Rip roaring Brighton-based Geordies SICK JOY, maintain their riff heavy output with new release new single ‘Hypodermic Sunshine’.  Produced by Dom Craik of Nothing But Thieves, Hypodermic offers a new side to the outfit and is the second new track from the trio since the release of last years debut album, ‘WE’RE ALL GONNA F***ING DIE’.  Damian Robinson caught up with frontman Mykl Barton to find out more. 

Fantastic new single Mykl, can you tell us a little more about it. 

To be honest there’s a few ideas to the song but we don’t like to talk too much about what our songs are about.  In a way they’re whatever you need them to be.  Some of my favourite music means more to me because people haven’t tried to overly talk about what it’s about. 

Hypodermic has a great sound to it, what was it like to be in with Dom? 

It’s really good and in a way its achieved its own potential.  We recorded this ourselves and then Dom mixed it.  We’ve worked with Dom before but this was slightly different in that it’s maybe a little more melodic and heavy and it turned out that we managed to catch that and then Dom pulled it together for us. 

Is the plan for him to be your long term producer like Rick Rubin and the Red Hots? 

Yeah, I mean that would be amazing.  We’re already 80% of the way into the next record, which sounds a little more like pop, and we’d love to work with him again for sure. 

That sounds an interesting direction 

Yeah it’s sounding like a mould of all our influences and we tend to listen to less and less really heavy pieces now.  So somewhere in the mix there’s loud guitars and big riffs but also a play for a more sonic sound and a little more experimentational but we’ll see. 

You’re playing live tonight and have some more shows on the horizon, is Hypodermic easy to play live, it sounds quiet complex to replicate live? 

Yeah we’ve been playing with various effects but I think we pull it off, plus it’s more to do with how you play live and the energy you bring; that’s the key.   

Plans for 2024 and some live North East shows? 

We’re planning to get this single out, and finish this run of shows then go back to writing mode and try to get something out maybe early in the year.  We’re certainly looking at doing some shows next Feb/March maybe somewhere like Little buildings but we’ll see where we get to first and take it from there.  The main thing is to enjoy ourselves and we’re doing that.  

Any final messages?  

Just go listen to the sh*t 

Hypodermic Sunshine is out now.