'Why Would You Not Try?': Ithaca on Integrity, Legacy and Their Final Show
Monday, 03 February 2025
Written by Will Marshall
Ithaca’s ‘They Fear Us’ was perhaps always going to be remembered as a landmark moment in modern British heavy music. Released in 2022, the London metalcore band’s second album was furious, vulnerable and principled and its place in the pantheon is now all but assured following the recent announcement that they’d soon be calling it quits with a final song and one last headline show.
The news sent their fanbase into mourning, but on many levels it made sense. To Ithaca themselves, dipping at the height of their powers offered them the chance to go out in the same way they’d approached their entire career — unbowed and on their own terms. “There were so many amazing things we got to do as a band that I never thought would’ve been possible,” guitarist Sam Chetan-Welsh says during a Zoom call just before Christmas.
Forming in 2012, Ithaca released their first EP ‘Narrow The Way’ two years later. Their breakout came in 2019 with their debut album ‘The Language of Injury’, which fused head-spinning, crushingly heavy riffage with vocalist Djamila Azzouz’s unremittingly intense barrage of screams and melodic change ups.
From that starting point they branched out to headline shows in America and thrillingly warped expectations by touring with big name indie-folk band Big Thief — one venue in Germany put up a sign warning that the opening band was really loud. “That [tour] was one of the most ludicrous things we’ve done,” Sam says. Each achievement was worth more given they were a band for whom passion and integrity remained paramount.
Ithaca were as outspoken in life as they were furious on record, which, as Sam admits, drew a fair amount of flak. “Having any kind of political underpinning was incredibly gauche,” he says, in reference to the scene around them back at the start. “But now bands will drop out of Download about Palestine — an entire stage [lineup] collapsed because of an engagement with politics. There’s a much deeper sense of a purpose-driven approach.”
Outspokenness on issues of representation, racism, sexism and abuse within the music industry might have come at a cost to the band, but it’s something they would not compromise on. “For some reason we always struggled to get booked for certain festivals,” Sam says with a wan smile. As they prepare to turn out the lights, though, this refusal to budge is something Sam looks back on as a proud part of their legacy. “This is complete credit to Djamila,” he says. “Some of the fights we started were about highly damaging people…who were deeply entwined in our scene. Now we have much less tolerance for those kinds of people, which is a major shift.”
Released by Hassle Records, ‘They Fear Us’ set the seal on Ithaca’s uncompromising approach. It embraced the band’s own multicultural heritage and identities, fusing things like field recordings of religious chants in the Ganges Sam recorded while in India for a family funeral with serrated guitar work and lyrics and melodies that veered from scathing to achingly vulnerable.
It was tied up with an aesthetic — vivid orange dresses, music videos captured in stately homes in a disruptive challenge to colonial history — that was uniquely theirs. “For that record, we had a label that didn’t ask any questions,” Sam recalls. “We went to the studio, came back with the album and they more or less said, ‘Thanks guys, this sounds good.’ They never made us feel like we couldn’t do something.”
The record also landed them a feature in Metal Hammer alongside other luminaries from a burgeoning UK scene, from metalcore extremists Heriot and shoegazey metallers Loathe to nu-metal revivalists BlackGold. “We didn’t have that sort of thing when we first started,” Sam says. “There were no prominent bands who could have passed the torch or mantle.”
This idea of legacy is naturally tied up with Ithaca’s ending. They were always driven by pure passion and lofty creative standards rather than chasing success, which goes some way to explaining why they have opted to quit while they’re on top. “Bands don’t really do this, they wrap up and do a final show, but it’s not marked with intentionality,” Sam explains.
Alongside their final recorded statement Ithaca will also play that one final headline show at London’s O2 Academy Islington on February 8. They wanted to make it bigger than their usual while retaining a sense of intimacy, like a gathering of friends and family. “It is going to be funereal…we’re going out completely on our own terms, exactly the way we want to do it,” Sam says. “We’re going to stand on our integrity.”
“All I wanted to do was make cool shit and do things I was proud of,” he continues. “What’s harder to get people to understand is that this is also about not making slop. I do believe this final track is up to the standard that people deserve; had we forced our way through another record, there was a huge risk we would create something not up to par, and we could never let that happen. This isn’t about taking something away from people, it’s about stopping something shitty happening.”
Ithaca will remain a special band long after their curtain call — they simply could not do things by the book, and we were the ones to benefit from their pursuit of freedom and integrity. “If we have had any impact at all, if anyone cares about anything we ever did, this is the principle I hope they take,” Sam says. “If you're just doing it as a passion project, why would you pander? Why would you diminish yourself? Why would you do what everyone else is doing? Why would you not try?”
Ithaca Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat February 08 2025 - LONDON O2 Academy Islington
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