2016 seems to have been the year when the impossible was suddenly realised – in the starkest, most nightmarish way. The forces of xenophobia rallied around the Brexit cause, plunging the UK into political and economic uncertainly that nobody – least of all the people who caused it in the first place – actually knows how to manage. Aleppo – an entire city – lies in ruins, with countless lives shattered. And in the United States Donald Trump won the race to the White House, amidst one of the most controversial and acrimonious elections in American history.
VANT frontman Mattie Vant has been on tour through most of this, watching in utter bewilderment as political certainties were shattered, and the darker emotions of the human psyche were let loose. “I think it’s just an absolute disaster,” he tells Clash. “The right wing movements of the world have been using fear and anxiety to essentially con people into voting for their philosophies. It’s a really, really scary time to be alive.”
The spectre of far right politicians exploiting dissatisfaction with the political sphere is something that has unnerved the frontman. “Now we’re left in this weird situation where I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going to happen next,” he explains. “It’s not over. Obviously these decisions have been made and now we’ve got Donald Trump as the president of the United States - or at least he will be in January - and we will at some point leave the European Union. It’s important not to forget that it going to happen and there’s going to be consequences for those actions.”
The band make frequent reference to these tectonic shifts in their lyrics, and when playing live throw out pieces of philosophy for fans to chew on. It’s a gradual process, but it’s one they hope will be beneficial, with fans educating themselves more on the decisions being made in their name.
“Social media is currently stopping debate,” he says. “It’s basically feeding off everything we want to see and we don’t see the other side of the argument any more, and I think because of that it’s very hard to influence the other side of the argument.”
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For Mattie, the key to any kind of political progress lies in the young – it was older votes who backed Brexit and Trump, after all. “I went to a very poor school in the north east of England and I didn’t have a very good education. I left school with no knowledge of politics. The only sort of political event that I remember from school was 9/11.”
“When I left school I spent a few years just not giving a fuck. I experimented in music and life and drugs and had fun. I just didn’t give a fuck about the future. It was only when I was a little bit older and I had to get a full-time job and I had to live on pot noodles and bread and butter when I lived in London because I couldn’t afford anything else that I was like... shit, this stuff really impacts me and really makes a difference to my life. I need to use my vote and I need to use my voice to make things better first and foremost for myself but also everyone else.”
“It should be mandatory that politics is taught within education. When a child leaves school at the age of 16, which is state mandatory education, the state should teach them about the system that is in place, it should teach them about the basics of what Labour is, what Conservatives are, what the opposition parties are, what their vote means, how to use their vote.”
“If you don’t capture the imagination of people when they’re young then they will never care about politics, or when they start to care about it it is too late. It should be just verbatim fact, it shouldn’t be teachers putting their own opinions on people… I guess that’s the only place where it could possibly fall down. But that needs to happen for me. Education in general needs to change.”
Taking a more rounded view on social change is a hallmark of Mattie’s lyricism, one that echoes his idea of ‘mature punk’ - moving beyond the sloganeering, and attempting to create change within existing structures. “I was very much aware, there is no other real solution offered if you go ‘well, fuck the system’ because then where do you start? If you got your way then where do you go from there?”
“I’m a firm believer that we can be together and the thing I love the EU – as much as it has a lot of flaws - it’s a collection of the greatest minds from all around Europe, and that can only be a good thing. Swapping ideas and having debates on a continental scale rather than just the country-wide scale can only be a good thing.”
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“Moving away from that, and towards philosophies of separation and protection of our identities and our ideologies, is terrifying to me because it’s regression, it’s going backwards. It’s going against everything all of these people that dedicated their lives, and lost their lives, to push for a more equal society worked for.”
“Those people will be spinning in their graves right now at the thought of these things coming into play and the condemnation of extremist minorities who have manipulated religions to fight individual pursuits of destruction. Then we as a society - because of people like Farage and Donald Trump - have tarnished an entire culture with the same brush. And then all of a sudden we saw straight after Brexit and straight after the US election an uprise in hate crime and racial tension across the United Kingdom and the United States.”
But where next? 2016’s apocalyptic grasp can at times fell all encompassing. “I think we’ve got to almost draw a line on this year and go: this is a massive place to learn from our mistakes. I think in 2017 we’ve got to look to find answers to these imposing questions.”
“I think the only thing we can do is try and manipulate the situation to work it as best we can to our advantage. I really don’t want to lose my rights to travel freely and work around Europe, as I’m sure many people do, and equally I don’t want all of my friends that are from Europe to go back to their home countries. That in itself is really scary but there’s a hell of a lot more scary stuff on the American side of things that may be even worse.”
“The black and white of it all is very terrifying,” he says. “The liberals have to stand up to it.”
“There are people out there actually doing positive stuff and it’s our responsibility to try and support those causes where we can. I think that’s what we’re going to try and do with our album campaign, and our album, because it feels like a really important time to release the body of work that we have. That’s my ambition for the next year anyway.”
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