10 QUESTIONS WITH GRAIL GUARD

We’re very excited to introduce you to hardcore punks Grail Guard who have recently announced the release of their debut album ‘Still No Future’, which you can order now from our website. They’ve just dropped the first single from the album ‘People Just Like You‘, which you can stream everywhere now. We caught up with Grail Guard to ask 10 very important questions about the band.

TNS: Please introduce the band?

Grail Guard: We’re four friends from in and around Coventry . We play blisteringly fast, angry as fuck hardcore punk. We’re made up of musicians who are veterans of many local scenes.

We’re Riaz, James, Phil and Adam.

Riaz’s lyrics explore themes of government incompetence, racism, British Indian cultural heritage and the rotten elite who hold too much power over society.

We’re in all the normal places online apart from Twitter because you know Musk is a massive shit.

TNS: Which of your releases should people check out first and what track is your definitive song?

Grail Guard: Our first album ‘Still No Future’ comes out in early March and the second track ‘Our Streets’ always seems to go down well when we play it live.

The song is about Riaz’s parents, grand parents and the wider Windrush Generation who came to the UK to help rebuild the country and worked incredibly hard jobs to support society and faced racism and prejudice that exists to this day.

It’s a song ultimately about hope and reclaiming the streets from the ever increasing threat of the far right.

TNS: Which member of the band is guaranteed to make you late getting to the gig and why?

Grail Guard: Spoilt for choice on this one. James is always early having already researched where to park, how long it will take to get there and arrives with a towel and toilet paper packed even for local gigs. But the rest aren’t great with timings. Phil is always taking his daughter somewhere or picking her up from somewhere. Riaz is always ten minutes away from where he needs to be, even after 30 minutes after he was supposed to be there, normally due to having to check out CEX one final time for some rare Japanese PS1 games. In normal circumstances Adam would be the last to arrive, if it wasn’t for Phil and Riaz.

TNS: What is your favourite venue to play?

Grail Guard: There have been so many stand out venues. Retro Bar in Manchester will always be special for us. There’s an energy in Manchester which is very special. We played the basement stage at the Exchange for Bristol Punx Picnic and genuinely thought we might burst into flames, as it was the hottest and sweatiest gig we’ve ever played. Fun though!

We played a board game shop in the centre of Rugby where people were moshing and crowdsurfing in the streets, and where the owner of the shop messaged us a month later to say they were still finding footprints on the ceiling. There was also a 71 year old Indian gentleman who had never been to a gig before and ended up crowd surfing, definitely a memorable afternoon. We hosted a summer gig at Brubl in Leamington that had a great vibe, we’ll be looking to put more on with the support of the owners who kindly provided free beer the whole night!

TNS: Tell us about something ridiculous that has happened to you whilst on the road.

Grail Guard: The first time we played Bolton we’d arrived after a pretty long and terrible journey. We’d unloaded, grabbed a drink and popped out the front of the venue for some fresh air and a cigarette. At that very moment a car pulled up and we noticed the passenger was holding a machine gun. Paralysed in a moment of fear, we watched two armed police get out of one car and then another four get out of a second car. Then two riot vans arrived, followed by a helicopter overhead. We were asked to stand against a wall for about ten minutes while they went room to room through the venue. They then wished us a good gig and left. Shortly after they’d gone the owner came and said he knew every dodgy bloke in Bolton and none of the them would prompt that kind of response, then assured us they must be after someone from Manchester ;-).

TNS: What are the best and worst bits of being in an underground/DIY band?

Grail Guard We’ve never really known anything different as we’ve all been in DIY bands since we were teenagers but the best bits are when all the bands are there for each other and there’s good natured mosh pits, crowd surfing, human pyramids and the occasional wall of death. We get to meet some amazing promoters, sound engineers, photographers, venue staff and we get to go to places we wouldn’t normally have reason to be. We love contrast and recently played in central Edinburgh where we left the venue surrounded by people raving in the street, piss trickling through a lot of broken glass, tipsy couples fucking in alleyways and drove to our accommodation in a sleepy boarders town where we enjoyed a Scottish breakfast followed by a visit to a country house where we played ‘Spot The Creepiest Portrait’. Lovely stuff.

The worst parts are closed motorways leading to long diversions at three in the morning. No halal places to eat after the gig which normally means a eating a shit McDonalds in the car the early hours for the second time that week. Starting work on a Monday morning after an amazing weekend of gigs and having to wait another five days for it to happen again.

TNS: What up and coming bands should we all be checking out?

Grail Guard: We’ve had some great support from so many bands in the scene around the whole of the UK, along with France (Jodie Faster) and Trinidad and Tobago (Anti-Everything). The Sewer Cats from Manchester have given us so much help and we’ve loved getting to spend so much time with them over the last three years. Our friends Face Up! from Coventry have supported us from the very start.

Probably too many to mention but: The Crash Mats from Oldham, Suckerpunch & Angry Itch and the wider Brum punx collective. Feral State, Pat Butcher, Healer Of Bastards, D.A.L.E, Pothole, Shreds, Dosed, Hearing Tests, Reason To Leave, Charlie Tango, Wallace & Vomit, Under the Influence and the mighty Pizza Tramp. We were honoured to play Jim’s birthday party in Bristol in 2025 and it was utter carnage, involving piles of sick, human curling, piggyback fights and a lot of people tripping their tits off…thanks for inviting us!

TNS: Any advice for emerging bands/bands just starting out?

Grail Guard: It’s a community. The more you put in, the more you get out. The least important part of a gig should be when you play, the most important part should be the people you meet and the shit you can chat with like minded people. If you’re in it for the money, probably worth going elsewhere. If you think getting 100 of your own signature plectrums made after 12 months of gigs is a good idea, probably worth going elsewhere. Support your local scene if it’s there, or create something if it’s not.

TNS: What’s next for you guys in the short term and the long term?

Grail Guard: We’re shooting a few videos, got a live stream lined up, hosting some gigs in Coventry and Leamington, talking a lot about the album for the next few months…did we mention we’ve got a new album out on TNS 😉 then from spring onwards we’ll be playing many gigs around the country and hopefully get a few gigs lined up in Europe for the first time. Come see us and say hi.

We hear MPF should be a good one this year!!!!

TNS: Finally, and most importantly, what is the biggest animal you could take down with your bare hands? Hypothetically, of course. We like animals. We often put them on t-shirts.

Grail Guard: We’d like to breed Nigel Farage and farm him on an industrial scale. Get a few hundred Farages, then a few thousand and fatten them up throughout spring and summer and then when autumn arrives, lead them in to a giant warehouse where we could take it in turns with our bare hands. Jurassic Park.