Bob Vylan: “We need to be in the places that don’t want to hear us, or the places that need it most”

If you walked around London earlier this year, you may have seen Bobby Vylan’s big, smiling face on a poster, announcing the release of the band’s new album Humble As The Sun, which came out in April. But the Bob Vylan singer wanted them to be more than just advertisements.

“Let’s say something with them, not just, ‘Oh, album out now.’ Let’s make a statement,” he explains. “I had this idea, from before the album was even finished, of taking lyrics and putting them on.”

The lines they chose included the bold declaration: ‘Bob Vylan got robbed for the Mercury!’ Speaking to Kerrang! in Brixton’s Canova Hall seven months on, Bobby talks through the words from Reign that lead up to that line – ‘These suits can’t burgle me! / Well, unless you count one time I was a victim of one crime / Was it a gun crime? / Nah, Bob Vylan got robbed for the Mercury!’

Bobby’s delivery bounces between confident, concerned and casual, making it feel almost like an acting performance.

“When you watch stand-up comedy, and you watch the pacing of a joke, and it leads you, leads you, leads you, and you’re not laughing, and you’re not laughing, and then, all of a sudden you’re in hysterics,” Bobby says. When he showed the song to people, they’d crack up at that point. “With that whole set-up to get to that line, I’m so, so proud of myself in the pacing of it, the wording of it.”

It’s just one example of the wordplay he’s happy to have penned, leaning forwards as he excitedly breaks down some of his other lyrics.

“That’s why we were Number One on the UK [Official Hip-Hop And R&B Albums Chart], because, motherfucker, I’m rapping my arse off on that album, man,” he laughs. Later that night during their headline show at Electric Brixton, Bobby will hold up that very award.

Humble As The Sun followed the band’s Top 20 album Bob Vylan Presents The Price Of Life in 2022, a fact they reference on the title-track: ‘Said I’m as humble as the sun / The album went to 18, but they know I’m Number One.’ By the time Humble As The Sun came out, the grime-punk duo had reached a level of critical and commercial success most bands only dream of, made even more impressive because they operate independently, putting out music on their own label, Ghost Theatre.

“I’ve personally learned a lot in running a bigger marketing and promotion campaign,” Bobby says. “I feel like I’ve become a better businessman because of it. I feel more confident than I did before in terms of releasing other people’s music, which is something that we had hoped to do with Ghost Theatre at some point.”

The album stands out for Bob Vylan, choosing optimism over anger, and adding more sounds to the mix.

“We’ve always had these hopeful and uplifting parts, but we haven’t necessarily shared them as much as we are now,” Bobby explains. “Maybe you create the audience that you are. If we’re putting out music that is only speaking of the anger and the frustration, then the audience is going to be more in tune with that. So when you express something that they’re not used to seeing or hearing, maybe they don’t know how to react to it.”

Crowds are already warming up to it. “I think with this new album out and performing it, it’s definitely shifting, which is great,” he says. “It’s a really nice thing to see.”

It’s something that’s helped to put drummer Bobbie in a more positive headspace, too.

“Just having said some of these things every day and talking to the crowd in the way that we talk to them, I now find myself thinking about how I talk to myself a lot differently,” he reflects. “I’m a person that likes to motivate myself, and I’m pretty harsh on myself when I do.”

When Bob Vylan meet Kerrang! today, it’s four hours before doors open for the first of two nights at Electric Brixton, closing out their biggest UK headline run to date.

Pre-show prep involves hitting the gym. But Bobby can normally be found by the merch table when doors open, signing autographs and meeting fans. Men of the people, both members come out to meet everyone after the show as well.

Throughout the nearly hour-and-a-half-long set, Bobby raps at a rapid clip, never faltering and somehow never short of breath, despite bouncing and dancing around the stage and in the crowd.

The audience matches his energy – there’s an explosive pit during GYAG (Get Yourself A Gun), without either Bob having to tell them to move. The first 30 minutes is devoted to Humble As The Sun, before moving into older material, like a mash-up of GDP, I Heard You Want Your Country Back, England’s Ending and CSGB, complete with their trusty cricket bat.

It ends with Hunger Games, with its uplifting spoken word over a thrumming drum’n’bass beat. Despite how different it feels from the fiery punk they’re known for, the audience dances along.

“It’s landed as well as you could imagine, that people know verbatim,” Bobbie enthuses. “Sometimes I look out and I just see people saying it with us.”

Bob Vylan’s touring pace is nearly as relentless as Bobby’s rapping, heading out to Europe soon after, and supporting Amyl And The Sniffers in Australia next year.

“That’s very exciting, because we’ve never been there before,” Bobby smiles. “It’s so cool that the band allows us the opportunity to go to places that we wouldn’t ever go to, and meet people that we wouldn’t have ever otherwise met.”

And they don’t seem ready to slow down anytime soon, either.

“I think this album has a lot of life in it,” Bobby says. “We need to get out and be on the road and build up in America, and get them up to speed.”

Bob Vylan have already started to put the graft in across the pond, playing headline shows as well as slots at massive festivals Aftershock and Louder Than Life.

“It’s a place where I feel like the message of this band really needs to be to be shared,” Bobbie says.

“And it resonates, as well,” his bandmate adds.

“We need to be in the places that don’t want to hear us, or the places that need it most – not just where people already like or believe the same things,” Bobbie continues.

“It’s like, ‘If you don’t like it here, go back,’” muses Bobby. “I could, but I could also just be here and annoy you. Why would I not do that? I’ll go back when I’m done annoying you.”

All this calls to mind the mentality of Pretty Songs, taken from The Price Of Life, in which Bobby sings: ‘I could do this all day long / Sing a song, a pretty little song / Blah-blah, rah-rah-rah / That’s alright, but I’d rather fight.’ When they perform it live, the stage lights switch to red, green and white – the colours of the Palestinian flag – while Bobby sings the updated lyrics: ‘Palestinian lives have always mattered / You were just never told so on TV.’

Bob Vylan as an entity have always been a space to talk about topics important to them. Even with all their success, they’re about more than music.

“We’ve been doing this our whole lives,” Bobbie says. “It’s not a thing that just starts at the show and ends at the show. It’s really just part of us.”

An example: Bobby attended a Palestine solidarity march as a teen, before music was even there. “That was 10 years or more before this band ever was thought about,” he says. “We just bring that part of our life into the room with us.”

And when the band did start, there was no question about using their platform to speak up. “If you have any moral compass, you understand the struggle,” Bobbie explains. “What’s more important is how people feel going onstage and taking that part of their lives away and going, ‘Oh, we’re not going to talk about this thing.’”

It’s been an ongoing discussion in the punk world and beyond over the past year, amid festival boycotts, as artists either showed their support for Palestine or stayed silent.

“For so many bands, this is their be-all and end-all,” Bobby says. “God forbid the band is not there. God forbid the money is not there. God forbid the crowd is not there. We love what we do. We love this band, but we were human beings before this band, and we’ll be human beings after it.”

Bob Vylan’s list of achievements runs long, having picked up the first MOBO for Best Alternative, and winning the Kerrang! Award for Album Of The Year in 2022.

“We’ve done everything else that we thought was a pipe dream,” Bobbie says. He recalls listening to Biffy Clyro in the drum room at school, and thinking, ‘One day, I’m gonna share a stage with these guys. I’ll go to a festival, and we’re gonna play together, and they’ll know who I am.’ Bob Vylan toured with Biffy in 2021. “And even to this day, when we’re at the same festival, they come and seek us out to say hi,” he grins.

But their success as a band can also be measured by the influence they’ve had.

“We’ve already accomplished something that a lot of bands will not ever do, and that is to have a ‘pre’ and a ‘post’,” Bobby says. “There is a BC and an AD to Bob Vylan. There is a before Bob Vylan, and there is now an after Bob Vylan. You look at the amount of punk bands now that are coming out and talking so openly and directly about things that they weren’t doing before.

“When you look at the punk bands that are choosing to remain independent and not seek out deals and trying to release things on their own labels and take it as far as they possibly can, independently and turning away deals,” Bobby says. “They weren’t doing that before We Live Here and The Price Of Life, but they’re doing it afterwards.”

It’s a landmark moment for representation in punk and alternative music as well. For all their success in 2024, this is the stuff that’s really important.

“As a band, to make an impact in the genre and the subculture of music that we’re in, to that degree, I think that’s probably the biggest accomplishment that we can have,” Bobby nods.

“It’s far more important than any award.”

This article originally appeared in the winter 2024 issue of the magazine. Humble As The Sun is out now via Ghost Theatre.

Read this next:

• Bob Vylan: “Our work is never done – the job is never complete”
• In the studio with Bob Vylan: “What shouldn’t be ignored is our power to change things”
• Bob Vylan, Witch Fever and High Vis are propelling punk into a vital new era