London, UK · hardcore · britpop

High Vis

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UK hardcore with baggy Britpop swagger — working-class catharsis that turned the scene's head, then everyone else's.

High Vis formed in London in 2016, growing out of the city's hardcore scene. Frontman Graham Sayle had already played in the bands Dirty Money and Tremors with Rob Moss, and after Tremors split in 2012, guitarist Edward Harper began writing songs influenced by post-punk that became the basis for the new band. Sayle, Moss, Harper and guitarists Romain Bruneau and Rob Hammarén made up the original lineup, and the group's records have come out through Dais Records.

The band's name comes from high-visibility workwear: Sayle has described it as a unifying garment of the working class, one that also renders whoever wears it invisible to everyone except people who want something from them.

High Vis released three EPs, I, II and III, between early and December 2017, followed by their debut album, No Sense No Feeling, in December 2019. Bruneau left the band during the pandemic lockdowns and was replaced by Martin MacNamara, and the group put out the Society Exists EP in 2020 while touring was impossible.

The group pairs hardcore's rhythm section and volume with guitar figures and vocal melodies drawn from Madchester, baggy and 1990s British indie rock, so the songs often move at a loping, dance-adjacent tempo rather than a straight charge. Sayle's lyrics deal with class, work, addiction and community in plain terms, sung in a broad northern accent.

Their 2022 album Blending, led by singles including "Talk for Hours" and "Fever Dream", broadened the band's audience well beyond the hardcore circuit and took them on headline tours of North America and Europe. A third album, Guided Tour, followed in 2024 and appeared on several critics' best-of-the-year lists; a US tour behind it was cancelled after Sayle required emergency surgery.

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