who feature Brooklyn based bands and try to put them together on shows to help build a scene. John who runs the website came across our music and decided to feature it on his website. It sounds so small, but what John is doing over there is such a cool thing, and he obviously cares so much about music, that for him to feature us, a little band from Birmingham, on his website about New York punk rock means so much to us.

ATP: What are your plans for the 12 months?
PYW: We have just released a 4.72", a 2 track vinyl-cd that has handmade covers that we spray painted ourselves, so for a while we will be promoting that. We have put out 2 EPs now that can be downloaded for free from our website and we now are thinking that we will take some time to get a full album together before hitting the studio again. Outside of that we will be doing the usual band stuff - gigs, gigs, gigs - and we're going to try and speak to a lot more webzines and blogs like Alter The Press! to get our name out there.