“Orgies used to get hosted regularly on this boat,” Annouli Papadimitriou explains, dishing out mugs of herbal tea.
As the Hawxx frontwoman wanders through her London narrowboat, squeezing past her two bandmates who are setting up our picnic of sandwiches and vegan Victoria sponge cake, it wobbles back and forth. The delicate movement ironically emphasises what she’s just said – one can only imagine how precarious those nights of debauchery must have been. As she pauses to regain her footing, she adds an important detail: “It was the previous couple that lived here that had the orgies… not me.”
For eight years, Hawxx have exorcised blistering rage through punk-infused protest anthems. Driven by a chunky, dual-axe sound, Greek harmonies and urgent screams, second album The World Splits Open is a galvanising howl of political, ecological and cultural outrage.
Today, however, as we nurse our teas, the vibe is disarmingly relaxed. The sun sparkles off hanging trinkets, and a warm breeze wafts a Palestinian flag hanging in the doorway.
We want people who feel marginalised to bring their rage and have a safe space to get it all out.
Annouli Papadimitriou
Despite coming from different corners of the globe – Annouli is Greek, guitarist Hannah Staphnill is Welsh and drummer Jess Dann is English – Hawxx come across like sisters. They formed over a mutual sense that every other member was “fucking cool”. Their first connection came when Hannah worked at London’s Alaska Studios, and would always book Annouli in to practise in the room next door to her.
“She just looked so interesting, I wanted to listen in,” Hannah laughs.
Later, Annouli met Jess when they were both enlisted to perform in a drastically underpaid late-night covers band. While blood does not unify them, their shared values do.
“This isn’t some ‘rebel without a cause’ scenario,” Annouli explains. “Our music is heavy because we’re directing all our power into breaking down walls. Then we can rebuild a new world. We want people who feel marginalised to bring their rage and have a safe space to get it all out.”
People might look at Hawxx and see a group of hellbent, angry ladies – but that would be a fundamental misunderstanding of who they are. While the wrath is there, it stems from a place of love – both of humanity and the natural world. Annouli overflows with affection when she discusses her Greek heritage, keen to grab and show off her bouzouki – a long-necked lute – and talk about the sea-worshipping chants on the track Sacred Water.
“I would say I’m spiritual when it comes to nature and how connected we all are to one another,” Annouli explains.
She feels a particular affinity with birds – a love shown through her ever-expanding collection of feathers, as well as her side-hustle of saving injured pigeons. Jess dreamily echoes the sentiment, reflecting on how the natural world is “our teacher” – just because the soil or an animal can’t speak, that doesn’t mean it isn’t experiencing the world as much as any other living thing.
I used to lie to her and say I was going out clubbing when I was actually at all-night prayer meetings
Annouli Papadimitriou
Their song We Are Nature “mourns how the natural world is being poisoned” by pollution and how corporations mow down natural habitats to build infrastructure, while Feral Mother sees Annouli reflecting on how sleeping rough for weeks in the local marshlands in a bid to find her lost cat, Moses, forced her to connect with nature on a visceral level. Elsewhere, Arm The Animals campaigns against mass industrial farming.
“I feel like consuming those products is just absorbing that suffering,” Annouli says. “I read an essay that pointed out how veganism is essentially a feminist cause, because of how much the dairy industry mirrors female suffering – it’s essentially the animal equivalent of abuse and taking children away from their mothers.”
Meanwhile, the song Bind is about feeling controlled by religion, while Me Her And The Birds is a queer tale of women having sex in the woods, revelling in their liberation from Christian disapproval. Annouli and Jess used to attend church, with Annouli noting she wound up in an abusive Christian cult as her form of “teenage rebellion”.
“My mum was laughing about it the other day, because I used to lie to her and say I was going out clubbing when I was actually at all-night prayer meetings,” the singer explains. “She’d joke that I could have been a punk, but I became a Christian. When I got out of the cult, I exposed them. They called me the woman that was sent by Satan to destroy them.”
Hawxx also get overtly political. Opener Resistance Is Justified is about the ongoing Palestinian conflict, and centres on Annouli’s friend, Jordan Devlin. In August 2024, Jordan and five others from protest group Palestine Action raided an arms factory in Filton, Bristol, alleging the company who operate it – a UK subsidiary of Israeli company Elbit Systems – was manufacturing weapons for the Israeli army (something it has strongly denied).
Twenty-four people were arrested in relation to the break-in, and some were jailed for up to 18 months while they awaited trial. At trials in February and May of this year, Jordan was acquitted of aggravated burglary and criminal damage, and found not guilty of violent disorder. Four of the activists were convicted of criminal damage, and will be sentenced in June.
“I ended up singing Resistance Is Justified outside the courthouse during the Filton 24 trial,” Annouli says. “Protest is what our music is made for, you know?”
In an unprecedented move for a criminal damage case, the judge ruled that the offences had a “terrorist connection” for sentencing purposes. Independently, the government also proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group in July 2025. This means that the UK government and the judge are effectively treating the act of protest as an act of terrorism.
‘How dare you call me a terrorist, when you provide war criminals with weapons of mass destruction?’ Jordan’s sister proclaims on the track.
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Ultimately, The World Splits Open aims to radicalise you – or, at the very least, make you give a fuck about something.
“Our music is about building resilience and resistance in ourselves, on our streets, in our communities,” Annouli explains. “We need to work together to get through what is happening in the world right now.”
As we polish off the last of the cake, we chat about the album’s triumphant closer, Be The Whore. It represents the band’s core motivation – encouraging people to stand up for what they believe in, even if someone tries to silence them.
“Religious texts are afraid of a whore, because she’s uncontrollable – and that’s pure power,” Annouli insists. “While the whore is condemned, she is also totally liberated. We want our community to be the whore in life. Tear down the walls of corporations, resist the rules. Be the whore that says ‘fuck you’ to your leaders. Because the whore is untouchable, and she always has been.”
The World Splits Open is out now. Hawxx UK tour starts on October 8.
(LouderSound)
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