Start Listening To: Wax Head

Wax Head on friendship, frustration, and why music should always come first - even if it hurts.

South-west born and Manchester-based, Wax Head are a four-piece careening through a world of garage rock squall, psych swirl, and sweat-slicked live shows. With drummer-vocalist Lewis Fletcher at the front and chaos at their heels, the band made up of Harry Bunker (guitar), Archie Jones (synth/keys), and Evan Chase (bass), channel noise, noise, and more noise into tightly wound songs that hit like a boot to the chest. Their latest single Terminal Sinker is a blistering mission statement: fast, loud, and deeply fed up. We caught up with the band to talk small-town angst, synths that sound like guitars, and the joy of leaving the stage on the edge of puking.

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

(EC) For those who have never heard us, Wax Head is an amalgamation of garage rock, psychedelic endurance jamming and modern noise. 3/4 of us are from south-west England and our synth player was born in Oldham, however, Manchester has always been our home as a collective. 

‘Terminal Sinker’ is an absolute blitz. How did this track come together, and what made it the right one to launch your 2025 with? 

(AJ) It may not seem like it, but we spend a lot of our time trying to write quite long intricate songs, which are really fun to write but it can be quite tedious and we’d gotten quite frustrated with ourselves. Terminal Sinker came out of the frustration and yearning of just wanting to write a simple fast song. It’s really fun to play live so we thought it was right to launch 2025 with this track. 

The lyrics take a pretty scathing look at small-town stagnation. How personal was that writing process for Lewis, and did the rest of the band bring their own frustrations to the mix? 

(LF) yeah I’d say the lyrics are very personal to me, they’re written off the back of personal experiences and relationships I’ve had with people from when I used to live in a small town. I have a lot of love for small towns, especially the one I grew up in but I also have a lot of things I’d want to change about it. The lyrics where definitely written more off of relationships I’ve had with certain people, not romantic relationships just friends I had years and years ago. I think Evan and Harry can relate a lot, Harry is from Devon originally and me and Ev went to the same college and were all kinda these kids who loved things out of the small town conventions, so there was definitely contrasting beliefs between us and a lot of the people we were surrounded by. 

Drummer-fronted bands are still pretty rare. How does having Lewis on vocals behind the kit shape the band’s dynamic, both live and in the studio? 

(HB) I’ve always loved drummers who sing and I think people love to see it. For us too, we like to have Lewis’ kit right up front and centre which makes the whole show feel more visceral and super loud. A lot of the time the people at the front will be a mere few inches away from the cymbals being crashed in their faces. In the studio I guess it’s the same as any band but live being right up front together, basically falling over each other just locks us in. I also despise drum risers.

‘Terminal Sinker’ was recorded with Borja Regueira and mastered by Joe Carra (King Gizz, Amyl etc). How did those collaborations impact the final sound? 

(AJ) We’re close with Borja and share many of the same music tastes and influences. He has a great studio in Manchester called GLUE. Being in a familiar environment with someone you know well definitely helps with creativity. Ourselves and Borja are always bouncing ideas off each other and he really gets what we want. 

Manchester’s known for its legacy scenes, but you seem more aligned with an international psych-punk current than any local ‘sound’. How do you feel you fit, or don’t fit, within the city’s music landscape? 

(EC) Unlike the days of Madchester, the modern Manchester scene is thriving with individuality and it is rare to hear two bands sounding the same. Musicians are united by attitude rather than genre. Wax Head don’t sound like your typical Manchester band but then again neither does any other band at the moment. 

You’ve cited Osees and Ty Segall as touchpoints, are there any less obvious influences that sneak into your writing or sound design? 

(HB) Outside garage and psych, my love for noise and industrial music really influences how I approach the guitar and how I think it should be played - especially live; the focus is on making as much a cacophony of harsh wall-noise to fully bastardise the already pretty aggressive sounding music as much as possible. I try to give a full assault on the senses. I hate going to a show and it just isn’t loud enough - especially when a band that is meant to be noisy is playing, it just sounds weak and boring so you can’t feel anything. It all bleeds into our songwriting and sound design. 

Your debut EP Salt Fat Acid Head hinted at a lot of directions, do you feel like ‘Terminal Sinker’ locks in what Wax Head is about now, or is it just one extreme of your spectrum? 

(HB) I’d say it’s just one extreme. Live we operate like a “hardcore punk” band for lack of a better term so it felt like the obvious choice as a single to document that area of our sound. However we’re sitting on a lot of new music at the minute where we’re leaning into weirder stuff; more drawn-out kraut repetition, Archie on the arpeggiators as well as some mangled minute-long noise rock type stuff - keep an ear out.

Archie’s synth and keys work gives your sound a strange, swirling dimension. How do you make space for those textures in tracks that are otherwise so punchy and driven? 

(AJ) It’s always been a different process when it comes to recording keys/synth. For example on the latest single - Terminal Sinker - my approach was to try and make the synths sound like a guitar. Doubling what Harry is playing on the chorus works for this track, but I believe there’s no overarching rule. Space is very hard to come by in our music, but it’s exciting to find ways around this. 

With 19 dates across the UK and Europe, how do you keep your stamina up on tour? Is it total chaos every night, or have you found ways to stay grounded? 

Food, shower, sleep and Dragon Soop. 

What do you love right now? 

(LF) I’m going to write a list because there’s too much to say. 

● Primus 

● My rat tail 

● Instagram reels 

● Lord Alan Sugar 

● Soup 

● Kurt Angles neck 

● Milk 

● Radiohead 

● Danny Carey 

● Crokey Pickle Crisps 

What do you hate right now? 

(LF) I hate bands who care more about how they look on stage and the image they have than the music they write. I feel like a lot of the music scene is about looking a certain way, trying to please the camera and that’s fucking stupid. Bands should have an aesthetic for sure and should lean into it, BUT MUSIC SHOULD COME FIRST. If you’re playing in a band that’s in the heavy territory of music, you should be leaving that stage red, sweaty and on the edge of puking. Maybe that’s just the mindset drilled into me by my idols such as, Henry Rollins and Iggy Pop, if I leave a stage and I’m not sweaty then I might as well not have played in the first place.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you? 

(LF) My album pick is the first, self titled album by Metz, released in 2012. This album is fucking chaotic, hell for leather all the way through. Tunes like “wet blanket” and “the mule” really made me lean towards heavy music as a teenager. When I was learning I wanted to be Hayden Menzies so fucking bad ahahaha, I bumped into him at green man festival last year and had to not freak out, completely star struck to be honest. His drumming is so powerful, so tasteful and has beautiful intricacies that are so distinct to his own personal style. So yeah, big up Metz for making that album. 

What does a “successful” year look like for Wax Head in 2025? More chaos? A full-length? Something else entirely? 

(EC) More shows, ideally in places we have never played, Scotland, Ireland and southern Europe would be great. Other than that, we are working on our next release, a full length LP which will hopefully be out this year.