Basement

Basement: Three Hiatuses, One Intact Lineage, and the Slow Vindication of British Emo

Basement, the Ipswich post-hardcore quintet, have built one of British alternative rock’s most durable catalogs through two hiatuses, three labels, and a viral reckoning that rewrote their commercial story. From the raw immediacy of their 2011 debut through the sonic expansion of Beside Myself and the 2026 return record WIRED, Basement have remained constitutionally unchanged — same five members, same emotional grammar — while the industry around them kept shifting tectonic plates beneath the emo underground.

Origins, Hiatus, and the Architecture of Restraint

Basement formed in September 2009 in Ipswich, England, following the break-up of pop punk band In This for Fun.

They have maintained the same lineup since then: brothers Andrew and James Fisher on lead vocals and drums, respectively; lead guitarist Ronan Crix; rhythm guitarist Alex Henery; and bassist Duncan Stewart.
That consistency — five members, zero substitutions, across nearly seventeen years — is itself a structural statement. In a genre where personnel churn is endemic, Basement’s immobility reads as deliberate, its creative friction coming from internal musical tension rather than external lineup flux.

They recorded their debut album, I Wish I Could Stay Here, in May 2011 at Stuck on a Name Studios in Nottingham.

The album received favourable reviews from critics, and featured on Thrash Hits’ top 20 albums of 2011 list.
The record announced a band with a clear tonal center: compressed, melodic post-hardcore that absorbed British reserve without abandoning American emo’s confessional velocity.
The band’s music is heavily influenced by early ’90s acts like Sunny Day Real Estate and Nirvana, as well as emo bands such as the Promise Ring and Braid.
Those reference points aren’t arbitrary name-checks — they describe a genuine relationship with DIY process and register: short songs, close-mic’d rhythm guitars, vocal melodies that sit in the middle of the pitch range rather than reaching for stadium uplift.

Colourmeinkindness was recorded at The Panda Studios in Fremont, California, and produced by Sam Pura, released on 23 October 2012.
The California recording location signaled an outward pivot — toward the American scene that had given them their aesthetic lodestars — but Basement then retreated entirely. The “This Is Goodbye” tour closed with sold-out dates in Leeds and London in November 2012, and the band went dark.
The band were initially active between 2009 and 2012, releasing I Wish I Could Stay Here and Colourmeinkindness, then active again between 2014 and 2019, releasing Promise Everything (2016) and Beside Myself (2018).
Their return in 2014, still without any membership change, confirmed something important: Basement do not reinvent themselves. They reload.

Discography: Four Pivots and a Fifth Act

I Wish I Could Stay Here and Colourmeinkindness established the formal vocabulary that the band’s audience would eventually carry into the algorithmic era.
While Colourmeinkindness is now esteemed as a cornerstone of modern emo, the band hadn’t released a new album in the eight years since 2018’s Beside Myself
at the point their third arc began. The second album’s closer relationship to soft grunge — downtuned guitar timbres, more dramatic dynamic swing — proved to have catalog longevity that the band themselves couldn’t have predicted in 2012.

Promise Everything, their third studio album, was recorded in April 2015 at Assault and Battery 2 in England, produced again by Sam Pura, and released on 29 January 2016 through Run for Cover.

Promise Everything received a Metacritic aggregate score of 75/100, with Exclaim! rating it 9/10.
The record moved the band toward a more polished melodic register — cleaner guitar tones, more room in the mix, Andrew Fisher’s vocal delivery pulling back from the post-hardcore upper-register strain toward something more direct.
Basement then signed with the American punk label Fueled by Ramen, which issued a revamped edition of Promise Everything that included a re-recorded version of the title track.

The Fueled by Ramen era produced Beside Myself (2018), the band’s most production-forward record.
The album was co-produced by Colin Brittain and the band themselves, engineered by Alex Prieto, and mixed by Rich Costey.

Brittain’s credits include Dashboard Confessional, while Costey’s roster spans Muse, Weezer, and Deftones.
The contrast with the Pura-produced records is audible: Beside Myself runs wider stereo spread, more sidechain-transparent low end, and a greater use of parallel compression on the drums — James Fisher’s kit sounds more physical, more room-present.
Beside Myself received a Sputnikmusic score of 4.5/5 and a 3/5 from Kerrang!
NME was warmer, with
the publication stating that “‘Beside Myself‘ is evidence that Basement are on track to be Britain’s next truly great rock band.”

The fifth LP, WIRED, arrived on 8 May 2026 via Run for Cover — a return to their original label.
The record marries Basement’s older identity with what they had tried to become, and critics noted it was a great fit — a space where they might become their best.

DIY Magazine awarded it 4 stars, calling it “a record that welcomes innovation and change.”