Graphic Nature‘s new album ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ is a raw and intense journey through frontman Harvey Freeman’s personal demons, blending nu-metalcore with innovative production to create a cathartic exploration of identity and self-reflection. Check out our latest Upset cover story.
Words: Jack Press.
“I said to the band, this is our ‘Iowa’,” declares Graphic Nature frontman Harvey Freeman. He’s not wrong.
‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ — the nu-metalcore mob’s speedy follow-up to last year’s ‘A Mind Waiting To Die’ — is a soundtrack to self-immolation; aggressively violent, deliriously dark and packed to the rafters with more bangers than your local butchers.
Much like Slipknot’s ‘Iowa’ does, ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching’ rips flesh from skin in its opening moments, flooding the wounds with bleach. ‘Locked In’ slams with brain-bludgeoning basslines as Freeman screams, “Yeah, I’m a little fucked up, but I’ve got so much to say, mentally deranged, who gives a fuck?” before revealing you’re now “locked into the sounds of the 404.”
“It’s a reference to Kurupt FM, because we all love Kurupt FM,” Harvey roars, at home in his study, adorned with anime figures and Warhammer miniatures, as he reflects on their rallying cry. “It’s just us saying, ‘Right, cool’. I’ve spoken a little bit, but now you’re locked into the 404; this is what’s to come, so now you’re with us, let’s go.”
During the build-up to releasing ‘A Mind Waiting To Die’, Harvey found himself the victim of physical assault on his train journey home from work. The experience triggered an ongoing battle with PTSD, eating away at his grip on reality. So when he says he’s got so much to say, you better believe ‘Who Are You When No Is Watching?’ isn’t light listening. Supported by his bandmates — bassist Charlie Smith, drummer Jack Bowdery, and guitarists Pete Woolven and Matas Michailovskis — Freeman found solace in exorcising his demons.
“The weird thing I figured out the other day is that every song on the album is written as if I was speaking to a therapist,” explains Harvey, who stayed up until 5am most mornings writing lyrics. “I think it had this weird effect of being a type of therapy for me.”
While he was anxious to record it, worried about what his bandmates and the world would think – “There’s only so many songs you can write about mental health, so would we do it for the next album? I don’t know, but I can imagine it gets a bit stale after a while” — he ultimately hopes it lands on the ears of those who need it.
“I like that people like our band, but I really don’t care if someone doesn’t like a song because it didn’t end with a breakdown,” he says when considering how the album will come across to listeners, and, ultimately, it all comes back to when they’re playing the new tracks live. “When I can have a conversation with someone that’s gone through the same shit, it creates more of a connection than someone saying, ‘Hey, your set was really good’, because there’s not really much you can say other than thank you, but if someone’s like, ‘Hey, I just wanted to say I’ve been going through this kind of thing as well, and your songs reflected with me, then it starts that back and forth conversation, and like, I’ve got nowhere to be after we play, I’ll sit and talk to you for fucking hours until my band have to drag me off.”
In many ways, the album’s exploration of experiencing, denying, and finally accepting the decline in one’s mental health in real time is an extension of Graphic Nature’s live shows. The majority of their sets thrive on circle pit chaos, but there’s a moment when Harvey stops the show and asks the crowd to be honest with themselves and raise their hand if they’re struggling.
“We don’t talk about it enough, just cause we’re dudes, and that’s part of our fucking DNA,” he says, disappointed in the way society has shaped men to stay bottled up. “I’m not surprised, but I’m always amazed by the amount of hands in the air that are just guys, and it’s cool. I’m glad everyone’s being honest, and there’s no one trying to be too cool.”
“Every song on the album is written as if I was speaking to a therapist”
Harvey Freeman
Thousands at Download and Reading & Leeds raised their hands to Harvey’s speeches as he was putting on a brave face and soldiering on. With his wife backstage at most of their dates, he made sure the sets went on. “I don’t know how I did it,” he laughs, looking back on a summer of shows that merge into one. “I got to a point where I was really scared of people. I just didn’t want to be close to people, so when we played festivals, I’d stay backstage. I was really lucky my wife was with me for most of it; it was like having a security guard.”
Ultimately, moments like this led to Harvey having to be honest with himself, which drives the album’s narrative from anger and denial to acceptance and accountability. Again, this journey is what links ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ to ‘Iowa’ spiritually. We’ve all heard the stories of Slipknot’s Corey Taylor recording songs naked, covered in vomit, and crying his eyes out. Freeman wasn’t exposing himself in recording booths, but the tears flowed and his feelings intensified as he wove his out-of-body experiences with PTSD into the fabric of every song.
At the crux of it all is the album’s grand finale, ‘For You’; its breakdown bleeds out into a mental one, with Harvey screaming into the mic and sobbing his way through the recording in one of the album’s purest moments. Its lyrics hold the key to the journey to acceptance: “I’ve carried this weight on my shoulders for so long, it’s beginning to drag me down; I let one bad day in my life define who I am”.
“When I was writing the song, I was really thinking about The Batman film, The Killing Joke, when Joker says to Batman something like, ‘All it takes is one bad day to turn anyone into a psychopath’. It really made me think about it,” Harvey confesses, who found comfort in the caped crusader’s moral world.
“I went through the motions of being like, ‘Fuck this guy, I really want to hurt someone now’, and then coming back to the idea that Batman wouldn’t do that. I know he does hurt people, but he wouldn’t do it out of this kind of thing. Not to say that was the pure motivation for me getting through this, but it was the idea of like, hold on, take a step back, this isn’t you, this has never been you, so why are you thinking like this? Let’s go in a different direction, let’s think about this, let’s put more time into the relationship; it’s an apology to my wife as well.”
The apologetic acceptance that closes out ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ is fitting for Harvey’s experiences, but is universal, too. “The acceptance of knowing like how much shit we carry without saying anything, as men especially, we just pile it up until eventually we can’t fucking carry any more, and that’s when we either lash out with anger because we don’t know what else to do, or we completely breakdown and shut ourselves off from the rest of the world, which is unfortunately what I did; I just didn’t speak to people.”
Take ‘For You’ and the single ‘Something I’m Not’, and you’ll have the puzzle pieces to the album’s title. “It is that song that’s like, ‘Hold on, who the fuck is this person?’ Like, who am I now? Because this wasn’t me before, and it shouldn’t be me now; that’s why the breakdown is ‘I’ll never be like you’, cause I ain’t that guy, I just wanna sit here and play Warcraft”.
“I went through the motions of being like, ‘Fuck this guy, I really want to hurt someone now’, and then coming back to the idea that Batman wouldn’t do that”
Harvey Freeman
So then, who is Harvey Freeman when no one is watching?
“My wife likes to give me the nickname Little Prince,” laughs Harvey. “I’m very much a sit on the sofa with a duvet, eating food, watching Bridgerton guy, or I’m in here painting or posing my action figures or playing video games”.
“I think for some people, their real self is when they’re out, and that’s who they are, and when they’re at home, they’re kind of a bit reserved, and they don’t feel themselves unless they’re with their tribe of people. For me, I always have to put on the mask when I’m outside, and I’m nice enough to everyone that I’m not a dick, but it takes a lot out of me to act normal; I really like being weird at home and just hanging around with my dog and stuff.”
That’s the version of Harvey Freeman who found comfort in creating ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’. Rather than shy away from its confessional tones, he embraced it and found fun ripping up the rulebook to push their sound into sonic territories they’d only teased at before. From incorporating hip-hop-inspired scratching and drum and bass sampling to injecting Billie Eilish-inspired hooks, the album is a whole new beast compared to ‘A Mind Waiting To Die’.
‘Session24’, a 2-minute tech-house tour through the nodes between the neurons in the brain, is an interlude that belongs at a basement rave rather than a metal show, yet is pivotal to the listening experience. Sandwiched between the sinister slow-burning ‘Breathe’ and the hardcore-influenced ‘N.F.A.’, it’s a breather that their previous album birthed.
“When we did ’90’ on ‘A Mind Waiting To Die’, we had so many people being like, you need to do a full drum and bass track, so we did, and I fucking love it,” he beams. “I remember we were doing it in the AirBnB, and we stayed up all night, and we went to Argos and bought a set of Pioneer decks just so we could add different samples and shit, and that led to us putting it more on the album. It’s really low on a lot of the songs, but there’s little scratches and stuff that we did ourselves, because it’s fun, like we learnt the basics of how to do it, so we were like, we’re here now, why don’t we just chuck it on.”
“It takes a lot out of me to act normal; I really like being weird at home”
Harvey Freeman
From there, they began to incorporate it into everything they created. The bruising title-track combines so much of their new influences without sacrificing the Graphic Nature vibe. “Halfway through, it goes into that lo-fi, liquid drum and bass bit where I’m just whispering for like a good minute, and then it comes in with that big, fucking, Sleep Token-y breakdown at the end.”
“I don’t listen to enough heavy music,” Harvey admits when discussing their sound, preferring the raw emotion other genres are capturing currently. “Billie Eilish has been a constant influence for the entirety of Graphic Nature for me cause her lyrics are very thought-provoking. Not the singles like ‘Bad Guy’, but the album tracks, which are the tracks that really resonate with me; they’re as open and as honest as you can be, and it really fucking gets you in the feels.”
In the days of the internet, it’s easy to get caught up in worrying about what the world thinks when you’re changing up your sound, yet Harvey isn’t “worried too much about the outside of things”. However, he does hope his friends like it. “They’re completely honest with me, my best friend Ed will tell me if the show I’ve just played was good or not, he’ll straight up be like, ‘It wasn’t your best one’. If he comes back and he’s like, ‘Dude, that was insane’. I’ll be like fucking hell, because I know he’s telling the truth, I know he’s not fucking trying to blow smoke up my arse.”
On the other hand, he does hope that whoever hears ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ takes the time to think about the question its title asks and the themes it explores. “I really hope the album goes when people listen to it: obviously, they start the album, comes in with a punch and then ends all-out breakdown, like mental breakdown, not a fucking heavy breakdown.”
“I just want people to pause the next song for a bit, like after they’ve listened to ‘For You’, and just sit back and stop, and they’re like, ‘Fucking hell, I need to take a minute, because that was a lot’. I hope that’s how it works.” ■
Graphic Nature’s album ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ is out now. Follow Upset’s Spotify playlist here.
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