Interview mit Caine & Steve Collier von Believe In Nothing

You founded the band in 2023 – what was your vision back then? Why did you feel the need to start this band, and why does the world need it?
Caine: The band originally started as a very impromptu jam between myself and Jasper, I played drums and he played bass. That day we came with the intention to just blow off some steam and enjoy being in a room together, sweating and playing riffs. We wrote and recorded a demo version of „Fist Full Of Worms“ that day, and then, we let it sit for a while. I later brought in a couple of friends, Steve and Lawrence, who I felt would both bring something different to the table, but overall, and most importantly, be respectful and fun to work with, which was something I desperately needed in a creative process. Musical fun was the name of the group chat for a long time.

I had a bit of a personal epiphany with what kind of band I wanted to craft, and what kind of creative space to inhabit. My previous projects were hard work, for many reasons. I was personally purging a lot of grief and trauma into songs. I found sharing that trauma on stage to be helpful at first, and then it was dangerous, consistently picking the scab, and with little support or understanding. My goal with BELIEVE IN NOTHING was to make the lyrical content be as removed from my own personal trauma as possible. I wanted to absorb the absolute crippled state of the world and reflect it back out.

The need to start the band felt urgent once we got everyone together. I felt very liberated creatively, the band for me has acted as the bucket for which my overactive and creative brain can empty itself, I was able to craft a really strong mental image, a world of cold decay and failure. I found myself pulling from that mental plane to drain the lyrics and noise-inflected soundscapes. Once that world was built, everything came flooding out. Filling the buckets.
The world does not need us. The world doesn’t really need anything apart from healing at the moment. This band is not healing, it is a mirror held up to the worst parts of what humans have done, to each other and the earth that suffers us.

Calling yourselves BELIEVE IN NOTHING shows a huge dose of pessimism. But on the other hand, don’t you at least have to believe in yourselves to start a band and pursue it seriously?
Caine: The band was originally called Bankart, Full Of Knives and I think Eat Shit And Die for a while. I came up with BELIEVE IN NOTHING and we eventually settled with that, as it was more representative of the tone we were striking musically and lyrically. I find band names don’t only help inform an audience of the intention, but the band itself.
Also, I once threw a bin offstage at someone in my last band, so it was a private joke that the acronym would be BIN.
We didn’t believe in ourselves too much at the start. It took time, lineup changes, gear changes, constantly carving away. I had a clear sound in my head, and we had to all find a representation of that together, as a team. It was hard work. We scrapped a lot of stuff. I got pneumonia at the start of this process, and I really wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do vocals anymore, which was very difficult. But, with the right amount of fight, perseverance and support we have given each other, we had the lightbulb go off in the room. And then we started to believe we might be onto something.

What exactly does your band name refer to – personal experiences, the state of the world, or all of it?
Caine: The name is very literal. And I like to think people might contemplate it and draw their own conclusions, because it is a bit of a brain worm.
For me, the statement helps illustrate the punishing nature of the world we are living in and moving further towards. There is a coldness to the statement of believing in nothing, it gets under your skin, instantly paints a very dark and dystopian image, but it’s also very personal, tears down idols, leaves you alone with problems. These are the kinds of topics I anchor my lyrics and live performance on. It has helped set the tone of the band.
And the acronym helped me see it as a double ended good idea.

You played one of your very first shows before you even had songs – and then released it as an (unofficial) live album. How did that idea come about – and why did it work?
Steve: It was accidental. Our vocalist Caine was promoting a show at a local venue, and one of the bands failed to attend at the last minute. We all happened to be there attending and we decided to just jam like we did in our rehearsals for 20 minutes. We didn’t expect it to really work, and Caine even had his eyes shut for most of the set, but the positive reaction from the crowd really caught us by surprise. That’s what really solidified our vision for the band, we knew we were on to something really great.
Caine: This was before we had Jasper move to drums too, we had our friend Kyle from another Eastbourne band CHUB, he was helping us keep momentum in rehearsals as I found my feet after pneumonia. He played drums that night, with Jasper on bass and Steve on guitar. Lawrence was in the band at that point, but not at the show. Shout out to the band that pulled out and made us jump in their spot, like Steve said, it was pretty pivotal and informative seeing a crowd reaction to the work in progress.

Now you’ve finished an album – and even the cover alone raises questions. What are we looking at here?
Caine: I got a pig heart and stuffed a chain through it, put it in a box with some twigs, bones, a pig ear, plus some general vegetation I found and left it in the sun for 6 weeks. I took daily pictures. The album cover is the last one. The smell was piercing.

The title Rot sounds morbid. Why was that the perfect title – what does this word mean to you?
Caine: It was the most boiled down representation of everything we were doing and moving towards. Rot seemed to sum up the sludgey acrid vat of tar the music seems to wade in and the lyrics are hinged on degradation and collapse. Rot seemed to sum all that up in 3 letters.

Musically, the album is brutally heavy – no wonder your label recommends it “for fans of FULL OF HELL, THOU, PRIMITIVE MAN.” Do you see yourselves in that corner, are those real influences, or just comparisons?
Caine: FULL OF HELL are a huge influence on me. Vocally Dylan just blows my mind. His noise table gave me the confidence to start dabbling in that world.
At the start of the band we really clung onto the album they did with NOTHING – „When No Birds Sang“, and a lot of the slower entries on FULL OF HELL albums, „Armory Of Obsidian Glass“ and „Bleeding Horizon“ especially. The main takeaway was to be confident in using space, tension and patience in the writing process. Slow everything down and not to rush it. Let it fester.
I had actually (embarrassingly) never heard THOU or PRIMITIVE MAN before we became a band, and I don’t think the rest of the band had either. After getting some comparisons I dug in, and absolutely love those bands now. We all went to see THOU in the middle of recording the second half of the album. I think I cried.
It is humbling being compared to these bands. If we are put in the same corner as FULL OF HELL, THOU and PRIMITIVE MAN, I feel very lucky. They are masters of their craft and continue to challenge the genre of heavy music as a whole.

That said, I find your album much more versatile than those bands’ works. How do your songs come together – more spontaneously, like with that early show, or through long hours of tinkering and refining?
Steve: We had a very strict approach to write almost everything in the room together. We really wanted to go with our gut feelings on the songs, to have a really organic connection and almost primal feeling to them. There were a handful of riffs or ideas brought into the room that were either expanded upon or discarded, but almost all of the songs on the album were written together in the room.
Caine: For me, writing in the room is the absolute magic of being in a band. Humans have been collaboratively making sounds together longer than formed language. To communicate like that in a room, finding the beast, catching it and fucking riding that wild cunt is a feeling like no other, and then to attempt to replicate that madness into a song to share, it’s a very powerful thing. Kind of magical. We made a decision to focus on that technique as much as possible, and always have the noise board set up to help dictate space and texture. Finding that as the standard was the turning point in the band for me. The lightbulb.

How do you generally work – do you write a lot of material and then select, or do you write fewer songs and refine them until you have a full album?
Steve: For this album there were definitely fewer songs written that were refined. It was interesting to see how the songs grew between the first versions, to seeing how they went down live, and then tweaking back and forth until we were happy. We really wanted that weight of heavy air being achieved and being felt by the crowd.

In the UK you’re already making waves in the underground – when will you make it to Europe? Any plans?
Steve: There are no solid plans yet but we would love to perform in Europe. Any European promoters and booking agents looking for a hideous noise band that eats hammers and strangles each other with chains on stage, make yourselves known!

And in that context – how has Brexit affected things? Is it harder now to tour Europe than it used to be?
Steve: Yes, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s harder once you’re in Europe, if you’re mostly in the Schengen countries, but it’s definitely more time consuming and frustrating when it comes to the UK/EU border. The passport checks are much more thorough which sometimes causes very long wait times, I’ve missed a ferry in the past because of this. Carnets are also frustrating if you have to get one stamped before travelling. The wait times can sometimes take up to two hours, so you have to account for that on your travel plans.

Let’s end the interview with a short brainstorming session. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the following terms?
Summer Festivals: Tents being set on fire
Germany: Sankt Pauli
Black Metal: Pigs Blood
Vinyl: Unit Price
Climate change: Failure.
BELIEVE IN NOTHING in ten years: Older.

Publiziert am 27. Oktober 2025 von Moritz Grütz