Baltimore’s Double Dagger make some of the most urgent, kicking and screaming, guitar-less post-hardcore meets turbo-charged pop you’ll hear just about anywhere right now. In fact that is the last time I will try and describe what they play. It’s just great. Don’t take my word for it though. Click on to listen a whole track for free and make up your own mind as well as hear what the band have to say for themselves.

You guys used to be in an outfit called League of Death. Now that is a band name. Whatever happened to League of Death?
Bruce Willen (Bass guitar): League of Death died.

How did it die? Was it suicide or death by other means?
Bruce: The drummer actually left to live in England.

So England killed League of Death?
Bruce: I guess so. We were just trying to make this evil heavy metal band but we weren’t really very good musicians and it all just came to a natural end.

Did any of the evilness carry over to Double Dagger from League Of Death?
Bruce: The confrontational live element maybe but we just wanted to do this high energy thing and make it catchy, not quite so evil. We used to break a lot of things and Denny, our current drummer, really beats the hell out of his drums so I guess that has remained consistent.

Where are your guitars?
Bruce: I just wanted to play the bass after having played guitar in League of Death and it just wound up that way. We just couldn’t find a guitarist that suited what we wanted to play. It wasn’t like we were inspired musically by Lightning Bolt or whatever, but I guess seeing bands like that made us think, “Hmm, maybe we don’t need a guitar”.

Tell people in London a bit about Baltimore. Is it all like The Wire and partying with Dan Deacon at Wham City with Daniel Higgs from Lungfish wandering around the place?
Nolen Strals (vocals): Well, we’re not really affiliated to Wham City but we’ve sure played a lot of of shows with those people. The scene  here is so small that everyone knows each other and the bills are really varied which is good and everyone just helps each other out.
Bruce: Funny you should mention Daniel Higgs, he lives in the apartment below me. I keep an eye on his place when he is on tour and water his plants.
Nolen: In terms of the city there are plenty of places that you wouldn’t want to go to but there are plenty of places that are totally fine and it has such a broad range of spaces to play, DIY house shows, art space, bars, clubs.

You’ve sold it. Maybe I’ll come visit soon. The nice pictures that accompany this post are by your Post Typography design company. How did you go from playing rock & roll with no guitars to doing graphics?
Bruce: We just made a few sleeves and then set up the company and somehow it ended up becoming our job.

Listen:

Double Dagger - “The Lie/The Truth”

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JAM