Interview with the band Shooting Daggers
Chat with London queercore band Shooting Daggers
With their queercore full of rage and passion, London trio Shooting Daggers recently released their album ‘Love & Rage’ (which we really liked and talked about here). A mix of punk, post-hardcore, grunge, shoegaze and a thousand other influences. They tackle political and social issues that are fundamental to us at Radio Punk, such as transfeminism, the fight against patriarchy and the DIY ethic, all on a skateboard!
- Radio Punk: Hi and thanks for being here! After listening to your album ‘Love & Rage’ we got in love with it and immediately thought of interviewing you! Briefly introduce yourselves to the reader, when and where you started playing together.
Shooting Daggers:
Sal (she/they): Guitar and Vocals
Bea (they/them): Bass and Bvs
Raquel (she/her) : Drums
We’ve been playing with this line-up since the end of 2020. We (Sal and Bea) met in late 2018 and started the band in 2019 with another drummer Godinha. We played our very first shows with him but unfortunately, he had to move back to Galicia during lockdown. After the pandemic, we were looking for a new drummer and we found Raquel through mutual friends in the London punk scene. (Godinha now plays in 2 Hardcore bands; OuttaSpite and Unexist. Shout out!)
- Radio Punk: Since we have a thousand things to ask you, let’s go in order and start with the first track of your latest album. “Dare” is about Do It Yourself, the ethic that guides our personal lives and which we also transfer here to the webzine. What does DIY mean to you? How do you try to apply it in your everyday life and in your band?
Shooting Daggers: D(o) I(t) Y(ourself) to us means creating opportunities that we would very likely never have otherwise. It’s freedom of speech without censorship. You can spread a message that would likely not be seen/heard on national television through art, leaflets, zines, lyrics. DIY can start from yourself alone but then followed by the help of a community, building a better environment for people who don’t have a voice.
It’s about taking the power in our hands when we disagree or when we have something to say. More specifically for people of colour, women, queer people, working-class people, people with disabilities, and marginalised people in general. We must create a life for ourselves in which we can express ourselves and live without waiting for some cisgender white men to give it to us. (because it’s likely not going to happen).
That’s why we love punk and the punk/hardcore/alternative scene. DIY is the essence of these communities. We apply it in our everyday life as a band in many ways: creating art, contacting promoters, organising our tours. We put our own shows sometimes with the lineup we want, we write all our music ourselves and conceptualise videos and artwork. As a punk band, it is also important to participate in fundraisers and charity gigs and promote like-minded bands as much as possible. We try our best to help the punk community which also helped us so much.
- Radio Punk: As we’ve said several times before, your album ‘Love & Rage’ blew us away on all levels: music, themes, general concept, musical influences and even the artwork is a blast! How did this album come about? Who did you work with on the more technical aspects like recording, production and cover artwork? Tell us a little bit about…
Shooting Daggers: Love & Rage is an album that came pretty naturally. Once we had a bunch of songs written we realised that if we put them in a certain order, they created a coherent message. It’s not something we thought ahead. We wrote these songs just within a few months. At the time we felt inspired by our queercore community. We wanted to spread a message of sorority unlike our previous EP ‘Athames” which felt more spiteful, although we kept the anger in this one too. We channeled our rage into something more positive and constructive to spread “love” for our community, hence the title. We went to the studio 3 times to finish this album as we were super busy playing shows, but this allowed us to take our time to add details & rethink some of our songs to polish them. We worked with Wayne Adam at Bear Bites Horse Studio in Haggerston London, who helped us complete our work with a modern yet still raw sound. The Album’s artwork is designed by the amazing Greta Bungle, a Spanish artist who works with mixed media and collage. She also created our “Athames” EP cover, and we liked it so much that we decided to work with her again.
- Radio Punk: Your project is characterised by a strong focus on transfeminism. Many people approach music first and then political content, but there are also those who decide to make music out of a sense of urgency, using it as a amplifier for socio-political activism. What has been your journey (both personally and as a band)?
Shooting Daggers: Us three people are political and with a clear mindset. For us, it’s always been natural to include our ethos and political stance into our music and it’s something we probably will never stop doing. Some people seem to think that when you’re a teenager you’re more angry at society and once you grow up you will start being more moderate, but that’s not how we feel. The more we grow as people the more we learn and solidify our political beliefs and we get even more enraged when we don’t see things changing.
We think that it’s not mandatory to be political in your music, and we have also created some music that is more introspective and about our own life experiences sometimes. At the end of the day, Shooting Daggers has been and will always be a band that was born out of a strong necessity for representation in the punk hardcore scene and we will keep fighting for women and queer people to have a voice and power on stage.
- Radio Punk: In Italy, within the punk subculture, we still haven’t stopped fighting to make the spaces we frequent safe places where queer people and girls can feel comfortable. What about the situation in the London scene? How active are queer people and girls there?
Shooting Daggers: There is definitely a growing queercore scene in London and the UK in general and we’re very pleased to see that. However, it is still too limited to the underground scene and we think that what we need now is more queer and girls in the actual business. More promoters, sound engineers, producers, agents, more queer and women musicians, and not just vocalists (with all due respect to all the amazing front women and queer people in bands that are doing the hard work). It is still a hard life for women and queers to navigate the music industry which is 90% run by cis men. So, big yes to all the awesome queercore bands that are coming out every day in the UK, but we can’t wait to see a radical change in the biz because that’s how you can ensure real safe spaces. Without all these cis men promoters who keep booking dodgy bands with abusers in them and without producers and sound engineers who mansplain you and make you feel less of a professional just because you’re not a man. Unfortunately, we experience systemic oppression and we’re putting in the work to make it stop.
- Radio Punk: Let’s lighten up the chat a bit by asking: which Daria character reflects you most?
Shooting Daggers: We know exactly how to answer this one as we dressed up as them last Halloween! Raquel is Daria, Bea is Jane, Sal is Quinn. And then we’re all a little bit of a Trent.
- Radio Punk: Back to music, what are your favourite queercore bands? What other genres of music do you listen to (besides punk)? Recommend us some music!
Shooting Daggers: Limp Wrists, G.L.O.S.S., Dicks, The HIIRS collective, Tribe 8, Against Me!, SeeYouSpaceCowboy , Slutbomb. From our friends’ scene, The Menstrual Cramps, Death Goals, Gender Warfare, Uncertainty, Throlz, Caution Elderly People, Liv Wynter, Es, Traidora, Deadname
Bea: I listen to screamo mainly, I can recommend Dreamwell who’s also fronted by a trans woman and Blind Girls who are some of my most recent discoveries. Besides alternative music I listen to EDM a lot. An artist I love is TR/ST who does some very cool dark wave, synth-pop or Bou who’s my favourite drum n bass producer at the minute.
Sal: I listen to a bit of everything, I know it’s a boring answer and I know that saying “it’s a boring answer” has been said a million times. I don’t listen to Hardcore as much anymore and I find myself enjoying it less and less at live shows. My fav music is the one that moves me and generally, it has a feminist message or something I relate to. Anyway, I’m really digging Kathleen Hanna’s playlist for her book Rebel Girl lately. I’m also absolutely loving the new Amyl and the Sniffers singles.
Raquel: Bands I’ve been listening to a bunch recently are Mannequin Pussy, Gouge away, One step closer, we just played a few dates with them and got their new songs stuck in my head! Also I’m listening to La dispute and tummyache a lot lately with whom I’m also super excited to play in a couple of weeks!
- Radio Punk: You have a sound full of influences and peculiarities, let’s ask you a nerdy question that will interest the insiders: what kind of instrumentation and setup do you use?
Bea: I play with a 5-string Fender Jazz. My pedal set up is: BOSS chorus, Deluxe Bass Big Muff, Bass Preacher compressor and tuner. My amp is an Orange Terror Bass.
Sal: I use a Mexican fender stratocaster (with double pickups). I play in E standard and drop D.I have a pretty big pedalboard: I have a Strymon deco to split my sound into 2amps, a little Lelhe to switch from one amp to the other. I also have: a fat metal distortion, a small clone chorus, an MXR delay pedal (which is useless, idk why I left it on my pedalboard) a Boss-20 for my vocal effects, and a boss tuner.
Raquel: My current set up consists of a 3 piece drum kit, I use a Mapex black panther 14×6.5 Ash Burl Coffee Burst Ltd edition snare, Tama Iron Cobra 600 single pedal, Istanbul Agop Xist cymbals (14” H-Hats, 16” and 18” Crashes & 20” Ride), a low pitch blast block and a Roland SPD SX
- Radio Punk: You recently released the video for the song Wipe Out, which is made up of a lot of clips of girls on rollerblades and skates that you collected through a call on social media. How cool is that! Are they all skateboarders? Board or quad? How many ramp bruises do you have at the moment?
Shooting Daggers: Yes! We posted a few stories on Instagram to collect videos of queer and women skating. It was so cool to see skateboarders and roller skaters from all around the world submit their clips.
Sal: I’m actually the only one who skates in the band (skateboarding). Bea used to ride longboards and roller skates a few years ago. I must admit that I don’t have many ramp bruises atm cos I’m not comfortable with ramps (yet! I can learn anything, it’s all about mental). It’s more that I don’t usually skate ramps and I don’t have many tricks on ramps except drop-in, axle stall, and if I’m lucky rock n roll &, fakie rock. Rock to fakie is supposed to be an easy beginner trick but I think they’re absolutely terrifying and they will f you up too. I haven’t skated properly in a long time, maybe 2years but I really want to get back to it. We just came back from a 3 days tour with One Step Closer and most of them were skaters. We only had a little sess at the end of the show but they made me want to skate every day again (love to these guys).
- Radio Punk: You’re playing a lot in the UK these days and we really want to see you live. Have you ever played in Italy? What kind of relationship do you have with the Italian DIY punk scene? Are there any bands from the past or present that you particularly appreciate or are inspired by?
Shooting Daggers: We would love to play in Italy! Bea is Italian so it’s definitely on our bucket list.
Bea: I’ve been in bands in the Venezia area before moving to the UK but I wasn’t super involved in the scene. I always loved going to Venezia Hardcore Fest and that’s definitely somewhere I’d love to play with Shooting Daggers one day. We have a few connections with people from the hc scene, like people in Stormo and Golpe who are incredible bands and they put on shows in Bologna and Milano. The bands I am most inspired by are the og hardcore Skruigners, the screamo kings Raein and the post punk legends Sick Tamburo. Also, last but not least, we all share a deep love for Raffaella Carrà among the band!
Sal: I’ve been to Venezia hardcore and it was really fckng cool. Super political, sick bands were put on and it felt like a real DIY punk community. I love Shoki from Milan but I’m not sure if they’re playing still. If they are, I hope we will play with them one day.
- Radio Punk: Unfortunately, as we know, even our small niche reflects society’s discrimination, have you ever felt uncomfortable as queer people and/or girls in the punk scene? And as a queercore band have you ever experienced discriminatory situations? What advice would you give to girls and people from the Lgbtqia+ community who want to be an active part of the punkSubculture?
Shooting Daggers: Oh yes, it happened way too many times, unfortunately. We had situations where promoters gave info to our male driver instead of us at the venue, and others where we had to drop a few events to avoid playing with dodgy people who didn’t take abuse seriously enough. We told some festival promoters that we didn’t feel comfortable playing on the same bill as some bands because some members were accused of horrible things (that our friends testified and/or have experienced). We have been minimised, ignored, and mansplained by bands, producers, or sound engineers who even told us how to play our instruments…the list could go on.
Keep being the professional musician that you are and always speak up! Seek comfort and a safe space with people you trust and cherish. Start your band and just have fun! At the end of the day, it’s worth it when one girl or one queer person in the crowd feels seen and heard and feels like they too, can do whatever they want.
Sal: I still feel uncomfortable and unwelcomed in Hardcore & Punk scenes. I feel a little less ‘preyed’ in the crowd cos I’m not 18 anymore. I even wonder sometimes if we will ever be fully part of the punk/hardcore scene, to me it’s easier to build a new scene in which we can express ourselves.
My advice would be: have the confidence of a cis man because from the inside you quickly notice that a lot of musicians are not that talented or skilled and that it’s not the only thing that matters to have a good band. We tend to put bands on a pedestal when in reality, they are just little weirdos practising in their bedroom, music lovers, lyrics writers, nerds, who decide to form a band. They just do it because they want to, until they get really good at what they do with the power of collaboration. It’s as simple as that. So, just do it yourself, break your mental barriers, do whatever makes you happy. In a male-dominated scene it’s gonna be less welcoming but you will find your own scene and your group of friends.
- Radio Punk: We found some of your interviews online. Ask yourself a question you would have liked to have been asked, but no one has ever asked you, and give yourself an answer!
Shooting Daggers: We thought about it and that’s a tricky one. We’re all vegan and have been working in almost every vegan place in London if you combine the 3 of us. We could talk for hours about anything vegan-food-related.
So maybe: What’s your favourite vegan food/vegan place/vegan recipe?
Sal: I’m an expert in vegan mac n cheese, I can’t make them for shit but I love them and I could probably make a UK map on where to find the best ones. I also love any vegan pepperoni frozen pizza with a good old Encoda Carolina Reaper hot sauce to dip your slice in (if like me you love a spicy kick). That sauce with vegan nuggets is also proper mint.
Bea: there’s so much amazing vegan food in London, it’s hard to choose but I would say my top 3 are Vegan Planet (Chinese), Purezza (Pizza) and LD’S Kitchen (Diner style food). Best vegan recipe is simple for me: pasta and its infinite ways of cooking it in a vegan way, pasta al pesto is my ultimate comfort food.
Raquel: As B already say, we are spoiled by choice in the UK and especially in London. I’m gonna be the boring one here and say I’m a sucker for a good salad! Love them with loads of grilled veggies and all kinds of toppings.
- Radio Punk: We’ve come to the end, so we’ve gained the right confidence for the last, personal question. Who are you in life? What are your passions? Are you in any other bands and/or projects? What jobs do you have? Thank you very much for taking part in our webzine and we hope to see you soon in Italy!
Bea: I am a freelancer so I do a bit of everything to survive, I do translations, tutoring, I write for a music magazine and I am a vegan chef. I have a huge passion for languages, especially Mandarin Chinese, which is what I studied at uni. I love animals and I am a very proud cat parent and a big advocate for animal rights and veganism (as we all are in the band). I crave a good old day rotting in bed when I can. I enjoy watching wrestling with my partner and I love queer nights and drag. I don’t have any other bands at the moment but I would love to start producing electronic music in the future or have a screamo project.
Sal: I’m going through hectic times at the moment. I’m moving out, and trying to find a sustainable career & environment. So let’s say that I’m living day by day. On a better note, though, I’m launching a Zine workshop at the Greenwich Library Centre in June and I’m super excited about it. I have another band called Deathchops, we’re y2k punk and we should be recording soon and I’ll be recording, mixing and mastering everything. I’m a vegan chef but I’m not thriving so I’m considering pursuing studies, it’s all a bit blurred atm. I need to make some serious decisions about my life now.
Raquel: I just play in one band at the moment, weird reading that back as I’ve been playing in a lot of bands at once for a really long time, but we are so busy that I choose to just focus all my energy with shooting daggers and it’s what it feels right at this time of my life. I’m also a promoter, I’m part of a DIY non profit collective called South London Scum and we organise gigs monthly. My day job is being a barista in a little cafe not far from my house. When I’m not working, playing music, putting on gigs or practising. I do love spending my free time creating/experimenting with visual arts, I’m currently trying to learn how to animate and learning a bit more of graphic design and music production. I also love reading, crocheting and going to the movies.
