AWAP Brings Humor and Heart to Punk Metal with Clown Carousel and Powerful Messages

0:19 This is the pipe man here on the adventurous pipe man, W4CY radio. And I'm here with our next guest that, Oh my God. When I listened to her music, I was like, that is so much fun. And music should, Definitely be fun. So let's welcome to the show, and I hope I don't butcher your name, but I don't think I will, AWAP. AWAP, that's right. Well done. It's not AWAP or anything else. It's AWAP. It stands for Ant Walking Alligator People. And I'm in South Florida, so we're alligator people. And we have red ants here that can take you down quicker than a hippopotamus could.

0:59 So. maybe your band should play in South Florida here because you'd fit in. I love South Florida. I've been down to Naples and Marco Island and stuff down there. I love it down there. Yeah, that's the West Coast, and it's pretty cool over there. I'm on the East Coast where all the crazy people are. So I've done all the, uh, the parks there and done the other glades, Miami, you know, I've been fortunate to be able to travel down there down to the keys as well. Beautiful part of the world. Nice. Nice. Well, I, I love your part of the world. I just hate your weather over there.

1:41 It's been hot. It's been, weren't you here for bloodstock? We've had a heat wave. It's been crazy, but it's really humid though. Yeah, it, it was crazy. And that was the first time, like I, That the festival does hit me hard at Bloodstock or Download because it was so dry. By the second morning, I was down in vocal zone and tea and honey and everything I could just to do my interviews. It was so bad. Yeah, I couldn't believe it because I always dress when I go over there or I pack. were when I go over there for all four seasons and usually bring all four seasons each day because I could do three interviews four interviews and they would all be the different seasons as you know and it just seemed like you were like Florida there Florida has two seasons hot and hotter the only difference it was there is here when the sun goes down it gets hotter There, I was freezing when the sun went down the first day at the very least.

2:55 You know? So, yeah, I can't believe the drought. Like, didn't even have to worry about drown load this year because there is no rain. It's wild. Oh, it's so dry. And we got no air con either. So, we haven't got the air conditioning that you've got over there or very few places have. So, it is just hot, humid all the time. Yeah, and your houses are made to kind of keep the heat in. So that sucks even more, man. Cause like, yeah, that it must be a brutal summer for you guys. Cause you're not even used to that type of weather either. No, I mean, in my house, it literally, the insulation is so good in here. You'll be all right downstairs, but then you come up stairs and you instantly feel the temperature rise a few degrees just because the insulation is good. So, you know, going to bed and sleep in a full night is not easy.

3:49 Yeah, I was bitching last night because my air con wasn't working for a few minutes. For a few minutes. But yeah, it's weather like that that I think creates great music because that's when you kind of delve into it. But that's not why you have great music. But I have to tell you, Like, you're the best of both worlds of mine, being a punk and a metalhead. That's what I feel, the energy. And you guys are so funny and fun. That's the way it should be. Like, music should be fun, man.

4:31 We have a lot of fun live. I do a lot of dressing up. I normally end the show just in a pair of pink hot pants and some makeup and a feather boa. But it's... I grew up same as you Dean on the sort of crossover. So it was for me, it was thrash and hardcore and British punk as well. So the whole idea of being able to be angry. About something, make a big noise about it, but also have a lot of fun and. Make sure that everyone is having, having fun. It's, you know, it, it's, I liked the death metal thing of everyone, you know, just everyone looking the same as the audience when they went up there.

5:15 But for me, it got old a bit fast. If I, if I want to see someone, if I'm going to pay money to see someone, I want them to put on a show. I want, I want something that's a bit out of the ordinary. I want someone that's larger than life. Someone that's going to entertain me, make me laugh as well as make me think. And I think that's what we try and do. Well, that's like, Being that bloodstock, I was in mosh pit with a bunch of dinosaurs, man. It doesn't get much more fun than that. Yeah. How about you, Dan? What what what's your thoughts on the subject since I just about rudely interrupted you right there? I think I think.

5:58 When you're in a small pond like ours, you know, you get, you see, I mean, we support a lot of the local bands and stuff like that, but you see a lot of them really try hard to do the metal thing, to be the super serious, you know, fuck you. Kind of attitude sort of stuff. And I think we just, you know, we just, that makes us want to be even more sort of like brutally funny and, you know, like I say, meaningful at the same time. But like I said, arms folded metal heads. Yeah. Yeah. I will see. I can see both sides of the fence. So I can speak with wisdom. Right. You're you're I would guess probably even like me to a reformed gatekeeper.

6:45 Yeah. I mean, I remember the days where I'd listen to, if it didn't have some kind of blast beat in it, I wasn't interested. I was such a gatekeeper and I was probably a bit of a dick, you know. But yeah, you meet so many people and getting with the guys that were in AWAP, you know, we've all been best mates for a very long time. We all formed the band to do something a little bit more different, to not be that next generation. you know, metal act, which is just going to frown and, you know, and, you know, that kind of stuff. So, so yeah, we're wearing our hearts on our sleeve basically all the time. We formed a football team.

7:28 We played in a football team together and they used to go in the pub together. So in, we were a bunch of metal heads in the town we live in, Ipswich, that played football for a team called Metal Gods. Danny Filth from Craig Le Filth's in the team and we'd all meet every Wednesday night, play football for an hour and go to the pub. And then just a few of them decided to, they'd all. Been in loads of other bands and decided they wanted something that sounded a bit DB. And then someone suggested I sing for him, which was ridiculous. And that's how I came to be. I love it. I love it. And, you know, I agree totally with what you're saying in respect of like, if you have a metal band or a punk band, there is definitely a message, but, that message can be done in a fun way because music's also supposed to be the best therapy there is. So you don't go to a show to still be immersed in that shit that's bothering you in the outside world. You go to a show to escape it. And I think that's where you guys are brilliant because you got your foot on both sides instead of just one. Yes, it's a strong message. Yes, it's a serious message. But how we deliver that message is what makes it fun. That's what I think about AWAP.

8:49 I mean, the new EP is called Clown Carousel, and it's basically about how the politicians keep changing, but it's the same clowns coming around just with slightly different makeup. It doesn't matter whether they're Labour or Conservative, Republican or Democrat, but it's just clowns with different makeup. But at the same time, what I try and be and what we try and be as a band is, is to be almost like the jesters in medieval times. So you're having to pass some serious information on to the public, but at the same time, if you don't make yourself stand out, if you don't make yourself worth looking at, no one's going to listen to you. So my whole persona on stage is to be, hey, look at me, I'm the strange.

9:31 Guy and I wear a shirt which has. A sloth riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex firing lasers out. I've got pink leopard print hot pants on. I've got strange corpse paint with pink and green on and a feather bow around my neck with bright yellow crocs with alligator lights on them. And everyone looks at me and then I'm gonna hit them with my opinions on veganism or my opinions on on being anti-war or something so you can you can take from it what you want if you want to take the more political message that i'm giving that's fine if you just want to enjoy the tubby tattooed guy jumping around on stage and swearing and you can enjoy that as well so there you go and.

10:15 It's about safe spaces as well i think yeah you know the more sort of flamboyant and, and, you know, the more outrageous we can be at times and the most fun we can have, do what we're doing with a smile on our faces. Hopefully that makes anyone who turns up to our show still safe, whether you're, whether you're like a, you know, arms folded metal head in the sides, sides of the wings, or, you know, LGBT, whatever, you know, we just want everyone to have. A good time. See, and I love that too, because I love it even more. Cause like of talking about the hardcore influence, Because I was not cool with that news recently of that hardcore band, I won't mention their name, we all know who it is, that had the banana attacked. Come on, man.

11:05 Who cares that he's dressed up as a banana? That's a little bit much. You want to get people to do a wall of death? I'm all for that. but don't pick on the banana dude, man. That was weird because it created a kind of schism in the hardcore world. There were people who went, yeah, yeah, that's right. You shouldn't be dressing as stupidly and going to hardcore shows. And then there were whole, there were record labels and stuff who just went, no, all supporting banana man. And at Bloodstock this year, they had a banana pit. I think you're in party canon. There was a banana pit because it was all, no, fuck you. Don't tell people what to wear. Don't say, yeah, we're anti-establishment and then establishing your own rules for it. It doesn't make sense. Right, right. It doesn't make sense.

11:51 And to your point earlier, I love what you said politically because I say it all the time. I always say they're all on the same team and it ain't mine. And that means all politicians, Republican, Democrat, doesn't mean shit They're all fucking for them and they're not for us. And we need to stop falling for the oldest trick in the book, divide and conquer, to think that there actually is differences. And we're fighting with each other and they're getting done what they want to get done, no matter who it is. That's why I love what you said, because not many people think that way. They're just like, oh, my way is right and their way is wrong. No, they're both wrong, in my opinion.

12:35 I think something that helps with us is, I mean, I'm now 53. Dan's just turned 50. The other guys are in their late 30s, early 40s. So we've been around the block. quite a while we've either been in bands or been in the music industry for like 25 plus years uh and dan and i have always done jobs helping other people working within mental health or substance misuse and stuff like so we've been we've been around the block we've seen what various politicians do to society we've you know earned our stripes as it were so it's a bit easier to try and see something from a top-down perspective rather than as binary as, as people try and make things nowadays, which is people are picking a viewpoint as though it was a sports team and saying that I've got to stick with this viewpoint, whatever, even if I hear facts that completely counter contradicts what it is, I believe I have chosen this viewpoint and nothing will let me stray from it.

13:37 And I think that's really dangerous. No doubt about it. A hundred percent. And, even the fact of music in and of itself, and you have people coming out and saying, oh, people shouldn't come out and give their opinion in their music. That's what music's always been really, you know, like it comes long before punk or metal, you know, it, it happened way back. It happened with the hippies. It happened before them. We're talking about folk music and stuff and back hundreds of years. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know? So like, you guys do it right. Cause you make it fun, but there's still a message and there should be. I mean, if, if you're an artist, in my opinion, why shouldn't you use that pulpit to be able to give information? If the politicians are using that same pulpit, like what's the difference?

14:32 Don't you think. People only complain about that Dean when they suddenly realize that the bands they like are saying things that they no longer believe in. There's a lot of people who say, well, Rage Against the Machine, why are you coming out and saying... Rage Against the Machine always had that standpoint. They were always the same. I wouldn't start listening to a Christian right-wing rock band now and say, I can't believe they've got these values. That's why they are who they are. There's nothing against whatever you say, but you can't censor people and what they're speaking about because if you're writing lyrics, if you're writing music, you've got to write what you know and you've got to write from the heart. Exactly. And like I said before about therapy, it's therapy for you, the artist, to get that stuff out of you. And everybody should have that right. And so at least in the music, it's not anything like really attacking. It's more entertaining with a message. And it's something that somebody can relate to. And they don't even have to put their own, your meaning to it. They can put their own meaning to it. As long as it helps people.

15:43 The new single, the lead single off the EP, Paracost, which is taken from the point of view of the satire pan, working with mankind to manipulate people through social media. And the whole way through, it's not about saying this is what's right and which side they're on. It's just saying... Society wants you to panic. Society wants you to, the people in charge, whether they're left. Wing, whether they're right wing, they want you to panic. They want you to make panic decisions just so that they can control you. So, you know, one of the last lyrics in it is screaming out Nazi denouncing as woke. So it's from the left who are always shouting Nazi at people whenever.

16:28 They don't agree with them. And it's the extreme right wing who are calling everyone woke just because they they want to care about other people. It's the whole, this dichotomy of, of people wanting to other everyone else that I find really quite frightening. Also as well, it's diluting good messages as well. Like, you know, when, when the left, I mean, I'm a self-confessed lefty, you know, but at the same time, when you just result to that lowest common denominator, you're shouting the Nazi word at people. when you're not prepared to sort of even listen and counteract their points sort of like intelligently, then you diminish your own message.

17:08 So, you know, be so careful of that as well. So yeah. And the only way people are going to listen is if you're not attacking and screaming at them either, you know, like they could listen to what your songs and think about the lyrics and go, well, you know what? That makes sense because they don't have to have their guard up or pick a team. Like we don't need to pick a team. Uh, you know, we need to pick our own team and human beings, one race, the human race, you know, that is one thing I do love about the UK. Like every time I go there, you guys are like the coolest people. The only person that wasn't that cool was my ex-wife, but she's, she was British.

17:51 So that, but seriously though, you know, like I always loved, people that i meet in the uk and and the kind of thought process and it doesn't even matter what their viewpoint is sometimes sometimes it's just hey we can get and talk and get along and not have to agree on everything i think that's important too. Yeah absolutely and i think that's that's what we found with the gigs that we play because we play we've played quite a lot of metal shows we play a lot of shows with death metal bands But we've played a hell of a lot of shows with punk bands as well.

18:31 And we found the punk audiences have probably worked better for us. But it's great to have a foot in both camps. Do you know what I mean? Exactly. We never used to say what our genre was. And it was a local punk promoter put us on a poster and put thrash punk. And we were like, you know what? We'll stick with that. Okay, we'll go with that. We'll go with thrash punk. Because if you, if we were to say crossover, people have an idea of what, if you say to me, crossover, I think of DRI. I think DRI, I think of crumb suckers. I think of early suicidal tendencies. So I don't think we sound like that. I think we've got some, there, there, there, there are some similarities between our stuff and those bands, but I, you know, for us to be thrash punk and to have a, a, a, a foot in both of those camps, both of which are known for being sort of done by good musicians who like having fun, but also are pretty mouthy about stuff as well. Because, you know, growing up in the 80s when we were deep in the Cold War, but the threat of nuclear war was happening as well. Nowhere was that more seen than in Ed Repka's.

19:48 Album covers. And the whole of the thrash world, we were all worried about nuclear war all the time. And it made you interested in politics because it was like, well, so why are we going to die? Why is there going to be a nuclear assault? Why is there going to be a toxic holocaust? Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, it's funny because people always thought we were talking about, especially in metal, like for death and destruction, it was against it. It was a lot of the Slayer songs on Show No Mercy were anti-nuclear war, you know, and it's a shame that in 2026, we're still talking anti-nuclear war and a lot of the same subjects.

20:30 It's like I talk about it all the time. Some of those songs from the 80s, you could just switch out names. Yeah, yeah, completely. And it's still appropriate today. Like, how the hell does that happen? We should be a little further along in 2026. But the whole. Thing, and Walking Alligator, people, the name comes from an urban legend about the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose skin sloughed off their skeletons. and they died in hideous pain over about a period of a month. Dan found it whilst looking for gnarly shit on the internet. But our title song, Outwalking Allegor, it was an anti-war song.

21:13 And in it, I sing from a point of view as a Japanese soldier in World War II. I sing it from a point of view of an American soldier in 2025. And then we're talking about countries that have been at war. And since we wrote the song seven years ago, when we sing it live, I just changed the name of the countries. Exactly. Because it's now Ukraine and Gaza and Israel and Sudan. But whereas before it was, and it's like nothing is changing. Nothing is changing. The difference is the drones are better at hitting libraries. That's about it. Yeah, right. The world has definitely turned full circle, hasn't it?

21:56 Since, you know, from like that 80s into the 90s and then, you know, the end of the Cold War, you know, a period of, you know, a short period of consensus, then the credit crunch, all of that economic collapse, blaming that on working class people and, you know, the shallower end of the middle classes, shrinking all of that. It gave the rich and powerful absolute carte blanche to squeeze everything. And, you know, and walking alligator people, yes, the literal term is an anti-war message from the band, but also as a double meaning, it's about people who are at ground zero, shall we say, of all forms of inequality, you know, abuse, disadvantage, all that kind of stuff.

22:41 So we like, yeah, I mean, one of our taglines is for the lost, weak and feeble, you know, we try and give a voice to the voiceless, you know, promote positive messages and hope where we can. That's the way it should be. And, you know, I love that you guys do that. I love that your attitude towards human people. And I love your music even more. Tell everybody real quick how they can reach out to you, connect with you on social chat and check out your antics on your social media. Cause that's funny as shit too. And, you know, and everything they need to know to connect with you and, and be able to check out your music.

23:26 Go for it, Dan. Well, yeah, so we are on, I'm not, I'm not a massive fan of the TikToks and stuff like that. We are on their Instagram, Facebook. We do have a general website where you can get hold of pretty much everything. That's awap.uk and you know, just type that in and you'll get to. Our sort of link tree. and that'll take you to. YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, everything. Awap.uk will take you everywhere. Yeah, you can get everything on Bandcamp as well. We're available on there. We're free to download, you know, pay what you will, just have the music, listen to it, share it, you know, send the message, send the word. And if you want us to play, get in touch. We will, we will love to, you know, work for anything.

24:14 Well, Thanks a lot for giving us not only a great, great music, but great message. And thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Cheers, Pipe Man. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man on W4CY radio.