Loud, unfashionable and built for the back row. New record Ash Garden out now.
Hellflower have spent the better part of a decade being the loudest thing in whatever room they're put in.
Formed in a Camden rehearsal room in 2016, the band built their name the slow way — support slots, sweat-slicked club stages, and a live show that reviewers kept describing with the same word: relentless. For their first three years they were fronted by founding vocalist Danny Vale, whose howl anchored the early singles and their self-released debut.
Everything changed on a wet Tuesday in New Cross. Vale had stepped away, the band was quietly auditioning, and a friend dragged them to a half-empty south London pub gig where a session singer named Stella Storm was covering songs she clearly thought nobody was listening to. They were. Within a fortnight she had the job.
Three records later, Hellflower are still allergic to trends and still writing for the people at the back who came to be flattened. Ash Garden, released in 2025, is the sound of a band that stopped trying to be liked and got better for it.
Before Hellflower, Stella cut her teeth fronting Belfast noise outfit Cheap Halo, then spent two restless years in the short-lived glam-punk act Velvet Undertow before it collapsed on tour. A stint as a hired session vocalist kept her singing until a chance London pub gig put her in front of the right people. She took over from Danny Vale in 2019 and hasn't looked back.
The band's chief songwriter and the elder of the two Kane siblings. Marcus started Hellflower in that Camden rehearsal room and still writes most of the riffs — big, unhurried, and built to be played too loud.
Marcus's younger sister and the band's low-end anchor. Rae joined a month after her brother started the group, on the condition she picked the setlists. She still does. Quietly the reason the live show never sags.
A late addition who answered a classified ad and never left. Pryce came up playing pit bands and pub covers, which is where he learned to hit like the room owes him money. Keeps the whole thing from falling over.
Third album. Ten tracks. Their heaviest and their most honest.
The record that broke them out of the clubs and onto the festival circuit.
The self-released debut, from the Danny Vale era. Rough, fast, and still a fan favourite.
"A rock band with no interest in your approval, and all the better for it."
— The Northern Wire"Storm doesn't sing over the band so much as drag it somewhere darker."
— Loud & Quiet Fanzine"Ash Garden is the sound of a band that has stopped flinching."
— Static Review