Credit: Found On Internet

Music Towers first met The Raid in a cold, concrete stairwell in North London…okay, so it was in a corridor in north London’s Kilburn Luminaire, a few minutes before the band soundcheck for the Shifty Disco Christmas party. Formed in Hemel Hempstead, lurking in the far reaches of Greater London, The Raid have all the requisite boxes ticked when it comes to being young, pissed off with suburban small-mindedness, and with a fistful of tunes to try to set the world to rights.

“Basically we met at school, and it kinda developed from there,” says Adam Robinson, singer of the band. “Four of us were in the same year, [Andy Maguire, rhythm guitar] who was a couple of years above us, joined a bit later on. But we’ve been doing this since we were 12 years old”

As far as the name went, it had a less auspicious start. “It started as Air Raid,” muses Paul [Taylor, lead guitar], “Then we realised that was fucking rubbish…”

“So we replaced ‘Air’ with ‘The’,” says Adam, taking over. “It was a growing trend at the time, and now everyone does it.”

Speaking of ‘everyone else’, London is awash with bands of blokes playing guitars in rooms above pubs. Just what is it that should make Music Towers’ readers pay attention to The Raid over the competition?

“There are a lot of bands out there playing – in our opinion - meaningless music.” Adam is certainly blunt with his honesty, but then compared to the bland, formulaic indie posturing of The Enemy, Pigeon Detectives and The Twang, the music of The Raid has passion and fire than a bus full of Spanish . “Our music means more to us than that. It’s bold and proud.

“The style of music could be a universal thing. It is rock’n’roll music, it’s not the English London scene thing, like Babyshambles, that doesn’t really travel well abroad, in comparison to American bands like Linkin Park. Which we’re nothing like,” he pauses after stressing this. “I don’t think they’re very good, but they’re massive all over the world.”

“Oasis is a better example. Them and Coldplay are the only two bands that travel well universally at the moment”