I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Joe Milbourn of Headcount to discuss his band’s new single, “Genocide or Jail.” Headcount is a fresh, heavy Hardcore/Thrash band who have been killing it in the UK. In this interview, I took the opportunity to discuss childhood, inspirations, and Headcount’s next steps with Milbourn, as the band continues to grow their audience in both the UK and the US.
Hey Joe, tell me a little bit about your childhood in Hertfordshire and how you discovered hardcore? Did you follow the metal-to-hardcore pipeline, or did you take a different route?
I grew up in Hertfordshire, a pretty straight, normal childhood, and I didn’t really have any involvement in music whatsoever, until I got to secondary school, or as you guys would say, high school.
My first couple of years there, I found myself spending a lot of time in the music department. One of my best friends was big into Iron Maiden, Motorhead, and Metallica. And I remember him initially trying to play me some of this music [metal], and I was just like… get this out of my ears, man. This is so loud, and it’s really abrasive. This is… this is unbearable. But, some sort of Stockholm Syndrome must have set in, and as I listened to [metal] more, I was like, oh… It’s actually really good.
I’m very much a hyperactive person. I need to be constantly occupied. Metal was really the genre for me, because obviously it’s so intense, and it requires your full attention, so I sort of got into metal through that. With Hardcore itself, I’d say that I wasn’t actually aware of… or around Hardcore until I had gone to university in Brighton.
Brighton has a really great Hardcore/DIY scene, with a few very good venues. For example, Dalton- shout out to them- they’re a great venue right by the seafront… Cali Club, I went to see a couple of gigs there. After seeing [these] bands play, and seeing friends-of-friends bands play, I was like, this genre… Hardcore is something I need to look into more, right? Because it felt like the best parts of metal and the best parts of punk, meshed in a way that is really unpretentious and unapologetic, it gets to the point.
Could you tell me which records have had the greatest impact on your playing, specifically?
That’s such a difficult question… yeah, you’ve opened a Pandora’s box there, man. You might have to ask me to shut up...
The records that instantly stood out to me growing up were Metallica’s. And I still think, to this day, that original run of ‘Kill Em All’ through ‘The Black Album,’ is just one of the most consistent parts of their discography- it’s just got so much variety within it.
I mean, it’s so hard to choose, but if I were to pick an album that’s probably most influential on me… It’s very cliche, but I’d probably say either ‘Master of Puppets’ or ‘And Justice for All.‘ I think… ‘And Justice for All’ tends to be a divisive one with people, because the production on it is very bleak and dry, and it can sound a bit like…I don’t know, demo-y. Like, you just taught someone how to scoop the mids on their amplifier, and then next thing you know, they’ve got this guitar tone that just sounds horrible.
Those albums are not only incredibly heavy to this day, but they have an incredibly consistent level of songwriting. To the point where almost every song on ‘Master of Puppets’ has a hook that sticks with you. I mean, if I were to find that album today, I reckon I could go weeks just listening to it, because each song is so catchy.
So… in a very long-winded answer, yeah, I’d say the most influential album for me was probably ‘Master puppets,’ and then as I started getting heavier and heavier, as most people do. I just wanted to find something heavier than the next, you know?
I think Sepultura were a huge influence on me as well, because they have this sort of… tribal element to their music… but they’ve also got something I think is very punk. You can see that in their covers and live performances, but they were all about playing as quickly as possible, with as much intensity as they could give. And for me. I’ve been a vocalist with bands as well. Max Cavalera’s vocal style, the way he vocalized for Sepultura, had a huge influence on me. We’ve got a similar vocal timbre when doing lower stuff, so I took a lot of influence from [Cavallera].
So… God, I mean, as you can probably tell, I could go on forever, but those two artists, Metallica, Sepultura, and the albums ‘Master of Puppets’ and ‘And Justice for All‘, those are the ones that come to mind for me.
I understand that Headcount is a newer band in the hardcore scene. With that being said, how was the recording process for “Genocide or Jail?” Was it a new experience to get into the studio?
I mean, it was my first time actually getting in the studio with the boys and recording something together. The whole process of recording was kind of ridiculous, because we had the most packed month of August this year. We had our performance at Bloodstock, which was a huge deal to us, and then we had a little break. We went home and let our throats recover, let our bodies recover, and… let our livers recover. Then, a week later, we headed up north to Country Durham, which is where Alfred (the guitarist) lives, to record. And we also put “Genocidal or Jail” down.
That was really exciting, because that song at that time was really fresh off the press. The space in between me writing that song and then eventually recording it was all within, like, the space of a month. Which is really quite crazy.
But yeah, recording that song in particular was a massive ballache. I only really had myself to blame, since I wrote the guitar riffs, but it has this really dissonant E string at the start of the song. That one really requires you to sort of string skip between your bottom and top string pretty consistently. You’re doing quite a complicated rhythmic pattern. Recording that, we all sort of sat there, just scratching our heads, like, who wrote this? I mean, we knew who the culprit was; it was me, but it was… yeah, it was a bit of a grueling one. But just to hear that song out and finally in people’s ears is just such a relief, and we’re all massively proud of it.
What was the inciting incident for your new single? “Genocide or Jail” is a pretty charged title. What ideas or conversations were you hoping to spark with it?
Straight up, I won’t write a song unless I feel particularly strongly about something. The idea for “Genocide or Jail” came from a debate I’d been having with one of my family members. I don’t know how specific I want to be about this, right? Because what I worry about sometimes is that people will forget that it’s a song at the end of the day. The purpose of my music is to give people enjoyment. I don’t want “Genocide or Jail” to end up analyzed like it’s… a political paper or a dissertation. I don’t want people reading it and being like, “hmm, there are flaws in this logic,” you know what I’m saying.
Obviously, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out which contemporary event, or events (plural), inspired the title. But it just came from the moral question of… if you were a soldier who was put in a situation where your armed forces are committing what is pretty blatantly a genocide, or what is widely recognised as one. In that situation, what do you do? Do you go along with conscription? Do your time in the army, one or two years, who knows? And then wash your hands of it and say, I’m done, and try not to think too much about the consequences, or do you say, I recognize how f*****d up this… oh, sorry, excuse my French.
So, that’s sort of where the title of the song came from. And it’s a really difficult moral question, to some people at least, but I just found it to be a really interesting dynamic, and something I could write plenty about. And obviously, as I said, there are a lot of very strong feelings attached to that song and its lyrics. But, I feel like if I go too into depth with them, as I said, people might just overanalyze it, and that’s what I worry about. At the end of the day, I want people to jam, man.
Switching gears a little bit, where do you feel you fit within Headcount’s overall sound and chemistry?What role do you feel like you play in Headcount?
I only really got the spot because the band had a gig coming up. Alf, my best buddy from secondary school, basically said, “Our vocalists can’t make the gig. Do you reckon you can fill in for him?” I was like, I can’t really turn this down. I didn’t really have any musical outlet in my life at that point, so I basically said, f*** it, yeah, I’m gonna do it.
So I ended up in the band basically just by happenstance, you know? It was sort of a coincidence, to be honest, but after that gig, and after just hanging out with the boys, I realized that it was a really good dynamic, and most importantly, there was so much drive and determination to make something out of this. I think as I get older, the more time I want to dedicate towards making this sort of dream a reality. So that’s why I joined the band. And sort of where I see myself at the moment.
In the structure of the band. I think my greatest strengths have to be songwriting and composing. I think, as an organizer, that’s where I fit in most with the band.
I took on quite a bit of responsibility in terms of putting our songs together, and I think I’m quite good at it. For example, if someone hands me something and says, “I like this track,” I’ll listen to it, and be like: “Yeah, 4 minutes of it are fantastic, but there are 4 other minutes in it, making an 8-minute track that we just don’t need.” I think that’s something I’m quite good at…understanding where you can cut the fat off.
So, yeah, I’d say for my place in the band at the moment, I’m pretty happy to be one of the main compositional elements. I love writing for the band.
I think also, in terms of the artistic direction… your sort of aesthetic as a band is a huge deal. Especially in the social media world, where people only really perceive you through what you post on your Instagram, what they see on their YouTube feed, etc.
I chose the cover art for Genocidal Jail. Hopefully have some new merchandise coming out, which I designed, and I’m really proud of it. I think that helping to steer the band in an aesthetic direction that’s sort of consistent is so important. So, yeah, I take a big hand in doing that stuff too.
Just wrapping things up, where is Headcount headed next? What should fans expect from the upcoming album? Is there anything in particular that fans should look out for?
Basically, our priorities at the moment are tying up everything with a bow for our next release. I can’t guarantee a release date yet, but we’re aiming for the start of next year, so early 2026. We’re also going to release some extra content related to [Genocide or Jail].
This album is just gonna be full of stuff people haven’t ever heard on record. I want people to be able to listen front to back, enjoy each song individually, and then get a nice, sustained experience out of the album, man. So yeah, that’s kind of the gist of it.
