Band Line Up 2017

Brace yourself. The One Hundred are about to unleash the full force of their as-yet-untitled debut 

album on the world – and the world better be ready. 

  

It’s already had a taste of what the Guilford four-piece have got to offer, thanks both to their acclaimed 

2014 debut EP Subculture plus their energetic, incendiary live shows, but this is even more energetic and incendiary than anything they’ve done before. Somehow, the band – vocalist Jacob Field, guitarist Tim Hider, bassist Phil Kneller and drummer Joe Balchin – have managed to capture on tape the brute force of their metal/rap/grime crossover sound. Play it at even half volume and it sounds like the 

band are climbing through the speakers and into the room to terrorize you – in the best possible way. 

  

“Our EP was pretty dancey,” explains Field, “whereas this album has a bit more of an r’n’b and hip-hop feel to it; the songs are more in touch with what and who we are. The EP was testing water, really – now we know what The One Hundred really is. We’ve stripped down our sound, but it also sounds more band-oriented and poppier. A lot darker, too.” 

A pulsating, full-throttle and unforgiving blend of hardcore, dance, trance, rap, grime and, yes, r’n’b and hip-hop, the album’s 12 songs spit, shove and snarl their way through the speakers with vicious intent, full of an anger and an energy that few British acts can rival; even more impressive when you consider the band had no expectations when they first started – they were just experimenting with music and trying to make “something different”. 

“This all began as a studio project,” says Field. “Tim and I had been in a really bad metalcore band before The One Hundred started, and we decided to sack that off because we grew older and realised that the stuff we were making wasn’t really what we wanted to do. So we started casually writing together – not for a band or anything – and came up with a couple of tunes just to pass the time. Then we realised they were kind of good!” 

  

That’s an understatement. Not only did the EP pick up rave reviews from national press, but the 

band’s songs have been played on Radio One and XFM; and in the two or so years they’ve been  

together, they’ve played festival sets at Sonisphere, NASS, Reading and Leeds, plus Download and Slam Dunk, while tours with Hacktivist, Papa Roach, Mötley Crüe and Alice Cooper, Crossfaith, We Came As Romans and Don Broco have cemented their reputation as a phenomenal live band. 

That reputation only looks set to continue and grow with the release of the band’s album, which sees 

them pushing boundaries to their absolute limit with very little regard for convention or tradition… 

  

“When you’re in the metalcore genre,” says Field, “there are all these rules you have to follow. So when 

we started doing this, we said ‘Sod that!’ If we don’t brand ourselves as anything, then no-one will have expectations as to what we should or shouldn’t sound like. No-one was telling us how to do this, so we ended up just writing for ourselves. We wanted to pioneer our own genre, to do whatever we felt like and to step outside the comfort zone of what’s expected.” 

That creative freedom has defined the band from the very start, of not making music to fit in with any 

scene, and it’s an attitude that continues to drive them … 

“When we started writing the tracks,” chuckles Field, “we were adamant people weren’t going to like us; we expected people to be so negative towards us, so when they decided to gravitate towards it, we were kind of taken by surprise!” 

As it happens, it’s almost impossible not to be drawn in by the vicious swirl of noise that The One Hundred create. Across venues all over the country, people have been connecting with the band and their songs on an incredibly visceral level, and for good reason – these are primal, forceful compositions designed not just to provoke a reaction, but to shake you to the very core of your existence. 

This is a breathless record that surprises at every turn, held together by the band’s in your face, no holds barred attitude. Yet as full of rage and aggression as these songs are – something which makes them perfect to soundtrack a broken, post-Brexit Britain, not to mention Generation Y’s resulting disaffection and dissatisfaction – the inspiration for them isn’t based so much in the real world as fictional domains… 

“A lot of people assume we’re political,” Field says, “but we’re really not. I’m a bit of a game geek, and the songs are usually about things that I’ve played or watched and then given my own spin. ‘Retreat’ is about Attack On Titan because I love that anime, and ‘Dark Matters’ is about Final Fantasy VII. That said, a lot of the meanings are ambiguous, so if you choose to take things politically, that’s absolutely cool. I just want people to listen to it, because we’ve put a lot of time and a lot of effort into this. 

  

“We’ve really found ourselves with this album – it’s got a bit of everything, and it sums up exactly 

what The One Hundred is. 

  

“This isn’t about who we were but who we are.”