Despondent

Despondent are a speedy fast skate punk band from leicester with all spikey guitar riffs and snotty vocals with 100mph drums thrown in for good measure. Despondent spawned in August 2004 when Reuben Vaughan (guitar/vox, ex-Third Hardest) and Luke Richards (bass/bvox, ex-Third Hardest) had some songs they'd written with some hard-hitting political and sociological lyrics, they just needed a drummer to bring the songs to life. Enter Nik Coley (drums/bvox, ex-Charybdis, Skoona & Mr. Tickle), and after a few practices the sound was complete. A couple of gigs and about a month of slogging hard work practicing as much as possible and they went to the recording studio to do the 10 tracks of "Proud to fail", which was reviewed very nicely on Punktastic ("this is a great, fast, melodic punk record" etc.) and can be bought from the band's website. In March 2005 they released their much anticipated "Come and Gone" EP, always the crowd's favourite and nowadays always seems to spark off a frenzy of crowd-surfing. They've now played loads of gigs supporting great bands like Fandangle, Da Skywalkers, Sonic Boom Six, The Big, Useless ID, Bullets To Broadway and Red Lights Flash and have just recorded their new "Fake EP" which has just been released and got brill reviews by Disconnected Press ("the vocals are great...this is really really good melodic hardcore"), No Front Teeth ("this is a solid EP...with an attacking political edge"), Moshmonkey ("It's a great piece of work...they are a great band") and Punktastic ("pedal-to-the-metal punk with a large dose of melody").