UK Industrial trio Tayne will release their debut album Love on 31st January via MNRK.
“There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another.” – Cyril Connolly
An exploration of love, desire, conflict and fear, Love is the new album from London-based Industrial Noise Pop triumvirate Tayne. Written during a period of dissociation, Tayne mastermind Matt Sutton documents his ideas of love as conflict, sacrifice and compromise, how emotional attachment leads to clashes and how the repercussions can ripple down through generations.
What does love cost? How far are we willing to go to chase it? “There’s definitely a defeated attitude in most of the songs” Matt says. “I was intimidated by intimacy, afraid of being vulnerable and putting myself out there.” Sound tracked by a raging hybrid of metal, industrial, shoegaze and pop, Love wrestles with the classic definition of the word, exploring how we navigate the clashes that emerge through its pursuit.
Whilst the lyrical themes of Love predominantly stem from Matt’s own experiences, there was also a subconscious through-line that resonated closer to home. A child of divorce, Matt’s parents separated, which it was later revealed was due to his Dad being a gay man. “When he told me that, I could contextualise it,” Matt says of the separation today “and instantly there were no harsh feelings. I think realising that at a young age opened my mind to being an accepting person, understanding life isn’t black and white.”
The themes of Love resonated deeply with Matt’s father, who could relate emphatically to his son’s experiences. This conversation between father and son provided a parallel context that made the album strike an even more familial chord. “I had a lightbulb moment” Matt reflects “where I realised my whole existence stems from a conflict in love.”
What had originally been conceived as an album about Matt’s own trials in the pursuit of love started to envelope his father’s experiences too. All of his lyrics echoed similarities of a relationship that had led to his birth. “Very quickly the visual side of the record started to come through into a story that we could tell that is, in a way, his story” offers Matt.
Believing strongly that albums should cohere as one harmonious piece of art, Tayne set about reflecting the story of Matt’s father in the visual aspects of the record. Three music videos from director Lief Johnson form an abstract narrative that explore the ‘Love is Conflict’ mantra whilst taking cues and employing talent from the LGBTQIA+ community. Artwork displays the album’s title writ-large in a barely legible stylised font usually associated with the nihilistic black metal scene, a metaphor not only for the album’s central theme but also for the contrasting influences that make up the music itself.
Matt’s effeminate vocal melodies provide a stark counterpoint to the unremitting skull-rattling beats and waves of pulsating electronic noise that punctuate these ten tracks, creating a powerful hybrid which takes as many cues from the art pop of Lady Gaga as it does the sonic assault of Nine Inch Nails. Violent synths collide with alluring melodies that reflect the internal conflict at the heart of the record. “The contrast is far more interesting to me” Matt states. “I still love extreme metal and heavy bands but I think there’s something a little bit more exciting when you’re trying to create something that isn’t what everyone else is doing.”
Love also features Rolo Tomassi’s James Spence on ‘Fear’ and Cage Fight’s Rachel Aspe on ‘Coherent’, who both join a long list of Tayne collaborators with artists as diverse as Jesu, Mastiff, Katie Kim, Wayne Adams (of Petbrick / Big Lad) and Poisonous Birds. As a live act, Tayne have supported the likes of Health, Author & Punisher and Greg Puciato, as well as securing slots on festival bills including Portals and Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany.