Interview Atomic Youth

Atomic Youth defy genre with their surreal invention ‘Wyrd Metal’—a chaotic blend of badgers, prog, folklore, and cosmic nonsense. We dive into their eccentric universe of Sunset Trajectory, squirrels, and sonic witchcraft.

1. For those who’ve never heard of Atomic Youth, how would you explain Wyrd Metal in fewer than 12 lies?
Juice: Genres are like astrology for men.
Jam: Polyrhythmic hobbit maths, chiptune, some bread & butter, folk metal, guitar solos & flute-bombs, trees & hedgehogs.
Johnny: tis a crooked alloy... a jolly jig or hymn hammer'd upon causality's anvil.
Jingo: We're waiting till some cleverclogs comes along and tucks us neatly into our cozy category coffin, cutely swaddled in Egyptian cotton. At the moment it’s Wyrd Metal; once it was Goblin Prog; before that, Neo-Pastoral Violence; and for a brief but passionate window, Romantic Horsecore. If that offends anyone's spreadsheet, we don't care nerd.

Here's Wyrd Metal in fewer than 12 lies, just for your readers:
1 - Four badgers arguing in a bin.
2 - A choir of pensioners mispronouncing "Worcestershire" all at once.
3 - School discos & regret.
4 - Idiot jazz.
5 - A congregation of cows plotting a mutiny.
6 - Ants confessing war crimes through a kazoo made of bread.
7 - "Prog metal"
8 - Yodelling ghosts & Gregorian techno.
9 - Binbag lullabies.
10 - Your PE teacher trapped inside a grandfather clock forever.
11 - the world is a carcass, and those who love it are dogs.

2. Your band members are virtual entities—Juice, Johnny, Jam, and Jingo. Which one of you is the least trustworthy in a time signature emergency?
Jam: Not me. I can count to any number, even the funny ones.
Juice: A diva is never late, but if the CIA interrupts my groove, I can't be held responsible.
Jingo: It's Johnny. He’ll start quoting Chaucer while the stage is literally on fire.
Johnny: time... is a mortal scaffold - the moving image of eternity. we owe nothing to the clocks of thisse world.

3. The new release is Sunset Trajectory (East Edition)—but apparently nobody remembers the first edition. What exactly happened to it, and is this one better, or just more confusing?
Jingo: Not better. Worse, probably. Deluxe downgrade. Nobody listened to the first one. Not even us.
Juice: It’s the same album in heels, dolled up & lovingly localised for eastern markets - bonus tracks, shiny booklet, new hairdo.
Jam: First one was shepherd's pie. This one is shepherd's pie with jelly-babies on top. Don't make sense. Still yummy!

4. You’ve been described as everything from “psychic microviolence” to “Romantic Horsecore.” Which of these labels feels the most accurate, and which one offends you the least?
Juice: Psychic microviolence is literally what my thighs are.
Jingo: Nah, none of those. We got called Landfill Debussy once. Best review we’ve ever had. Bloke in a robe broke into the gig through the fire exit. Then climbed onto a fruit machine and started casting a spell or something.
Juice: We later found out it was just Oswald, the local wizard.
Jam: He had a parrot. Not a real one, taxidermy, glued to his shoulder. Kept feeding it Quavers.
Jingo: We wrote him a song and played it live at a ren faire.
Juice: Still our most honest ballad. Oswald deserves it.

5. Tell us about the track “Sampson Was a Shire Horse.” Is it really about a horse, or is that just prog-metal code for something deeper and uncomfortably rural?
Juice: Some of us just like a stallion, sweetie.
Jam: Biggest horse ever! Lovely lad. Like a cottage with legs.
Jingo: It’s about class warfare disguised as hooves, wrapped in an English folk song.
Johnny: méarh Sampson, a beast bearing the burden of a thousand unthanked years. and when the fields lay fallow, still the echo of his stride remains.

6. Your press release mentions recording behind a banana factory where squirrels held avant-garde concerts. How much did the squirrels actually influence the final mix?
Jam: Ah the old studio behind the banana factory.
Jingo: It was basically our Abbey Road... except Abbey Road is rubbish. Just a zebra crossing clogged with tourists and the stench of London.
Juice: They were basically our producers, the squirrels. We paid them in acorns.
Jingo: Crap engineers, obviously.
Jam: Little claws on the faders.
Jingo: Mostly just abusing Ableton until it sounded OK. Still way better than some ponce in sunglasses calling himself a visionary.
Juice: And squirrels don’t grope interns or buy Bentleys on your royalties, either.

7. Jam Ælfwin apparently recorded drums underwater. Did that improve the sound, or just ruin a perfectly good swimming pool?
Jam: Still use that snare to this day. Sounds nice n' soggy.
Johnny: a drop of glory in the living water of Poseidon’s lost cause.
Jingo: We used many unique techniques. Johnny insisted on playing his solos backwards through a Victorian drainpipe. Juice tuned her bass to angel numbers, and I spent most of the budget on weaponry.
Juice: We also pioneered the “fox-in-the-studio” method, where you simply let a fox wander around and accept its spiritual input.

8. If your music was accidentally played at a Renaissance Faire again, how long do you think you’d last before being burned as heretics?
Jingo: They don't have the balls. LARPers aren’t executioners, they’re closet e-girls and PTA dads in chainmail. Soft as oatcakes.
Juice: If you're 555, then I'm 666, babe.
Jam: They gave me free pie, then called me a daemon. Can’t complain.
Johnny: hairetikos = he that chooseth. daimonion = counsel as curse. such is the alchemy of the pyre, Truth tis barter'd & the heretyk martyr'd in wicce-fȳr.

9. Many bands talk about their influences—yours range from ABBA-in-a-swamp to Scriabin nightmares. Which influence do you think listeners would least expect to hear in your riffs?
Jam: Kate Bush. Frogs.
Jingo: Oscar Peterson, Hideki Naganuma.
Juice: The click of stilettos on marble. Johnny likes Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Jingo listens to Bulgarian wedding bands.
Jingo: Ivo Papasov. That stuff slaps.
Jam: Hobnobs as well.

10. The ethos of Atomic Youth seems to be: “The riffs are real, the band isn’t.” But what happens if one day the band does become real—would you quit immediately, or demand proper trousers?
Johnny: reality is a virtual photon paying rent in the void. spacetime an emergent chord woven from Hilbert’s sea; to be 'real' is to sink from symbol to carcass.. and myth outlivez meat.
Jingo: Translation: no, Johnny doesn’t like trousers, he only wears shorts.
Juice: Real bands age, babe. I'm an eternal JPEG with eyeliner. Hot and hyperreal.
Jam: If we're real, can we get a pet guinea pig?
Jingo: Becoming real just means paying VAT on hummus while some knighted nonce yaps about net zero, taxing kettles and opinions. I’ll stay a cartoon thanks, can’t evict a doodle.

11. You’re also making a video game. Can you give us a hint—are players battling in 17/8 time, or just running away from giant horses?
Juice: We aren't making the game, babes. We're starring in it.
Jingo: You ever played Earthbound, or Baldur's Gate, or Chrono Trigger, all on the same save file? It's like that, but the telly watches you back.
Juice: You must gather your party before venturing forth, on an Atomic Youth world tour that starts with a spam email, a living comet, and a velvet worm in a motel.
Jingo: We ate 'Irish spaghetti' on St Paddy’s during the US tour, solved the riddle of the Village Weasel in Wales, battled techno-babies in Shaanxi, got extradited from France for driving a gyrocopter into the Louvre, escaped gaol, and rode a village-sized turtle to a different dimension.
Jam: Fastitocalon, bless her cotton socks.
Juice: We saw Eden, booted from a corrupted backup drive. Dead pixels in the sun. Stars fell from the sky. It was not very cute.
Jingo: Friccin' lobopodians and coneheads!
Johnny: tower o' Babel, antenna to the abyss; a call to the cosmos, pyramids tune the pitch.
Juice: Honestly, it's mentally scarred us for life. OST is pretty hot, though. We wrote it.
Jam: If you wanna save the world, always remember to pack a sandwich and extra pair of socks.
Jingo: And level dex.
Johnny: hie thee hither & be unbound, to wander where the stars are drowned. to reave the spark from heofon's gate, and nail to neon eden's fate. scry the sign that sings beyond the fetters of thy mortal bond, to wake the wound within the dream, we sound the chord that tears the seam. seek the Truth beneath the skin & shatter gyves that hem us in. for we are more than flesh & bone, Atomic Youth: The Light Unknown

12. Final question: If a wizard, a badger, and a music journalist all walked into one of your gigs—who makes it out alive?
Jingo: Careful! That's how wars start, mate.
Juice: Remember when World War 4 was filmed in a local car park?
Jam: Yeah. Budget of twelve quid, and a wig.
Jingo: Cardboard tank, inflatable soldiers.
Jam: Four extras, and a dog.
Juice: It was so realistic!
Jingo: Wars need someone left to lie about them. ‘Mostly Peaceful Badger Uprising Overthrows Wizard Dictatorship.’ So the journalist survives.
Johnny: Hibakusha.
Jam: Gōd Wyrd, min freond.

ATOMIC YOUTH • ORG