LOVELETTER: THE HEAVIEST METALCORE WE CAN MAKE

WELSH METALCORE BAND LOVELETTER ON SONGWRITING, HIGHLIGHTS AND NOSTALGIA

Headlining our first TOC @ The Wheatsheaf show were the mighty LOVELETTER, ably supported by the always excellent The Cartographer. It was one hell of a night, from start to finish.

South Wales is kicking out some serious noise right now, and LOVELETTER are leading the charge. Hailing from Bridgend, South Wales, LOVELETTER specialise in dealing out controlled chaos: their sound is a volatile mix of hardcore and metalcore that consistently hits hard but never feels one-note.

The breakdowns are brutal, the riffs jagged, and the vocals impassioned — just how you like them — with hook-laden passages that stick long after the noise settles. Formed in 2023, LOVELETTER have built an impressive reputation for high-energy shows, tight musicianship, and a catalogue of songs that never fail to deliver.

Riding high on the back of explosive new single Nostalgia, LOVELETTER are vocalist George Ross, bassist Sam Gibbs, guitarist and producer Kane Butler, and drummer Josh Baker.

We grabbed a pint with the guys before their Wheatsheaf set to talk Nostalgia, highlights, and what’s coming next.

For piss lager, Daniel Bedingfield, and buckets of mint yoghurt — read on!

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Hello LOVELETTER. Welcome to The Winchester. What are you drinking?

JOSH — At the moment, I'm a stout guy. I prefer Murphy's to Guinness, so I’ll go for a crisp Murphy's.

KANE — I favour quite dry lager, so I’ll go for a pint of Asahi or something like that.

SAM — Normally, I'm a lager man. However, Aspall’s cider is God's nectar. One of the best fucking drinks ever.

GEORGE — I’ll go for any watered-down piss lager: Fosters or Stella.

Bottoms up. Please describe for us the LOVELETTER sound. 

GEORGE — It’s a hard one to describe. It’s metalcore, but it's our spin on it — the heaviest metalcore we can make. Metalcore is such a wide umbrella. But when you hear it, you're like, oh yeah, it's that kind of metalcore.

LOVELETTER vocalist George Ross | credit Andy Ross

How did you all meet?

GEORGE — Pretty much all through local bands. That’s how we met and how our friendship grew. Kane’s our most recent addition. He played a show with us — our EP release show — with his band TYRANTS.

KANE — Yeah, we were around for a few years. And then they poached me, basically.

Please tell us more.

GEORGE — We met Kane when we went to record our first ever song — in Swindon, where he’s from. We got there and our bass was just not suitable for how low we wanted to tune it.

KANE — Someone there knew I had a Dingwall bass, which is a specific bass that holds low tuning pretty well. They called me up.

GEORGE — That’s literally how we met Kane; he lent us a bass.

KANE — We got talking and soon after they played a show with my band, TYRANTS. We then played their EP show in Swansea, and we played Blondies in London together as well. We all got on really well. We just clicked instantly. There’d been a few jokes about me joining their band, but when I saw them playing in Swansea, I was like, fuck, I need to make the jump. I could feel that TYRANTS was kinda fizzling out anyway. It was all very smooth.

LOVELETTER guitarist Kane Butler | credit Andy Ross

When exactly did you make the jump?

KANE — Maybe like a year ago? I think I played my first show then. I kinda joined the band, say, like December ’24. That’s when I went to my first practice, but I didn't really get fully involved until Toothless came out. I was on Toothless, which I recorded. That was like the start for me.

Do you remember the first show you all played together?

KANE — Yeah, it was in London. It was a nightmare!

GEORGE — That was our worst show. All the others have been great, but that one was just technical errors, basically. It was a big day festival, so obviously the changeovers are super quick. And there’s somebody on our case because they’re running behind, even though that’s not in our control.

JOSH — We were riding high, ‘cause we’d just got Track of the Week on BBC Radio 1. We were vibing, like, it’s going to be amazing.

GEORGE — And then it just went to shit. It was a good turnout and everything, but everything went wrong. We're running click to keep us in time, because we've got tracks and automations and stuff, and our click just went to shit. It was Kane’s first show and we just had to wing it. It was just horrible for us.

SAM — We got through it, but it was horrific. Not good.

Let’s talk of happier things. Please tell us about Nostalgia.

GEORGE — Well, it’s my favourite track — but that’s probably because it’s the latest. Like, there are times when my favourite is one we did three or four tracks back, or whatever, but I tend to always like our newest stuff. We’re always trying to add in little interesting bits to keep ourselves entertained.

JOSH — You just get that feeling sometimes when it's all coming together. This one came together quick. There are a lot of niggly bits at the end that we took a bit of time sorting out, but generally it was fast.

GEORGE — When you do a song that just flows from start to finish, you tend to be like, that’s bliss. That’s what we love: when you're writing it and you're not forcing it.

Do you have a standard writing process?

GEORGE — Me and Josh, drummer and vocalist, will sit down together and I’ve got the guitar in my hands, not plugged into anything, just hearing string noise, and he’s just looking at my fingers to work out what I’m playing. Then we just sort of map out riff ideas. Generally, it’s just fiddling about until we get that one riff idea.

JOSH — Yeah, throw a load of stuff at the wall and one thing will stick.

GEORGE — But he MIDIs everything in instantly, which is the best thing because you hear the complete song, almost, straight away — or at least that whole part exactly how it's going to sound, or close to how it's going to sound, in the final thing. You can decide, within like 30 seconds, if that’s it or not.

JOSH — It saves so much time because you don't have to worry about tuning the guitar or sloppy takes. It's all perfectly to the grid straight away.

KANE — You can just send it into the group chat and everyone hears it instantaneously, basically.

JOSH — We'll usually send half-cut demos to the group and then we'll get together and listen to them.

GEORGE — Sometimes we’ll write 90% of a song, get stuck on one little bit, and move on to work on something else. We’ve scrapped way more songs than we’ve released. I think for each song we’ve released, there are probably four songs we’ve ditched. That’s why I say when something flows, it becomes one of our favourites.

LOVELETTER drummer Josh Baker | credit Andy Ross

That’s called quality control. What’s the next stage? How do you go from demo to finished track? 

GEORGE — Kane does all the production for our tracks and we record them with him. Changes happen then, while we’re recording.

We've got a song on the go at the moment. We've just been listening to it in the van on the way here — just playing the MIDI demo, basically, for anyone to make changes.

Where do you record? 

KANE — At my house. I have a home studio, so the boys come down and, typically, I'll track guitars beforehand and then we'll spend the day doing vocals and layers. That takes most of the time.

JOSH — Godsend, this boy. Saves us all the money in the world. He figures out all the riffs by ear. No help from any of us.

KANE — It’s a nice, smooth routine, to be honest. It’s pretty dialled in.

Do you find it easy to let go of a song, or does it never feel finished? 

JOSH — No, I don’t find that overly hard. 

GEORGE — I think I find it harder than Josh does. When we get to, like, that’s a full structure, he’s on to the next one, and I’m very much like, I don't want to think about starting another song until I've got everything for this one.

JOSH — We’ll do the music together, but George has then got to think about lyrics, vocal parts, melody, and stuff like that.

GEORGE — I tend to do that in the bath. If I can’t think of anything, I have a bath and then I’ve got a whole song. It just comes together. But I can't think about starting another song till I’ve finished this one. It stresses me out. The thought of having to think of two concepts for songs at the same time just fries my brain.

LOVELETTER bassist Sam Gibbs | credit Andy Ross

Nostalgia’s been out for about a month: what’s the response been like?

GEORGE — The response has been pretty nice, hasn’t it? Everyone's been very complimentary about it. People seem to enjoy it, especially when we play it live.

But it’s difficult to get a track noticed these days. It’s always the same: you drop a track and then the whole thing is trying to shift traffic to Spotify.

Other than this interview, what have been your LOVELETTER highlights so far?

KANE — A standout for me would be the Radio 1 thing, with Toothless being Track of the Week. That was insane — a big high. We'd already had the email saying they were going to play it, which was cool for me — the boys had had stuff played on the radio before, but I hadn’t — then we got another email saying it was Track of the Week, which was sick.

GEORGE — We did two local shows in Swansea last year and we sold out both of them. The response locally has been crazy. We never expected that. When we started the band, we spoke about what we each wanted to achieve, and mine was to be able to put on a show, be the headliners, and sell out the venue. It’s far surpassed what I wanted to do. Now I want more! 

JOSH — We played a show on Monday in London with Connor Sweeney’s new band, TheBoyShadow. He’s the guitarist from Loathe, and Loathe totally changed our musical trajectory. He reached out and asked us to play his new band’s first ever show.

GEORGE — It was a huge honour for us: getting the email from him saying he likes our stuff.

LOVELETTER | credit Andy Ross

Anymore highlights?

SAM — We did a show in Newcastle last year and that was incredible: Venom Fest. Absolutely massive venue. The crowd was amazing, the green room was nice — food, drinks, whatever. It couldn’t have been a better show. Amazing. Obviously, it was a horrendous drive home from Newcastle. It was like 10 hours. Worth it, though.

KANE — Also our Swansea headliner. That was crazy. George is a genius, to be fair, and put together a whole light rig. We had lights and a screen behind us with a video running for the entire set. It went off without a hitch. It was perfect.

GEORGE — I animated every single bit. I did it every night for about a month. It actually goes in time with every single song for the entire set. I thought it wouldn’t take long — it was like a half-hour set — but doing every single little bit actually took forever.

JOSH — But it looked like arena-level production. That was a standout and a big high.

GEORGE — Thank you, guys.

Okay, let’s mix things up with some random questions. Which movie title best sums up your life?

GEORGE — God, that’s a hard one. Umm... You’ll have to come back to me; I’m literally struggling to think of any film that has a title.

JOSH — There must be a film called It's Complicated.

GEORGE — That’s not what I was expecting. I thought you’d go for, like, Sexy Beast.

LOVELETTER at TOC @ The Wheatsheaf | credit Andy Ross

Try this one instead. You’re on Death Row: what are you having for your last meal? 

KANE — Can I have three courses? My starter would be an unlimited supply of poppadoms with a pint-sized bucket of mint yoghurt dip. Then I’d have a bespoke Domino’s — maybe like a 20-inch pizza. And then for dessert, I think I'd have a Matilda chocolate fudge cake with ice cream.

GEORGE — Gluttonous. I’m gonna go very specific. There’s a place called Remo’s on Aberavon Beach, Port Talbot sort of way. It's a café on the front. Me and my missus go down there with the dog all the time and I get Cajun chicken and chips and the best garlic bread you've ever had in your entire life. I don't really need anything else.

SAM — My local pub, The Pheasant in Bridgend, did a starter of creamy garlic mushrooms. I've never eaten the same again. So good. They’ve stopped doing them now, but I used to have them all the fucking time. For my main, I might have some sort of Nando’s, because I can't think of what I actually want. I'll have chicken thighs with PERi-salted chips. And chuck some broccoli on there as well, as I’m not paying. I guess the state’s paying for this, right?

JOSH — I'm going to have dinner and dessert. No starter. I'd probably have a roast — a sublime roast with all the meat: chicken, beef, lamb — and all the trimmings. And then I'd wrap it all up and say goodbye over a nice sticky toffee pudding. 

LOVELETTER | credit Andy Ross

What a way to go! You can only play one track on the jukebox — which is it? 

SAM — Daniel Bedingfield — If You’re Not The One. That’s what we’ll put on.

KANE — It's the first thing that goes on in the van. 

SAM — And it's on multiple times.

GEORGE — We love it. We like to make a queue of songs, but between every song — so every other song — is that song. We get a little bit more excited about it every time it comes on.

SAM — We’ll play it in the van on the way back home.

Whatever floats your boat. Thanks for chatting with us and for headlining our first TOC @ The Wheatsheaf show. Can't wait to see you perform.

JOSH — Thanks for having us. We’re quite selective about the shows we play now. We’ve all done bands for so long — we’ve all done the grind, played every single show that’s been offered — so now we won’t take a show unless we think it’s going to be a good night, or a good turnout, or we’re going to play with bands we know or like.

And what’s next for LOVELETTER?

GEORGE — We've got a couple of shows coming up, but we’re really working on more music. I think probably the plan is to do an EP next. We’ve got a couple of songs banked up that we just need to finish and record. Yeah, that’s the main goal for this year.

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► Stream Nostalgia by LOVELETTER on Spotify, Apple Music and elsewhere.