A grotesque, giddy blend of theatrical art-rock and deranged pop, Gag Salon make music for the beautifully unwell.

With a name like You Have Been Killed, Gag Salon's debut album was never going to be a delicate affair. The Reading-born quartet channel theatrical chaos into tightly wound songs full of grotesque humour, manic energy, and moments of unexpectedly tender clarity. Ahead of the album’s release, we caught up with frontman Joseph to talk cursed studio sessions, writing lyrics in the park, and why sometimes the only sane response is to go completely feral.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

I am Joseph on vocals and guitar, and the band is Tom on guitar and keys, Seb on bass and Ayden on drums. We’re all originally from Reading and the areas surrounding. We make crazy loony guy music!

‘Man’s An Artist’ barrels along at breakneck speed. What inspired this track’s manic energy and grotesque lyricism?

So this song is a fairly old one one, we’d first tried a rough version of it at a rehearsal back in either 2021 or 2022 but didn’t ever revisit it until we were putting material together for the album. I originally had a bunch of ideas for how it would branch off and prog out but ultimately it just felt right for it to be a super quick, blink and you miss it kind of pop song. Sometimes you can work a song way too much and squeeze all the life out of it! In terms of the lyrics, again, not a huge amount of thought behind them. For me, the meaning tends to come after the lyrics have been written. This feels like a channeling of some deep sexual shame to me. With a rockin’ beat!

Your debut album is titled You Have Been Killed. How did you settle on that name, and what kind of tone were you hoping to set with it?

It was pretty much the first name we thought of. I like how it’s kind of like a GAME OVER screen on a video game: “YOU ARE DEAD”. The music and lyrical themes on the record are all pretty hellish and focussed on macabre things, but there’s also a lot of humour and frivolousness, and I think the album title gets that across. I also like the idea of it addressing the listener directly - a lot of the songs on the album do this, using the second-person.

There’s a theatricality to your music, both in the vocals and the arrangements. Have performance and visual drama always been part of your DNA as a band?

Definitely, Gag Salon music is so exaggerated and inflated so that kind of theatrical approach is very much what makes it.

You recorded the album in a freezing Glasgow studio over ten days in January. Did that intense, icy environment influence the sound or mood of the record?

I think it did! It was a fucking miserable month, for many reasons not just the weather, so recording the album did feel kind of like a respite from real life for a bit. We stayed just down the road from the studio opposite Kelvingrove Park, and most mornings I’d go for a walk there in the gloom and listen back to what we’d been doing the previous day, make notes, and finish lyrics. I wouldn’t say the music itself sounds particularly wintery - maybe it does to others - but there was certainly a tension in that environment that no doubt contributed to the performances you hear.

How did your relationship with producer Chris McCrory shape this album? What makes that collaboration work so well

We’ve worked with Chris for a long time now. We did an EP with our first band Palm Honey with him back in 2016, which was our first ever truly enjoyable recording experience really. He gave us the confidence to record live together and made us realise what working on a record should really feel like. We can be a bit of a dour bunch sometimes, and he’s got a great of sense humour that can cut through that in a second and get us back to that place of being excited about what we’re doing. We massively value his input, he’s just a wizard in the studio who constantly has great ideas and feels like a fifth member of the band in a sense.

‘Man’s An Artist’ seems to explore obsession and delusion in a pretty unhinged way. Do you enjoy writing from the perspective of characters who are slightly unwell?

As a fairly mentally unwell person it comes quite naturally. In seriousness though, yes, it’s fun and cathartic to inhabit the worst parts of yourself through performance. I think that’s one of the great things about music, or art in general - being able to indulge yourself in your darker thoughts and inclinations in what some might call a ‘safe space’. Nobody is perfect - everyone has thought, said and done things that they’re not proud of. I think it’s fundamentally pointless to try and hide from that. All of these songs come from real emotions and experiences I’ve had, even if they are exaggerated in some way.

You’ve been described as ‘gobshite art-rock’ and ‘feral’. Are there any descriptions of the band that have made you laugh or feel weirdly proud?

Those are probably quite accurate although I do take umbrage at the idea we’re gobshites! I always find it funny when we get compared to bands that I’d have never thought of in a million years. I think there was a blog that compared us to Oasis once? That was a good one.

Which track on You Have Been Killed took the most unexpected shape during the recording process?

Most of the songs had been pretty heavily fleshed out at rehearsal ahead of recording to be honest, so we don’t tend to make huge changes in the studio, but there were some exceptions.

Our bassist Seb wrote the music for the track ‘This! Man!’, and we’d only ever rehearsed it instrumentally. Seb had sent me a voice memo of some rough vocal ideas, and truth be told I massively procrastinated on writing the lyrics until literally the day we actually recorded the vocals. I went out and wrote them all sitting in the park that morning, so the first time any of us were hearing the vocals and instrumental together was during that session. That was a really cool experience, although I wouldn’t generally recommend being that unprepared - there are obviously so many subtle things you have to consider with a vocal part, so it was a bit of a leap of faith just hoping they’d all fit together nicely first time. Fortunately they did!

Another example would be ‘Throwing Up’ - originally, I had only written one verse to just be repeated through the whole track. It was when I was recording the vocals that the other guys realised that it felt a bit shit and wasn’t really hitting. And they were totally right - at first I was pretty petulant and didn’t want to hear it but thankfully I came round and ended up writing the other verses on the floor in the studio just before recording them.

Your tour finishes at the Shacklewell Arms in London. What makes a live Gag Salon show feel satisfying for you?

It’s nice to look at the audience and a.) actually see people and b.) see those people dancing and enjoying the music rather than standing completely still and staring at you. That’s always the most satisfying thing, and it makes it really easy to get into the mood for the show on stage too. So hopefully these last few gigs will “go off’!

If You Have Been Killed had to be turned into a stage play or film, who would direct it and what would it look like?

Some kind of combination of that bit in Event Horizon where they watch the footage from hell, the “shunting” orgy at the end of Society and all of Tetsuo: The Iron Man. It’d be a stage play, a grand guignol, and in the last few minutes after they’ve witnessed two hours of insane torture, the audience would discover that all the theatre doors have been locked - and they’re up next!! Have Phil Tippet direct it. I think that’d be pretty nice.

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