
Graphic Nature’s Harvey Freeman guides us through the latest chapter of his band and the raw creation of their vulnerable new album, ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’, out July 12 via RUDE.
Read Graphic Nature, ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ | The Album Story below:
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Ten seconds. That’s all it took for everything to change for Harvey Freeman.
Growing up in and around London, Harvey had never been the victim of something as random, unprovoked or violent as what he experienced whilst travelling by train through the city last spring. His band Graphic Nature had just released their long-awaited debut album ‘a mind waiting to die’ and they had a summer of festivals and shows lined up; a chance to blast their vulnerable and volatile take on nu-metalcore to even more ears and further bolster the tightknit community they had been building since 2019. In sharing the most raw and real parts of himself and highlighting the importance of taking care of your mental health, Harvey felt more comfortable and confident than ever before.
But then, whilst passing through Canning Town Station on this particular evening, a hooded member of the public tapped him in the chest, unleashed a barrage of punches on his upper body and then invited him to step onto the platform for what could have been an even more fatal encounter. In those ten short seconds, everything he previously felt was in tatters on the floor and the person he thought he was felt like a stranger in comparison.
“All that went through my head was, ‘I know what London is like’. I grew up in East London, and I know what all the areas are like with knife crime,” he remembers.
“Because of the way that the guy was dressed and the way he was enticing me to get off the train, I was like, ‘No’. I’ve got a wife at home. I’m not going to be stupid. I’m not the guy who is looking for a fight.
“But at the same time, it was very emasculating for me. Ever since I was younger, my dad said not to take any shit from anyone. I’ve been fortunate enough that all the fights I have got into I haven’t started. I’m not violent, and I don’t like hitting back. It’s just been telling people, ‘Dude, it’s not worth it, go home’. For me not to do that at 30 years of age in this situation, that made me go, ‘Who the fuck are you? What’s going on? You’re supposed to be this person, but you’re not.”
Though they had no intent of crafting another album so quickly after their debut, music was the only way that Harvey could consider making sense of his feelings following such a life-altering occurrence. That is where ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ comes from, an unrelenting, unashamed and unbelievably heavy exorcism of emotion. One of the most comprehensive and calloused accounts of trauma and all of its consequences you will ever hear, it is also some of the finest work that Graphic Nature has put together. Bludgeoning, bold and brilliantly dark, it is a stunning example of conquering the worst this world has to offer you in whatever form gives you the most strength.
“This has been tough for me to talk about,” Harvey relays.
“It’s almost as if I am talking to a therapist based on what I have written down, and I think that’s what I needed at the start of this year. I haven’t actually been to therapy. I haven’t done anything that I tell everyone to do. I’m my own worst fucking enemy in that way. I can give advice, but I can never take it for myself. So it felt like something I needed to do, and I am proud of that.”
To delve deeper into the murky depths of this harrowing piece of heaviness, Rock Sound sat down with Harvey and discovered what it means to question everything that you ever knew about yourself…
THE SOUND
Musically, Graphic Nature have always been unrelenting in their output. A swirling pit of the most depraved and devastating parts of modern heaviness, all forced through a thoroughly UK-centric atmosphere and attitude. Yet there is an extra layer of dirt to the output on ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching’, perfectly embodying the fear that Harvey now feels when travelling through a city he has grown up in and thought he knew so well. Every corner has a darkness, from the jittering grit of ‘Locked In’ to the urban decay of ‘Fractured’. Painting a picture of a landscape that is now difficult to walk through, the band make you feel like you are there with Harvey on that train, experiencing every blow alongside him.
Yet, would it come as a surprise to hear that this is actually the most fun the band has had putting together the instrumentals of a record to date? That comes from the fact that all bets appeared to be off. If they were going to make this and put themselves through this process so swiftly again, then they aren’t going to let any idea pass them by. Much of that comes from the electronic influence that wraps itself around these riffs, specifically the band’s love of drum and bass and bassline. There’s even a homage to Kurupt FM and People Just Do Nothing in the chaos of ‘Locked In’. It was a way for the band to make such an unexpected trip back into the creative mindset as much fun as possible, and it helped Harvey in more ways than one.
“What our last album lacked was that fun side of us,” he smiles.
“I’m not saying this is a fun album at all, but we did go to Argos and bought ourselves a set of decks to learn how to scratch and sample on. We like electronic music, and we like metal. They are very closely related in terms of musical styles, and we are not the first band to do it, but for us to do it meant we could let our guard down a bit. Should we do this? Fuck it, let’s do the shit we want to do. If we enjoy it, why wouldn’t we put it in?”
Allowing themselves to enjoy the process made the more challenging parts of putting such a traumatic experience on tape that little bit easier. The studio became Harvey’s safe space, where the personal difficulty of the train journey from London up to Stoke-On-Trent to join producer Sam Bloor could be put behind him. And when you’ve gone through so much to get there, why wouldn’t you leave feeling like you’ve had the time of your life?
“Going to the studio was the first time that I got on a train again,” Harvey recalls.
“Towards last year, I started getting back on the trains with my wife when we returned to work. But then, for me to go from London to Stoke, I was completely alone. I would be five hours away from home if I wanted to drive. Once I was with Sam, though, I knew I was good. And that’s why we had so much fun with it. Like, I’m good, and the situation could have been way worse. But at the point we were recording, I knew we had to do our best with what we had. Anything could happen, and if I died before this album came out, would I be proud of it? Now I can say that I would be.”
THE LYRICS
The moment that Harvey realised that he wasn’t doing well following his life-changing encounter was when how he communicated with his wife changed. Not speaking for weeks at a time and just going through the motions of every day without engaging, when she eventually asked what was going on and Harvey let some of the weight off his shoulders, he still felt like the tears filling his eyes weren’t necessary. So much of this feeling will be familiar for many a man out there, born into a world that expects them to be strong even in the face of the worst days of their lives. This societal expectation to shrug off the heartache and keep on trucking ends up affecting those around you more than it affects you. And though he has always tried to denounce and stand against such bullshit, Harvey felt this long-outdated view of masculinity built up inside him as the weeks of hurt passed him by.
“The initial three or four months of dealing with it went from, ‘Fuck it, don’t care. I’m a guy and a geezer, I’ll get over it’ into, ‘I fucking hate people’. People who think that they own the world and think they can do dumb shit to other people. Maybe because I had long hair and was wearing nail varnish at the time, they thought I was weak or something? I just hate bullies, you know?
“I’ve always found writing things down easier than opening up. It’s a weird thing. You find it hard to speak to someone you know, but you find it easy to speak to a complete stranger. My wife told me, ‘You need to let it out, you need to cry, you had to talk’. But I said, ‘If I keep it in, I can put this feeling out into the songs and on the album, and it can be genuine’. That’s completely unhealthy, but weirdly, I’m glad that I did it for myself.”
He’s absolutely correct in it not being the best way of combatting trauma, but in terms of what Harvey produced when it came to writing the lyrics for the record, it is an astonishing and powerful account of grief. Every doubt, every worry, every panic is captured in screaming colour, the anguish felt as if you were the one passing through Canning Town Station that day. From the realisation that he will never be the same at the centre of ‘Human’ to the depressive depths of ‘Low’, all the way through to the heart-breaking one-take reality of closer ‘For You’, sobs and all, it is a breathless and, at times, difficult listen because of just how much of his soul Harvey cut off and forced into these songs.
Putting so much of what he has been through into these songs is not a case of putting a lid on it or pushing it all to one side. It is more about using such pain, confusion, and pursuit of growth to ensure no stone is left unturned. No lingering doubts have been left to turn into a regret at any point. In pushing so hard, it has allowed Harvey to make peace with the situation as much as peace with himself as the artist he hopes to be.
“There were times after getting ‘a mind waiting to die’ back where I listened and thought, ‘I should have added that’ or, ‘I should have changed that’. I went into this album with the mindset of writing the song lyrically, leaving it for two days and changing it if anything jumps out after that. I did that for three weeks, focusing on a different song each time to the point when I was completely and utterly happy with everything I had written about.”
THE TITLE & THE ARTWORK
A lot has changed for Harvey in how he approaches travelling now. He doesn’t listen to music, he doesn’t sit down, and he doesn’t read, something he was doing at the time of the attack. He now always keeps his wits about him no matter what sort of train carriage he is travelling in. However, one of the other big things that has shifted is how he presents himself. He no longer wears Star Wars or anime t-shirts in public, choosing not to show off some of his biggest passions to not draw unnecessary attention to himself. For someone with such a deep-rooted love for films, gaming and pop culture, hiding that part of himself is difficult. However, that is also reflected within the album’s title, focusing on the version of yourself that the world sees and the version that you know rules the roost at home.
“To me, inside my mind, I am still 10. I constantly feel like that until I’m outside, and I have to put the tough guy look on. I stopped wearing those shirts so that no one wants to fuck with me again. That’s why I was so mad at myself, because it felt like I had lost this complete identity of myself. I stopped enjoying shit because this one person had done this thing to me, and it took me down a couple of pegs. There’s Harvey at home, and there’s Harvey at work, you know?”
Nobody should ever feel like they can’t be their true selves. But anybody with any passion for alternative culture will know what it is like to be singled out for something they like. And though ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’ may feel like it focuses on the negatives of this, there is hope. The mannequin seen on the cover is less a person stripped of their essence and more a clean slate for who you can be as a person. You can overcome whatever may have held you back and shimmer however you want. It’s an arduous journey, but it is possible.
“I used to be embarrassed to go into Woolworths to buy Lego when I was at school,” Harvey laughs.
“If I saw someone, they would be like, ‘Why are you buying that’ and I’d be like, ‘It’s for my cousin’. I always felt like I had to make up an excuse for why I enjoyed something, and that seems so fucking mad. Imagine saying that to someone now. This is what scares me about kids now. They are growing up too fast. For us, we kind of knew where the cut-off was. But when you hit 30, you realise you don’t care. This is your cool shit, and you should be proud of it.”
THE COLLABORATORS
Though they have already been mentioned, the importance of Sam Bloor as producer cannot be understated in the crafting of this record. Graphic Nature probably wasn’t expecting to return to Lower Lane Studios so quickly after their last visit; when it came to deciding who could bring the best out of such a personal and pivotal moment in their story, there was no other option. For Harvey, especially, in the relationship that had blossomed between him and Sam away from the mixing desk, he knew he had someone who understood what it meant to squeeze every ounce of feeling out.
“Sam can get the best take out of you as well as all the emotion out of you,” Harvey remarks.
“Not in terms of how they did the Slipknot albums when they were bullied and shit, but in terms of he just knows when it’s right. He also won’t change a song just to make it sound like something he has made. He will say, ‘This sounds cool, but how about this word’ and he knows I’m not going to be a diva and throw my toys out of the pram. It’s one of those relationships where we try and one-up each other, too. I can’t wait to go back and work with him again, but I don’t want it to be another album just yet.”
THE FUTURE
Understandably, Harvey is nervous about how people will react to the contents of ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’. Being so unashamedly open, even having your wails of anguish and screams of despair documented, is one giant step to take. Yet, when it comes to those drawn to Graphic Nature, he has no reason to fret. Everyone who has found a piece of themselves in the band’s music knows what it means to be at war with yourself and the steps necessary to gain such personal victories. That’s always been the case, and this new record will only cement that further.
More than anything, Harvey hopes that the future means that the clouds will continue to clear that bit more. He will feel confident in himself, comfortable expressing himself in public, and ready to conquer whatever life has thrown at him now. It’s a long process, but he’s proud to say that he’s getting there.
“For me, it is accepting that it is done,” he concludes.
“Hopefully, shit like this doesn’t happen to me again. It’s now a case of living day by day and knowing we are here now and doing this. I’m surrounded by people that want to be here with us. I feel comfortable around those people that come to our headline shows and it’s really cool being able to get to know them. I want to know I can go on stage and not worry about what’s happened in the past.”It’s about growth now more than anything. I’m just trying to enjoy things again.”
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