Each month, we invite artists to Greeny’s rehearsal space to lay down a stripped-back live session. One take. No do-overs. This month features a slice of noughties indie from the recently reformed, (and once upon a time, Exposed Award winning!), Dead World Leaders.
Ahead of their sold-out show at Hallamshire Hotel, we caught up with bass player Rob Nicolson and drummer Dan Ryan to chat about revisiting old songs, Sheffield’s indie boom years and why a band that quietly disappeared nearly two decades ago suddenly finds itself back in the spotlight.
For a band that never officially split up, Dead World Leaders have had one hell of a long break.
There was no farewell tour. No dramatic announcement. After years spent criss-crossing the country during Sheffield’s mid-2000s indie boom, the band simply stopped.
“We never actually announced we were stopping,” recalls Dan Ryan. “We just stopped.”
Seventeen years later, they’re back in a rehearsal room together, preparing for a sold-out hometown show and rediscovering songs that many assumed had been consigned to memory.
The reunion wasn’t part of some carefully orchestrated comeback plan. In fact, there wasn’t supposed to be a reunion at all.
Even after the band drifted apart in 2009, the members stayed close, meeting up occasionally for Christmas drinks and catch-ups. Last year, a conversation in Fagan’s turned to the twentieth anniversary of their debut release, The Start of The End Begins, and the possibility of revisiting some old recordings.
Rob hadn’t played on the band’s earliest material, having joined shortly after those sessions, so revisiting the original studio stems offered an opportunity to finally put his own stamp on the songs. A remastered reissue followed, complete with two previously unreleased tracks.
Then came the dangerous suggestion.
“We just said, ‘Let’s do a rehearsal and see what happens,'” says Dan. “Bearing in mind, at that point we hadn’t played together for seventeen years.”
The expectation was that it might be a nostalgic afternoon. A chance to blow the dust off a few old songs and reminisce. Instead, something clicked.
“It wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be,” laughs Rob. “We went in with five songs and by the end we’d done seven or eight.”
The muscle memory slowly returned. The songs held up. More importantly, the enjoyment did too.
That renewed enthusiasm runs through both tracks chosen for their Red Light Session. The first, House of Frauds, remains one of the band’s defining songs. The second is a surprisingly natural take on A Flock of Seagulls’ synth-pop classic I Ran (So Far Away).
Unlike most cover choices, there was little debate involved.
“I think it was like the first suggestion and we all just went, ‘Yeah,'” says Dan.
“We’d never done a cover before,” adds Rob. “Not even at a gig.”
What could easily have been a novelty choice quickly became a genuine favourite. While Kyle and Andy kept much of the original arrangement intact, Rob and Dan approached it from a different angle.
“We kind of made it a bit more Dead World Leaders with the drums and bass,” Rob explains.
House of Frauds offered a different challenge. Listening back now, both musicians are struck by how relevant the themes still feel.
“It’s very political,” says Rob. “Almost like the government is coming for you and they’re not the people you wanted in.”
The band were never interested in writing overt protest songs, but there was always a sense of frustration bubbling beneath the surface.
“A lot of it is disillusionment with the modern world and the world we live in,” says Dan. “I quite like it when songs don’t come out and directly say, ‘This song is about this.’ Let people form their own opinions.”
The session itself also allowed the band to experiment. Additional musicians Joe Newman and our very own Joe Green helped expand the arrangements, with the group even splitting drum duties between two kits.
“We separated the kits and split the parts up,” says Dan. “Sonically it worked really good.”
The whole experience seems fitting for a band rediscovering itself. Because while Dead World Leaders emerged from one of Sheffield’s most celebrated musical eras, they never quite saw themselves as part of the same story.
“It was such an exciting period in Sheffield,” says Dan. “You had Reverend and the Makers, Milburn, loads of bands doing really well. It was just really exciting.”
For Rob, though, that period carried extra weight. As the brother of former Arctic Monkeys bassist Andy Nicolson, he witnessed first-hand both the opportunities and pressures that came with Sheffield’s sudden rise to global attention.
“Their first gig was when I thought, ‘I’m going to play bass,'” he recalls. “I thought, ‘I can do that because this looks fun.'”
Watching close friends and contemporaries break through created a sense that success might be just around the corner.
“It was what was tricky,” he says. “You’re in a group of friends where some of them have gone astronomical and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’ll be us,’ because everyone’s doing it. And it’s not always the case.”
Dead World Leaders carved out plenty of their own memories along the way. They played the first Tramlines main stage, toured alongside The Enemy and built relationships with bands across the country, often travelling far more than they played in Sheffield itself.
One of Dan’s favourite memories came courtesy of a last-minute support slot in Coventry.
“I think one of my favourite gigs was in 2008 when Rob rang me and said, ‘What are you doing tonight? Do you want to support The Enemy in Coventry?'”
With no time to rehearse, the band piled into a van and spent the journey listening to recordings of their own songs to remind themselves how they went.
But like countless bands of that era, the dream eventually collided with reality.
“We just got a bit burnt out,” says Dan.
Rob remembers the feeling all too clearly.
“Do you keep driving to London every weekend for twenty-five quid and four people to turn up because you’ve been told there’s an A&R man coming? Then they don’t come. You’re getting home at five in the morning feeling disappointed. I think we collectively got to a point where we just couldn’t do it anymore.”
Life moved on. People got married. Families started. Priorities changed.
Yet perhaps because there was never a definitive ending, the door remained quietly open.
Now, with Hallamshire Hotel sold out and fans travelling from across the country to attend, the band find themselves confronting something they never really expected: genuine demand for a Dead World Leaders reunion.
Still, they’re determined to keep it in perspective.
“We want it to be a celebration,” says Dan. “A bit of a party. It’s not, ‘We’re back.’ It’s a celebration of twenty years of doing the band.”
Whether that remains true after the show is another question entirely. For now, though, Dead World Leaders seem content simply enjoying each other’s company and reconnecting with songs that have stood the test of time.
After seventeen years away, that feels like more than enough reason to step back under the lights.
