Slaves talk their new album Acts of Fear and Love, first/wrong impressions, and auditioning for a new drummer

Punk-rock duo are about to drop their third record which marks a noticeable switch-up in sound

Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent of Slaves (Juergen Teller)

In a stiflingly hot studio in Mile End, London, Slaves guitarist Laurie Vincent is auditioning for a new drummer. There’s a knock on the door: it’s Sam Doyle, apparently looking for a new band after The Maccabees called it a day. Ben Thatcher from Royal Blood drops by. And Joel Amey from Wolf Alice. The gorilla from the Cadbury’s advert is keen.

Dave Rowntree from Blur walks in. “Mind if I have a go?” he asks.

Despite a few fans expressing concern at an announcement on Slaves’ social media claiming Isaac Holman had quit the band to pursue a career in dance, this is in fact a shoot for the band’s new video, to accompany their single “Chokehold”.

It’s “flat-out silly”, as Holman puts it a couple of weeks later, as both band members sit contentedly outside a bar on Brick Lane, while Vincent adds that it’s the “most fun we’ve ever had on a video shoot”.

“Chokehold” is the second single from Slaves’ upcoming third album Acts of Fear and Love, released on 17 August. Recorded at a residential studio in Belgium, where the band were spoiled for choice when it came to vintage guitars and other equipment, it’s a record fans may be surprised by, and one the band developed through testing and experimenting with new sounds, and new ideas.

It’s less angry then their first two albums. Opener “The Lives They Wish They Had” is one of the few that harks back to their 2015 debut Are You Satisfied? And 2016’s follow-up Take Control: raw and featuring squirmingly on-the-knuckle observations about the infinite hunt for social media validation.

“I said to Isaac at one point, we can only have one of these on this album, and I think Isaac’s done it better than he has on either of the last two albums, in one song,” Vincent says, adding with a laugh: “We’ve lured fans in with the first song, they’re all really worried at the moment."

They’ve worked harder to ensure the record has a proper dynamic, with more considered, reflective songs in between the harsher, rowdier tracks fans have might expect: “The things we enjoy most is quite sad, melancholic music, so it was nice to make a bit of that,” Holman nods, with Vincent citing artists such as Elliot Smith and Leonard Cohen as favourites.

Acts of Fear and Love looks more at human behaviour and questions it, rather than railing against the system as they have in the past. It’s refreshing: amid a wave of artists calling on their peers to make more angry protest songs, Slaves sound like they want to offer you a cup of tea and a nice chat.

When they started out, it seemed as though Slaves got off on the wrong foot with many people. Asides from the exhaustive controversy around their name, they were painted as rather loutish, swaggering lads from Kent who were all mouth and no trousers – in the flesh, there is some of that cocksure charm, but they’re also thoughtful, and curious about the UK music scene as it stands.

“I think this album will be like a first album to some people,” Vincent says. “People in the know don’t think like that anymore, although I think some of our fans still want us to be like that. But doing things like Slaves TV it’s so obvious that that’s not who we are.”

They’re certainly having fun with the album promo. A teaser for the new record posted on Slaves TV showed Vincent’s baby son Bart take on the role of producer, scolding them for not working hard enough or trying to show them how to play their instruments properly.

“All our other kids are gonna give us so much grief about Bart,” Vincent says, laughing. “I know any other kids I have are gonna be like ‘ooh you love Bart more than us’. He’s got a big attitude.”

Acts of Fear and Love is arguably the best capturing of the band’s live sound, too, whether it’s an acoustic track such as “Daddy”, the vulnerable “Photo Opportunity”, or their punchy single “Chokehold”. Vincent admits he’s struggled in the past, to find a recording that truly captures how he “thinks we should sound”.

“I think this album is better produced, and the guitar sounds like you’re stood in front of it, the drums are tighter,” Holman suggests. “This is the most fun we’ve ever had as a band, on this record. It’s the music we’d listen to.”

“All of our music has that dynamic from the beginning to the end of the album, whether it’s ‘Daddy’ and this guy having a midlife crisis, or ‘Acts of Fear And Love’ on how people treat each other,” Vincent adds. “I think ‘Bugs’ is the first time we’ve written an all-out thrash song that’s got hooks in it. It’s almost like old nu-metal. I was really not sure at the beginning, we were being so heavy, but then it’s got these big singalong bits in it.

“What I found really interesting this time is if you listen to lots while you’re recording, you start thinking about the dynamics. Sometimes I think rock’s not doing as well because a lot of it is super-compressed and flat. People need to get better at recording guitar music.”

'All our other kids are gonna give us so much grief about Bart being on the album' (Juergen Teller)

They wonder about the sudden resurgence of indie bands from the noughties – acts such as The Kooks, The Wombats and Razorlight – plus a wave of younger bands who Vincent exclaims sound “exactly like that”.

“It feels like it’s too soon for that to come back around,” he says. “It’s like those cycles of music have got so much shorter, that’s what’s mind-blowing. It’s like… we only just had that. I’m interested in why all of the same rock videos from when I was a kid are still on TV, when so much of the focus is on new rotation. Why is it so stuck in that time?

“I think everyone wants guitar music to become more prevalent again,” he adds. “Because rap’s been dominant for so long, there are teenagers who aren’t aware of Nirvana… as teenagers they’ve never been exposed to anything apart from what they want to find. It’s not a bad thing, but when I was young I feel like popular music was more diverse.”