It’s a hazy autumn night in the Shakespeare’s beer garden. Vodka coke, vaporised smoke and metalcore rewrites are some of the topics of interest that myself and Sheffield band Dusthouse discuss during our pint-fuelled rendezvous. As darkly tinted liquids leave our glasses at an alarmingly rapid rate, I found myself in awe of the band’s tenacity for trendsetting. Bedroom studio dwellers turned Radio 1 regulars, Dusthouse have seemingly captivated the Sheffield metal scene with their electro-infused anthems, delivering an unprecedented live set that stands apart from any other act in the city.
“Dusthouse are three lads – two from the North East and one from the East Midlands,” says Dominic Whillians, guitarist and primary songwriter.
A pint glass slams, albeit comically, as Chesterfield-born drummer Joe Moore interjects.
“Don’t be stupid, I’m from Yorkshire! Well, interestingly, I have a Sheffield postcode, so you could categorise me as South Yorkshire, but it’s actually Derbyshire within the Sheffield postcode region. How does that make any sense? Well, it’s a story for another time.”
From the get-go, it became apparent that this interview would be unlike anything I had previously conducted. The band are equal measures musical virtuosos as they are comedic storytellers. What formed our chat was a series of bizarre anecdotes, combined with the unravelling of each member’s appreciation for various music genres and, ultimately, why I believe Dusthouse are reinventing metalcore for the masses.
Their story started three years ago in a Kelham Island flat, previously occupied by Dom. Having moved to Sheffield in 2019 from County Durham but continuing to play guitar in a previous project back in Newcastle, he decided to leave his former band and embark on his own musical voyage.
“Up to that point, I’d been through two metal bands, so I just had to try something a bit different, y’know? I started a bedroom project with a couple of mates that was heavily electronic, pop rock-inspired, but nothing ever came to light with it.”
“I spent ages writing whatever I wanted. It could have been a dance song, a pop song, a drum‘n’bass tune, literally anything. Anyway, me and me mate Michael had the idea to start a new band together, so we put an advert out for a vocalist.”
“I was sat in my living room with Ethan and his partner Monica, and they were both like, well, Ethan can sing. I literally said, ‘Don’t be stupid man!’. I’d known him for three years at this point and never once heard him mention he can sing.”
“Well, he sent some videos through to Michael of him singing and screaming, and he was amazing. So him and Monica moved to Sheffield and we immediately started writing together in my flat.”
A quick refill on our drinks before we decipher the Dusthouse sound; two Guinness for Joe and Ethan, a pint of lager for myself, and for Dom, his signature double vodka diet coke. The band’s second single, Original Soundtrack, catapulted them onto BBC Radio 1. The track serves as a fascinating concoction of blaring metal and Eurodance, a homage to Dom and Ethan’s North East origins.
“It’s The Prodigy meets Slipknot. Metal meets hardcore, mixed with a bit of 90s rave culture,” says Dom, underneath a cloud of vapour.
“The songs are like dance tracks. We wrote Original Soundtrack in about an hour. Thematically, it holds the tone of a metalcore track, building upon itself with repeated riffs, but it progresses like a dance track rhythmically.”
“From there, I knew that we needed to write music that’s hard hitting, aggressive and heavy, but electronically charged. It needs to be raw, but well-produced and also have that EDM vibe to it.”
Primary screamer Ethan, eager to explain how he enters the picture, exhumes a huge gulp of Guinness before unearthing his resounding enthusiasm. “Before I met Dom, I had absolutely no idea how to scream. So, when we recorded our first single, Mindset, Dom gave me some guidance on technique – I think I blew my vocal cords! Still, I was so proud of the demo, because it was the first time I’d recorded myself as a singer.”
“Then we recorded Original Soundtrack and I was like, yeah, I’m really starting to bounce off of Dom’s creativity. We were just going back and forth and then, just like that, the tune was done. Now when we have a writing session, it’s a case of Dom bringing an idea, me coming in with the vocal pattern, the screaming. We make these bedroom demos and then bring them through to Joe, and then later to our producer Fed.”
Unlike Dom and Joe, Ethan hasn’t played in bands prior to Dusthouse. The band is his first musical project, although his passion for music and art dates back to his childhood.
“For a decent amount of time, I was a theatre kid. I was obsessed with Disney movies. The Prince of Egypt, yeah, the tunes in that are absolutely mad. I kept singing random Disney songs in my living room until one day, my grandma said, ‘y’know, we’ll get you introduced to some theatre’. So there I was, the theatre kid.”
“A lot of what I remember hearing when I was young is similar to Dom’s taste. If you grow up in the North East, you grow up on Clubland.”
“The radio was massive for me as well. I remember waking up one morning as a kid and discovering Eminem on the radio. As soon as I heard that, I was like, fuck it, I want to be a rapper. So I was like, shit, I’m the hottest in Stockton-on-Tees! But yeah, other than having rap battles in school, I never really did anything. Ali Azad, if you’re reading this, you got absolutely merked mate!”
“As I got older, I discovered metalcore, which led me to finding Bring Me the Horizon, the absolute biggest influence on my voice. Through hearing Oli Sykes’ vocals, I discovered that you can do these abrasive, alternative screams alongside a clean singing voice.”
“I loved singing, but I never really did much with me voice until I moved in with my girlfriend Monica. She really encouraged me to pursue performing. Yeah, I was mostly just chilling all day, until I met Dom, who’s just so passionate about music. Afterwards, it was like, nah man, this is what I’ve got to do!”
As for Dom, he has had a wealth of musical experience, performing with metal bands since his teenage years. However, his first experiences with music differed stylistically from the current chaos he pursues.
“The first music I can remember hearing were Clubland classics, like, Cascada, y’kna? I didn’t really form a music taste from an early age, but that’s what I was first listening to. It might have been because I fancied the women on the cover!”
“When I was around ten, I got into guitar. My dad had just passed away. I was there, with me brother Ronnie, during the moment he died. My older brother has loved music his entire life. I’m not going to go into why, but it literally saved him.”
“Me brother listened to bands like The Libertines and Babyshambles, a lot of 2000s indie stuff. He also loved guitar and used to play a fair bit. Yeah, he was the first person to show me how to play, although at the time, I wasn’t particularly bothered.”
“So, in 2007, I remember seeing Babyshambles in Glasgow and thinking… this is just amazing. Then, around the same time, I got a hold of this Oasis DVD. I remember first watching the ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ performance and hearing Liam’s voice, with this proper fucked, raspy singing. It was just so destroyed sounding and the music was so distorted, I’d never heard anything like it.”
“Seeing that DVD, with the crowds bouncing up and down, it was just crazy man. I dreamt of doing something like that, even if it was just in front of one person. From that point onwards, I started taking guitar more seriously.”
Some musicians first meet each other in the pub, some touch ground at a show. Some may be introduced to one another through a friend, and some manage to find each other online. The story of how Dom and Ethan first met is as unique a band origin story as the music they create. Around five years ago, the pair were matched together in a Call of Duty lobby through a mutual friend. The conflict was palpable, as Ethan recalls.
“We didn’t really get along at first. In fact, I thought he was a bit of a nob, but that was mainly just Call of Duty chat. I quickly discovered how passionate he was about music and the rest is history.”
Fast-forward a few years later and Joe enters the picture. After leaving his former band two years ago, he found himself wanting to express his drumming capabilities within a new environment. A demolitions operative by trade during his day job, he channels that same explosive energy within his drumming. After finding Dom through a Sheffield musicians group on Facebook three years ago, he auditioned for the role, practising his drum parts on his lap during his train journey into Sheffield.
Reflecting on those early days, he remembers that “some of the original demos were impossible to play, because Dom wrote them on his computer. Excerpt for instance, you’d need six arms and three legs to play the demo version! So I took a drummer’s standpoint, rather than a guitarist’s, and locked in on that sorta shit.”
“When you get a guitarist to write the drum parts, they don’t seem to realise you’d need eight limbs to play them. I sorta explained that to Dom and thankfully, now when he makes demos, he thinks about the drums in terms of two arms, two legs.”
“Everything is for the vibes” he remarks. “It’s when you get to the final breakdown, like in Excerpt, where Dom’s drenched in sweat, Ethan can barely scream anymore. My brain’s scrambled, I hardly know what’s going on anymore, but we’ve all sort of got that togetherness onstage, y’know? You don’t really know what’s going on at the time, but in the end, coming off stage, you’re all smiling at each other – you think, did that really happen?”
Experiencing a Dusthouse show is like walking into a warehouse rave, illuminated through the backdrop of a horror film set. Red strobes and razoring synths are featured throughout, along with astronomical distortion, hysterical shouting and screaming, all supported by sensational drum sequences. The band’s first show came in the form of an all thriller, no filler onslaught at Yellow Arch Studios in September 2023.
“People just got it from the get-go. I mean, people immediately felt that we were doing something different within the Sheffield metal scene. Those electronic influences make the setlist sound unique – you can mosh with Dusthouse, but you can also dance to us,” says Dom.
Dusthouse have risen strong since, continuing to establish themselves within the Steel City’s bustling heavy music scene, as well as afar. The band performed three back-to-back sets at Corporation and The Green Room throughout last year’s Tramlines Fringe festival, as well as featuring as guest vocalists during the Drastic//Automatic set at Shakespeare’s. They spent last year enjoying an explosive series of gigs, including performances in Rotherham, Chesterfield, Leeds, Hull and Birmingham.
The band share a mutual admiration for crowd carnage. Ethan overcomes shyness with brazen onstage antics, fuelled by his desire to constantly overachieve.
“The thing that inspires me the most is seeing my peers do really cool shit. After performing at the Drastic//Automatic set at Shakespeare’s, I just got wanting to have that kind of influence on a crowd, to construct that kind of carnage. I always want to be able to control a crowd and to be better than everyone else at doing it.”
“Envy might be a negative emotion, but it’s a negativity that massively inspires me as an artist. When I’m feeling negative, because I’m skint, or anxious, or sad about something, that’s what motivates me to be creative. Everyone experiences negativity, it’s a cold, ugly truth, but I feel that people need to find a way to channel their negativity into something positive.”
“I’m in a band with two people who constantly inspire me. Dom is an amazing guitarist and an even better songwriter, and Joe has alien abilities on the drums. They are both already incredible at what they do, but I am still relatively new to this. I always feel like I can progress, with both my performance and songwriting capabilities. Obviously, I want to be able to replicate what other bands in the scene are doing, but it’s the people around me, the musicians who I perform with, who are the people who inspire me the most.”
Joe credits his dad for much of his musical inspiration. Some of his earliest memories date back to 2004, listening to ACDC in the back of a Kia Sorento.
“I suppose this a bit of a soppy one. My dad passed in 2021, the day before his birthday. He’d said to me, ‘I want to see you perform on a big stage somewhere before I’m gone’. And that’s, I mean, the opportunity to play on a big stage may never arise, but if it does, that’s the whole reason I want to do it.”
“It’s a weird one, yeah. I think, to be fair, all three of us resonate with that, because we’ve each got that one person that’s kinda pushed us towards what we want to achieve.”
As for 2025, Dusthouse are set to continue on their upwards trajectory, adding more shows and recording sessions to an already packed schedule. The band are focusing on releasing a series of new singles, as well as debuting in various new cities from March onwards. Dom’s vision for the band is one of constant reinvention.
“If you hear our first EP, the tracks sorta sound different to each other. With our upcoming singles, there’s a much more consistent theme throughout these new tracks, sonically, but I think that we’ve massively progressed with our sound and live set.”
“Ultimately, we’re still writing signature Dusthouse tracks, but if you like Ethan screaming his bloody head off, then there’s loads more of that to expect in the near future.”
