Despite knocking around for a couple of years, 2016 has really been the year for Bad Sign. This trio have exploded onto the alt-rock scene with powerful tracks such as ‘Closure’ and ‘Rebuild’ – these brutal, heavy tracks have seen them share stages alongside the likes of Black Peaks, Feed the Rhino, and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, to name a few. They also signed to Basick Records, a label that’s a firm favourite within the music industry. And, so far, the label has really been helping the band with the release of their music and their aim for world domination.

“It’s been a brilliant experience ever since we started working with the team there,” Joe Appleford says, bassist and vocalist of Bad Sign. “When we first met with Barley and Megan at Basick, it felt like they were really listening to us and actually understanding our vision for the future and 2016 has been a real building year for us. They’ve been so supportive every step of the way.”

Working with an independent label that really, genuinely cares about their artists and their work has been a real help for the band too. “We still retain our DIY ethics and we’re meticulous with every aspect of this band and our output; Basick have only helped us make things possible more easily.” As Joe explains, it’s allowed the band to focus on being creative and reaching a wider audience and, so far, it’s been an incredibly positive experience overall to be working with the Basick Records team.

When starting out as a band, the ultimate dream is to be signed to a label and many set their sights on the three majors: Sony, Warner, and Universal. But Joe and his bandmates, guitarist Jonathan Harris and drummer Kevin Miller, feel that working with a smaller, independent label has been extremely important in helping them to achieve their goals of releasing their music. “They give artists a platform,” Joe explains. “They also give artists a support network. You can replicate that network on your own, but it will be so time and labour intensive and I believe that can sometimes distract attention from an artist’s primary focus which is to create. We all know about the various horror stories of labels in the industry and we made sure to avoid them, but our experience with Basick as a strong, independent label has been nothing but positive.”

As stated before, this past year has been absolutely huge for the band. They’ve seen their work, like their newest single ‘Closure’, being played on Daniel P Carter’s show over at BBC Radio 1, and deservedly so. Full of biting riffs and a huge chorus, it’s a brilliant piece of work to showcase Bad Sign’s talent – so what was the thinking behind such a personal song? It’s no secret that the band draws from very personal, emotional experiences to write such hard-hitting songs.  “That song [Closure] is about going back to the same person or place in your life repeatedly, even though you know it isn’t good for you and coming to the realization that, that negative path needs to be closed off and taken as a lesson learnt,” Joe explains. “As with all the subject matter of our songs, it is personal to us as a band but I think a lot of people can relate to that scenario.”

They’ve also been hitting the road – a lot. They’ve toured with Black Peaks, Heck, Tesseract, and played small festivals such as Festivile, which was headline by Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes. Their “key focus as a band is to be the best live band we can possibly be, so going out with bands from varying genres firstly has been a great test for us to see how we can engage different audiences,” says Joes. “Secondly, it’s allowed us to develop friendships with bands such as Heck and Black Peaks which is another main reason for wanting to be musicians, to connect with people!” And as for a headline run in the next year or so? “We will be announcing a headline run at some point for sure and we’ll look to take out a band or two that we believe to be the finest new talent in the UK,” he assures.

Whilst 2016 has been a whirlwind for Bad Sign, they show no signs of slowing. “2017 sees us release our new album and relentlessly touring”, we’re told. “Our main goal, as ever, is to get out there and reach as many people as possible with our music and hopefully affect them in some way.”

But first, before the year is out, they’ve got a tour with Hacktivist, Heck and Zoax across mainland Europe. Our EU counterparts won’t know what’s hit them when Bad Sign take to the stage to fly the flag for British talent.

You can catch Bad Sign with Hacktivist in December, then Black Peaks in February next year. Check out the dates below.

December
10 LONDON Camden Underworld
12 BRISTOL Thekla
13 BIRMINGHAM Flapper
14 MANCHESTER Sond Control
15 GLASGOW Audio
16 NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms
17 BRIGHTON Sticky Mike’s

February
03 BATH Moles, Bath
04 LEICESTER Firebug, Leicester
05 BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy 3, Birmingham

JESS TAGLIANI