Knocked Loose are painfully boring - and that’s why we love them!

By R. Loxley

Not that long ago being in a band meant destroying yourself on camera.

In the 2000s, if you bought a tour DVD from Slipknot, CKY, or NoFX, you were buying into pure Jackass-style debauchery with borderline criminal behaviour, and bands teetering on the edge with entire fanbases forming not just around the music, but the dysfunction. The unspoken rule: the more you break yourself, the more authentic you are.

It’s grim in hindsight.

The worship of chaos in music goes all the way back to Jimi Hendrix choking on his own vomit, Jim Morrison mythologised as a doomed prophet, and Mick Jagger crooning about underage girls. The 1980s were arguably the darkest chapter, with scores of grown men singing about teenage girls, in a way that now just reads like open confession. Kurt Cobain’s death only seemed to deepen the sickness, with the media leaning even harder into spectacle. Collapse became entertainment.

Extreme music attracted even more extreme dysfunction. If the music’s violent, you’d better be puking in your van, sleeping in squats, and getting arrested. The music was marketed through mayhem, and if someone filmed it, even better. Peter Doherty became a tabloid regular because of his heroin habit, not his music, and Amy Winehouse’s unraveling was turned into a punchline, collapse as clickbait. Within more DIY scenes, those with the highest tolerance for chaos were mythologised. GG Allin self-mutilated and shat on stage before overdosing, and no one talks about his songs. Marilyn Manson’s media attention was always about controversy, not sound, with credible accusations of sexual assault and abuse later catching up with him. Burzum is apparently beloved for murdering Euronymous and burning churches. The Jackass generation are now cautionary tales, with public meltdowns, missing teeth, relapse and death. No one won.

This is what makes Knocked Loose so radical.

The new Knocked Loose tour documentary Beyond The Breakdown is stunningly dull. No arrests, no fights, not even a single pint of beer lifted in triumph, and it’s a riveting video. The documentary is about soundchecks, team morale, and decorum, with the crew speaking as proud collaborators. Every single person interviewed is relaxed and deeply complimentary about the band’s character and professionalism.

We meet their front-of-house engineer and learn the exact processes that go into getting that earth-swallowing sound, as guitarist Isaac Hale talks about signal chains with a nerdy, and academic focus. Knocked Loose conjure apocalyptic violence on stage, but there is absolutely no chaos backstage and no fragile egos. Instead, there’s care and calm, and from that they’ve built what is easily one of the most devastating live acts in music today. They make everyone from techs to tour managers to lighting crew feel like part of the family, knowing what happens when pressure breaks people, and instead they’ve found something sustainable, stable, and extremely boring behind the scenes.

Knocked Loose are the beginning of a new rule.

The old model worshipped broken genius, but the new one celebrates a functional team. There’s still plenty of room for eccentricity and edge, but the glorification of dysfunction is dead, or at least dying. Their work ethic belongs more to that of athletes than addicts, and it works, because they aren’t spending their days hungover or at war.