Breed 77 on a decade away, the songs that outlived the scene, andVII
There’s a particular kind of band that never quite belonged to the era that produced them, and is therefore never quite dated by it. Breed 77 are one. They came out of Gibraltar into a London that was busy inventing nu-metal, spent a decade and a half being enthusiastically mis-filed by everyone who tried, and then — around ten years ago, simply stopped. Now they’re back, with a new album, VII, out on 13 November, and a UK tour that begins in Bristol ten days before it.
Speaking to Paul Isola and Danny Felice, what’s striking isn’t nostalgia. It’s the near-total absence of it.
“The songs are our legacy”
Legacy is a loaded word for musicians, some treat it as an insult, others think about little else. Isola doesn’t flinch at it, but he narrows it to one thing.
“I think we all feel the same, that the songs are our legacy,” he says. “Because if a song is good in one time, and then 20 years later it still stands up, it stands up on the song, not on the climate or the fashion of the time. So our legacy, I believe, is always trying to write the best songs we could, and songs that would stand the test of time.” Then, almost as an afterthought: “Beyond the sound, beyond the intention, beyond everything, the purest thing is always in you.”
Felice agrees with the sentiment but refuses the frame. “If you had told me ten years ago that we would have split for ten years and then come back, I wouldn’t have known. Nobody knows what happens in the future.” The back catalogue, he concedes, is a practical gift, “we had the people that like the band, so maybe it’s easier than starting from zero with a new name”. “Sometimes I go back, and I think, ‘oh shit, we shouldn’t have left it’. But you cannot go back to the past and think what would have happened. I like to turn the pages. For me the future is now, the past is the past, and for me it’s the new album, the new music, the new tours. Breed 77 in 2026, that’s where my head is, and my spirit.”
It’s a philosophy that shaped the shape of the comeback, including how long it took. “It was very important to us when we came back, and maybe why our comeback has been a bit more prolonged than we would have liked, that we had to be current,” Isola says. “We had to have music now. We couldn’t live on the memories of yesteryear. A band lives and dies on what it is today.”
A beach, a pandemic, and a very short conversation
The decision itself was less dramatic than the ten-year gap suggests. Felice remembers the setting first: “We were actually on the beach, if you want to know. A sunny beach, beside the seaside.”
Isola fills in the rest. The band, in their heads, had never really ended, “we had just put the band to rest for a bit. It wasn’t gone”, but the serious conversation happened at the start of COVID. “There were so many of our freedoms that were curtailed, and life changed so suddenly, that I think it really put a spotlight on how much we had enjoyed being Breed 77. It just seemed stupid not to do it again.” He laughs off any grander reading: “I’d love to say that there were deep philosophical conversations behind it, but we’re very simple people. It was as simple as, ‘Hey man, shall we do this again?’ It was a no-brainer.”
Felice’s version has a harder edge, the arithmetic of time. “It was like, we do this now, or it’s never gonna happen. You suddenly realise that ten years passes like that. And then you look and it’s like, well, another ten years can pass really quickly, and then you’re in another frame of mind, the world can change a lot. So it was: we need to do this now.”
Distance as a production technique
Breed 77 have always been globe-trotters, recording in different countries as a matter of routine.VIIwas different in a way that turned out to matter: for the first time, the band weren’t in the same room.
“It’s the first record where I wasn’t at the tracking sessions for the main band in the big studio,” Isola says. “We’ve always sent songs to each other via email, song ideas and stuff. But it was weird.” What he’s clear about is that the constraint made the record rather than compromising it: “The record couldn’t have come out how it’s come out if it was done in a more conventional manner. It’s our most eclectic work, in that it’s very varied in scope and in tone and in intention. And that’s because of the recording process, because the distance was drawn out a bit longer.”
His explanation for why is the best thing he says all interview. “Songs are a representation of where you’re at at a certain time. You spread that spectrum of time, you spread it out wider, so you’re getting a much wider thing. You’re not always wanting to kick off. You’re not always wanting to be sad, or angry, or happy. So all this variety of our life experience, plus the ten years between one album and another.” He compares it to a debut: “When you do your first album you’ve got more years to pull from, of songs and inspiration. Very different songs from different times have ended up together on the same album, and the result is a very eclectic mix that makes the album very epic, and a great listen as a whole.”
Felice treats difficulty as the band’s native condition. “We started like kids from Gibraltar coming to the big city in London, and already that was a challenge in itself. We were very young, it was the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s, and it was the time nu-metal hit. So it was always challenging for us. We’ve come back, and it’s a different challenge, but it’s still the same, it’s hard, mate.” Isola: “We thrive through adversity. When the chips are lined up against you, you’ve got to bring your A game.”
The outsiders, still outside
Ask whether Breed 77 need to fit into the modern heavy landscape and the answer arrives before the question finishes.
“We’ve never fitted in, man,” says Isola. Felice, over the top of him: “I was going to say the same. Even back then we were different. So now we come back still different. Nothing nearer to anybody else.”
He remembers the pigeonholing with some amusement. “Journalists and the business tried to put us in styles, new wave, nu-metal, this and that. But it didn’t mean nothing to us, because we listened to the other bands and we’re like, it doesn’t connect.”
Isola is more reflective about the cost. “There’s a real conflict between: has it worked in our favour, has it worked against us? We were never part of any scene per se. They tried to tag us to different things, but nothing’s ever stuck.” His era punished that. “We came up in a time, from the 90s to the early 2000s, where metal was very fashion-led — all nu-metal, the baggy pants and the Adidas and the hairstyles and the piercings. And then after that, makeup came in, masks came in. We were here before all that.” The dividend arrives late: “With age comes this wisdom that it’s kind of okay not to fit in. There’s probably the majority of the world that are unique in themselves — the thing is that groups make more noise.”
“Is it them, or is it me?”
Which is, not coincidentally, whatVIIis about. “A lot of the lyrical concepts on this album talk about that,” Isola says. “About not fitting in. About feeling outside.”
He traces one of the first songs written for the record back to a homecoming. “I’ve come back to live in Gibraltar after a couple of decades living away, and I realised that I felt the same way I felt when I lived here as a kid. I felt the same way when I got to London, and now I feel the same way when I’ve come back. And it’s a thing, is it them, or is it me? I think it’s very much a me thing. And there’s a whole bunch of me’s everywhere.”
From there he arrives somewhere unexpectedly warm. “It seems like we don’t want to celebrate the difference. Because of the angle we’ve got of discrimination, racism, fascism, all the isms, it’s all about the negative in the differences. And there’s a lot of positives. The world would be such a boring place if everybody saw everything the same way.”
He’s adamant the record isn’t a sermon. “We write a lot about it on this record, not so much as a message — because we never preach — but as a documentation. We feel this way, it’s okay to feel this way, a lot of people feel this way. Let’s celebrate the differences. That’s what makes the world full of colour.”
Felice sees the same thing from the other side of the barrier, working in venues. “I daily work with kids. Nowadays everybody’s got their own — trying to be their own scene. There’s loads of little scenes, and everybody’s in their own world. Everybody’s eye for their own identity, which is important for people to realise what they are and feel comfortable with what they are.” His conclusion is a shrug and a smile: “In a way, nothing changes. It keeps on being the same.”
The proof in the pudding
Ten years is long enough to wonder whether anyone kept the light on. Bloodstock answered that.
“It’s a humbling experience for us,” says Felice. “We didn’t know what to expect, if people were going to be there for us. And the proof was in the pudding when we did Bloodstock. We just looked at the audience, and it was a packed tent, and we were like, wow. You could see the happiness in people’s faces singing the songs. That’s really humbling after so long.”
Isola frames it as continuity with who they’ve always been. “We’ve always been humble. We’re kids from a small town. Everything’s always been very big for us, and never overlooked. Every single detail, every single gig that you remember, we remember them too.” Reminded of a show at the Adelphi in Hull, he supplies the detail unprompted — “the bus coming out the side of the wall” — then the gratitude that goes with it. “Our art has been able to afford us these experiences. It’s priceless. It’s beyond the gift, and we don’t take it for granted for a second.”
What’s changed is the age range in the room. “People sing your songs, people are bringing their kids. There’s this generational thing going on. We are nothing without the people that come and appreciate what we do.” He can’t resist the tease: “It’s been such a great comeback, and like I say, man, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Success
So what does success look like, for a band that already did the awards, the big tours, the world, and then walked away from it?
Felice points out the question has been reset. “It feels sometimes that we’re starting all over again, so we’re at the beginning.” Then the honest version: “If you’re happy with yourself, with what you’ve done. We cannot control how big the band gets. The music business is like a monster, it’s not that every band is going to be huge, a Metallica, a Bon Jovi or a Def Leppard. That doesn’t work like that.” What he wants is more of what the band already gave him: “Thanks to Breed, all of us managed to see many parts of the world. We’ve been to Mexico, USA, Australia, Europe, you name it. My ambition would be to go to the places we haven’t. I would love to do Asia, Thailand. We’ll expect the best, and we’ll work as hard as we can.”
Isola takes the harder line on ambition as a hazard. “Success is very subjective. There’s people chasing wild dreams, and it turns into a position of avarice and obsession, and it can turn very dark. The business we’re in is an ugly monster, it’ll chew you up and spit you out in no time at all. So the successes you look for, you keep them in your reality.”
And he will not have his career described as fortunate. “I’m not gonna say lucky, because we’ve worked our asses off, man. I don’t like words like lucky and talent and all that stuff.” What’s left is almost modest: “Success on a personal level is that every day you can be a better human, a better friend, a better version of yourself, and you carry on keeping your eyes and ears open and learning from the world around you. Keep it real, keep it realistic.”
VII
VII is released on 13 November. The UK tour starts ten days earlier, on 3 November in Bristol, and runs through the first half of the month, headline dates plus two shows with Soil, on 8 November in Bradford and 15 November in Margate. Tickets, Isola says, are moving well.
“If you want to experience Breed, there’s only one way to do it, and that’s live. That’s our environment. That’s where we thrive.” Felice’s addendum is as brief as everything else he says: “Come and see the band. And if you haven’t done before, now’s the time.”
Isola has one last thing, and it isn’t about his band. “The climate for live music in the UK is in a very, very precarious position. It is the most important time ever for people to buy tickets in advance, and to pre-order albums in advance. You do not know how important it is. It guarantees people’s jobs. It guarantees people being able to eat.” He wants the ask to land wider thanVII: “Support the scene. Whenever you can, and you’ve got some money that you don’t need for anything vital, go and pre-save, pre-order, buy tickets. It’s super important now.”
Thirty years in, from a rock in the Mediterranean to a tent full of people who never forgot, Breed 77 have never sounded like anyone else and have never had much interest in learning how.VII is, by their own account, the widest-angle record they’ve made, a decade of feeling outside, written down without a sermon attached. Turns out the band who never fit in were just early.
VIIis out 13 November. Breed 77 tour the UK from 3 November, with dates alongside Soil in Bradford (8 Nov) and Margate (15 Nov).