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When you’ve already devoted your whole life to music, you rarely find yourself faced with the unknown. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the tour laminate. But in those few instances where an artist comes in contact with something completely new, with no pre-conceived pretence or directional purpose, it’s the sort of thrill that needs to be grabbed with both hands.

For Douglas Robinson, Sal Mignano and Josh Eppard, this was exactly what they felt when it came to Held., a project some near 20 years in the making. Having spent forever in each other’s circles, with Doug and Sal working together as part of The Sleeping and Josh carving out a unique legacy behind the kit with Coheed and Cambria, an eventual opportunity to actually get in a room together and jam has transformed into a truly and deeply special project.

“That’s part of the lifeblood of why this was so enticing to do,” Josh explains, the excitement of what this has become evident in every word he utters.“I’ve had opportunities over the years and been asked to play in things, and I never bit. It just never felt right. This felt right. And a big ingredient of that is that it’s something new. We’re carving out a place together, and nobody knows what it is, and there’s something really exciting about that.”

“I love these dudes, you know?” Douglas adds. “We’ve known each other, and we’ve been in the same circle, forever, and just to be in a band together is amazing. This process for us is so easy. Everybody chimes in on the things they feel strongly about. Everybody respects each other and what they’re moving forward with. It’s just been so cool to do this as a group and realise how much everybody trusts each other and believes in each other.”

And that respect, trust and ambition for crafting something fresh has resulted in ‘GREY’, a record that is as sensational as it is unique. Decadently crafted, wonderfully obscure and littered with as many emotional unfurlings as forward-thinking intent, it’s unlike anything else you will hear this year, or any year to be honest.

Rock music and friendship in their most pure forms. Resilient, unrelenting and rich in colour and content.

THE SOUND

In many ways, it’s difficult to really pin down exactly what Held. is. The litter of influences and inspirations that creep into the periphery as you make your way through these ten tracks feels endless, whilst also feeling and sounding like nothing else that has ever been committed to tape. Intricate in scope yet vast in stature, so much of what has come to define Held. came from a jam session back in 2022. Thanks to their mutual connection in Mike Birnbaum – producer, sound engineer and owner of Applehead Studios – offering up their time and space to the trio for an initial get-together, immediately songs started to spill out. That first session most notably saw the birth of opening track ‘DEFENDING THE EARTH’, a caustic piece of driving post-hardcore fury, and the title track, a beautifully building ballad brimming with stratospheric ambition and gorgeous melodic refrains.

To have such vastly different songs appear out of the ether is not something to be sniffed at, and very much set the standard for what would follow. For the trio, though, the main takeaway was just how easily such complexity and exploration fell out of them, the sort that some projects and bands never get close to achieving.

“We got in a room, and we started jamming, and it just fucking made sense,” Sal exclaims. “It was easy. It’s not always easy. You know, creatively, sometimes you want to pull your fucking eyes out. And this is like, yeah, this just came together.”

Though other commitments started to get in the way, and though more sessions were due to be penned in, the band unfortunately had to take the backseat for a moment. Though for Douglas, he couldn’t shift the feeling that this was something more than just a jam. That this should be worked on more intently rather than in downtime.

“I basically locked myself in my room,” he explains. “Ignored my job at the time, ignored every meeting, and I just sat there and wrote and wrote because I started realising that this is going to be something. It feels like something. The only expectation I ever had was just to write how I feel. Yeah, you know, all the music I listen to, all the music we like, I want to make this for us.”

A lot of that came from the fact that Douglas was playing guitar in a band for the first time. The first time he had played guitar since high school, even. Though when the project was first proposed by him and Sal, they had other guitarists in mind, one, for example, being Thomas Erak of The Fall of Troy, but sometimes things just don’t work out. By taking on the responsibility himself, he knew he needed to work to catch up with his fellow bandmates. By pushing so hard to get to that level, he inadvertently fell in love with playing music in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time.

That is why when you listen to ‘GREY’, the love and passion for the sounds being created are so prominent. Because love and passion have once again been pushed to the forefront.

“When you think about records, we’ve been doing this for a long time, but it’s still a really singular thing,” Josh states. “I’ve only put out maybe 13 records in my life, and on one hand, it is a lot, but it’s really not when you’ve done something 13 times. So, each one is incredibly unique, incredibly special. But I’ve never had more fun than making this Held. record. You didn’t have to worry about egos because everybody was on the side of the song, and we all got there together.

“It was also important to us to be a three-piece,” he continues. “I think that’s a ballsy thing in this day and age, there’s a lot of classic lineups that we love, certainly 90s three-piece rock stuff, and wanted a foot in that world, but have it feel modern. You’re juggling these delicate things, and it’s no easy feat. But this is one of the rare times in my life that we really executed what we wanted to go after.”

THE TITLE AND ARTWORK

When you’re building something from the ground up, it’s easy to consider the extra bells and whistles that are going to eventually be attached to what you are moulding. But when it came to Held., that process was made a whole lot simpler as the colour grey kept on cropping up in everything they were doing. On one hand, it can be viewed as a neutral shade, something that doesn’t change, however much you add or take away from it. But on the other hand, it was more a case of remembering that not everything has to be explicit. Not everything had to be viewed or explained in black and white. It can sit in the middle. It can just exist. It can just be, and that is enough.

“I think with us playing for longer and being musicians for longer in life, it makes you more focused, not even realising what you’re doing is more cohesive,” Sal states. “I think, more than anything else we’ve done as musicians, we had a vision without even realising we had a vision.”

“And as we were talking about our emotions, we saw how not everything is black and white,” Douglas adds. “You know, there’s nothing. The whole world is grey, right? One day I feel amazing, the next day I feel like shit. But when you look at the album artwork, and you open the record and see that there’s this one colour inside, it makes you go, ‘How do you feel in this moment?’ Do you feel happy? Do you feel positive? Do you feel grim or sombre? Everything is there, because that’s how life is.”

There is peace to be found within that, too. In knowing that everything you are feeling is being felt by somebody else out there at the same time as you. We are complex beings, but there is still only a catalogue of emotions that we can muster, and being safe in the knowledge of all of them applying to everything that this world can throw at you is enough to elicit a bit of much-needed clarity. And for that to be the case in a scenario where a little bit of everybody can be injected into the finished article, it makes it that bit sweeter.

“If somebody you’re working with has a vision, you’ve got to be on board with it, like in your heart,” Josh adds. “You’ve really got to believe it. Doug had a vision, and I followed it. And because of that, I’ve been able to learn so much about aesthetic, and I believe in what we have made wholeheartedly. I think it’s one of the best records I have ever been a part of, look-wise.”

THE LYRICS

By his own admission, Douglas has a way of writing lyrics that sit on the more sombre side of reality. In dealing with many things in his personal life, when he commits pen to paper, the result is often rooted in equal parts hopefulness and hopelessness. Nothing is black and white, remember?

But when it came to figuring out what he wanted to represent in his words, he knew it had to be different from anything he had ever done before. He wanted to write the way he had always wanted to, but never really had the means to. The final result of that is a collection of poems and musings that feel as close to the heart and soul as they do to the distance between the sun and the moon. Complex, emotive, real feelings, matched with grand, extraordinary visions of time, space and beyond. Such a juxtaposition of the deeply personal and the effortlessly powerful is, once again, not easy to master, but by allowing himself to say exactly what he has always wanted to say without worry, Doug has seemingly tapped into something truly extraordinary.

“I’ve never really been a storyteller where I can be so visceral, but still feel, in my own way, read exactly what’s happening,” he admits. “I was really inspired by those types of writers with his record. People like Chino Moreno and bands I grew up on like Failure and Hum and Catherine Wheel, they all have this tongue-in-cheek forwardness, but with so much beauty in their approach. That’s what I wanted to channel.”

Though approaching things so openly wasn’t a surprise to Sal or Josh. They know that their mate, Dougie, is an open book with the people he cares about. A sensitive soul that is not afraid to bare his soul when it is needed. But in pushing himself in this way, sharing his internal ebbs and flows in a new state, he has shown two people he has worked alongside for so long a completely different way his mind works, both from a professional standpoint and from the one rooted in their friendship.

“I was really proud of Doug for this new place he has pulled from after being a career musician for so long,” Josh praises. “I think it’s the best he has ever sounded. And our job is to then meet that, because if this is the best that Doug has ever sounded, we need to share in that.”

“And we didn’t want to be like our other projects,” Sal adds. “We made that decision early, and I think it came out. We exceeded that.”

“We’ve all been in other bands that we’ve been in forever,” Douglas continues. “It’s pretty much the only other identity we have musically. So first and foremost, within this, I just want us to be friends. I want us to give a fuck about one another. Singing and writing, I’m always very personal, but I will tell anybody what it’s about, and that’s what has allowed us to gel in the way that we have.”

THE COLLABORATORS

There are loads of people that the trio admit are incredibly important to this band getting off the ground. There’s Michael Dubin, the band’s manager, who kept on pushing for them to get sessions booked in and more songs written, because he believed in the skeletons they had created so much. Then there is John Markson, who took on production duties, fleshing out those skeletons and making them sound as gargantuan as they do.

But on record, two particular voices are now a part of Held. history. The first is Frank Iero, who lends his incendiary chops to the sensational ‘NEW AGE ANTHEM’. And the other is Graham Sayle of UK crossover titans High Vis, who brings a British grit to ‘KNIFEPOINT’. Both represent different points in the band’s social and professional circles, but meet in the middle on one thing: dedication to the cause.

“I had grown up in the same circle as Frank,” Douglas declares. “His first band, Pencey Prep, I used to go see them all the time. I was in a band called Stillwell when I was very young, and Gerard designed our first T-shirt ever. I went to My Chem’s first show. Frank has always been the GOAT and always such a nice dude. And when we started talking about the possibility of guests, Dubin was the one who rang him. And Frank said, ‘Oh, dude, Doug’s got a new thing. I love Josh. And Sal’s writing, I love The Sleeping. I love Coheed. Fuck it. I’ll do it.’

“We will back that dude forever. He is still the same as he always was, and literally went out of his way for that part, for us, in a way that no person in that guy’s stature would probably do.”

It was also through management connections that Graham was able to get involved, this time through Coheed’s manager, Blaze James, who also looks after High Vis.

“What a fucking thrill that he did it,” Josh exclaims. “And he did it because he digs the band, and he isn’t doing a song he doesn’t like for any other reason than that. It means a lot to us that it was a yes from the jump. I think that’s cool as hell, and I can’t say enough about both those guys and their generosity with their talent and energy. I think that’s really special.”

THE FUTURE

In many ways, Held. has already made it further than most projects like it will ever get. But to have reached this point, with an album and a connection of this calibre, is even more reason this is not being viewed as any sort of side hustle or part-time affair.

It means so much already.

“None of this feels like a side project,” Josh hammers home. “Held. is my other band, and I take that seriously. We’ve worked really hard playing together, and we are dreaming big. And when you talk about possibilities, I think they are limitless. What’s the point of doing this if you don’t have the biggest aspirations? And the fact that we have made this piece of art that now gets to live on forever, one that we truly believe in, is really gratifying.”

If there is anything to pull from what Held. have already achieved, it is to make sure you do the thing you want to do whilst you still can. Because life is too short, too strange, too unpredictable for you to be feeling any sort of regret in not letting something that could be spectacular take place. And what would you rather do: never know, or find something that changes your life?

“I think about this shit every night. I don’t fucking sleep,” Doug concludes. “The fact that we are playing like we are is on another level. And no matter what, we are going wherever this can go.”