Credit: Dangerous Minds / Louise Phillips

Sometimes, there comes along a band who can renew your faith in music. You know the type, the bands who are the woofer to everyone else’s tweeter. The name of this band is The Heat Inc.

They were originally a four-piece out of London, but as of this year are a five-piece, and describe themselves as “the loudest rock ‘n’ roll band”. But let’s be honest here, being loud doesn’t always equate with talent. That’s why The Heat Inc truly counts. They are not just loud (do catch them live – you will not be disappointed). They are one of the best and most blisteringly talented bands to emerge on the music scene in the past few years.

The Heat Inc are Jon Dodd, vocals – a singer who sounds like he comes from the lineage of Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop and Nick Cave with a soupçon of David Bowie. Then there is Marco Simoncelli on guitar, who has a dedicated talent to find riffs and rhythms which mark him out as like a young Keith Richards. Then add to this Nicolas Rigot on bass and Maurizio Vitale on drums are like the V8 engine at the heart of the band. This year, a fifth member, Fabio Staffieri, on second guitar, joined.

Having achieved a cult following on the UK gig circuit, The Heat Inc released a debut album, Asleep in the Ejector Seat, in 2023. It was an astonishing first record which soon became a word-by-mouth hit. Asleep in the Ejector Seat garnered five star reviews from the likes of Classic Rock, Sonic Abuse, Louder Than War and every other music site out there. But you don’t need them coz you get all your juice here.

Dangerous Minds caught up with Jon Dodd and Marco Simoncelli to let you hear about The Heat Inc from the horse’s mouth.

How did The Heat Inc get together? What bonded you as a band? How did you come up with your name?

Marco: “As my previous band began to split up, I was rehearsing at Kafri studio in Haggerston with a bunch of fresh players, and I was already trying to put this new outfit into place. Someone knocked at the door”.

Jon: “It was me”.

Marco: “It was Jon, obviously. He explained that he was a photographer and asked us if we wanted some pictures taken as a band”.

Jon: “Syd, the owner was… is a sweetheart, and I was rehearsing there at the time as well with my band, that also felt like it was spiralling down a metaphorical industry sinkhole, and so I just started shooting the bands already playing there on film in the downtime. I was distracted. It was distracting”.

Marco: “I was happy for him to do so, and he left me this weird, square business card. A couple of weeks later, I just messaged and I said, ‘Hey, where are the f*g pictures?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back to you, I have a rehearsal this evening,’ and I said, ‘What? You’re a musician?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m a singer.’ I said, ‘I thought you were a photographer?’ So we ended up arguing about music and we realised that actually, we were speaking the same language. We loved a great deal of the same bands. The same films. The band’s name was actually inspired by Heat, the Michael Mann movie”.

Who is in the band and what are their roles?

Marco: “Well, Jon promised me Morrison if he’d lived a little longer. So that was that. And I’m waiting”.

Jon: “That’s part of it”.

Marco: “He, in turn, brought Nico Rigot on board, the bass player from his previous band. That was kind of a condition, if I recall! I brought Maurizio Vitale, this wildcard drummer I met in Dalston at The Rocksteady. It was just the four of us for the longest time then, but we recently picked up Fabio Staffieri as a second guitar to myself, and it feels like the best fit”.

Jon: “He’s a solid soul, a phenomenal player, and he frees up Marco to play the parts that he’s meant to play while maintaining a fuller, more ferocious guitar sound. I don’t hate him. I think”.

Marco: “We don’t hate him”.

When was the first time you realised you had something special going on as a group?

Jon: “Session one”.

Marco: “Yes. I mean, many bands feel like this, I’m sure, but this is none of our first rodeos. The second we went loud, everything just clicked”.

Jon: “I think Down In The City was first… or Raptors?”

Marco: “Down In The City. It was just massive from the get-go”.

Jon: “Was that 2021? It seems both five minutes and yet so long ago”.

Marco: “2019 rehearsal, but yeah…or 2020 actually? When we released it? All I know is that as soon as we played it, we felt it. Powerful, energetic, melodic. All too easy”.

How did your sound develop? Where did it come from? How would you describe it?

Marco: “We love Bowie, The Stooges, Lou Reed, of course The Doors, Nick Cave, Pixies, Ramones. The Stones. That’s our common ground, and that’s where our sound or ethos originally came from, but of course, for us, it’s important to allow our own individual strengths to shine through. To express our own personalities, our own tastes, and of course, to leave some kind of legacy or signature”.

Jon: “Everything is in service of the song. Even the lyric, and I’m picky. It’s the fun machine, and we’re gonna have fun with it in our own way”.

Marco: “Huge choruses, powerful riffs, integral energy”.

Jon: “It’s meaningful rock ’n’ roll that allows people to connect to it and lose their collective shit. I don’t know what else I could wish for…I could wish to be remembered for something like this, I guess”.

What was your first record release?

Marco: “The self-titled EP that came out in 2021… or 2020”.

Jon: “It was 2020”.

Marco: “It was 2020. It’s five songs. People seem to love it”.

Jon: “Then, in 2023, we released Asleep In The Ejector Seat, our debut album via Punk Fox Records”.

Marco: “We came to an agreement to release 300 copies on some real special vinyl with them, and it sold out through Rough Trade pretty quickly”.

Jon: “I think the cover had something to do with it. It was in their top recommended records of 2023 for a while”.

Marco: “It’s a great record. We’re very proud of it”.

Jon: “Still”.

Marco: “And I think that says something. It’s still not entirely ‘out there’. The whole first album is still only available on vinyl. Five out of ten tracks are available digitally, but we hope to have the whole record available online and stream…able…if that’s a word? Soon. We want it out there proper”.

Tell me something about each of the members in the band…

Jon: “An Englishman, a Frenchman, and too many Italians walk into a bar”.

Marco: “Each member is important. I don’t know how we would work otherwise”.

Jon: “It would be imperfect”.

Marco: “It would be different. Nico on bass is such a powerful force, and Maurizio on drums drives the rhythm section together with these stupidly heavy tribal arrangements, and they work on dynamics very closely to create the bones of the band”.

Jon: “Marco makes up for the rest of the noise and the melodic structure”.

Marco: “And he caps the whole thing off with this baritone vocal and a lyric that can have me either laughing or crying. Nothing in between”.

Jon: “I made you cry?”

Marco: “No”.

Jon: “You want to talk about Fabio?”

Marco: “Fabio joined us this year, just before a tour of Scotland with GUN. He’s the most fantastic, eventual addition to the band”.

Jon: “He’s meticulous, and he gives you the space you need. Like a jigsaw”.

Marco: “Eccoci”.

Can you take me through the tracks on the album, detailing how each song came about and how you created such a powerful original sound for each track?

Marco: “‘Draw Blood For Proof’ comes to mind first”.

Jon: “We wrote it from our respective gardens during the first lockdown, which is wild, albeit no less sincere, considering it’s a punk rock tune…”

Marco: “We both wanted to have a type of song like that, with a gang chorus, something reverent in terms of The Clash or Sex Pistols, but hard-hitting enough to reflect how pent up… how passionate we were at the time…”

Jon: “It ended up being about our families and ourselves and the band at the same time, and the Apocalypse helped to crystallise that, if anything. Explicitly, that track ended up being very much about myself, my relationship with my daughter, and my father. I had no way of knowing that going in, I was just reading, looking at a lot of Larry Clark’s photography at the time. Then Marco ended up with an assist on the chorus lyric, and it all pulled together”.

Marco: “‘Little Knuckle Charlie’ is a riff that Nico came up with a while back”.

Jon: “That song happened real fast, real raw, and then took a real long time to get put to tape”.

Marco: “It’s a more contemporary, darker envisioning of The Stooges”.

Jon: “And the lyric just fell right into place, straight off the page. It was a collaborative effort. ”98′ was mine. That’s a punk/pop tune with a chorus to rule the world. It’s also one of those songs that’s actually three songs, and they happen to fit together. ‘This Thing Called Love’ might be another example of that. Maybe. That’s more of a swamp blues kinda thing, and I think that song took something like three to four years to write in the end…”

Marco: “‘Akasaka Murder Squad’ gets overlooked all the time”.

Jon: “Most likely because it’s not digital yet, and people can’t listen to it”.

Marco: “It’s a powerful garage rock song with a hella middle eight. I don’t get it”.

Jon: “‘Get Wild'”.

Marco: “Ah, yeah, that’ll do it. ‘Get Wild’ is a melodic, alternative rock number. It’s part of the soundtrack of Hot Milk, starring Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, Vicky Krieps, directed by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. It’s a fizzy, envelope kinda song. They ended up with that track, along with ‘Little Knuckle Charlie’… maybe even ‘Polaroids’ from the first EP…”

Jon: “‘Ms Willie Mae’ maybe should have been on there”.

Marco: “On the soundtrack? Maybe. It’s a garage rock song with absolutely no remorse. Samson lives on in that dynamic, although it’s seedier too. It has these softer, squishier bits in the verses, paired with some real heavy sections, and it ends up super aggressive…”

Jon: “‘Ultraviolence’ is the only kinda quiet, acoustic song off that album. The rest is all pretty foot to the floor”.

Marco: “It’s a beautiful closer.”

Jon: “We forgot about ‘Souvenir’.”

Marco: “Great album opener, although that was never intended. Yeah. Barnstormer”.

You seem to use different styles in your songs which you make into your own, how did this come about?

Jon: “We’ve never really stopped writing”.

Marco: “Since we met”.

Jon: “We have a process. For the most part, he’s music and I’m words. Once we have the basic structure down, we take it to the rest of the band and let them skin it. It’s only rock ’n’ roll, but it seems to work!”

Marco: “Long may it continue”.

How did the album do?

Marco: “Like I said, people seemed to love it. Vive le Rock, Classic Rock… it was also ‘Album of the Year’ on Radio Warfare and ‘Album of the Week’ on Louder Than War. I just heard it was considered the finest UK rock album by Safety Pin magazine?”

Jon: “These are the reviews I don’t ignore”.

Marco: “The singles were played on BBC 6 a few times by Lamacq and by Deb Grant”.

Jon: “Michael Bradley, bass player of The Undertones”.

Marco: “Yes! He played us on his Radio Ulster show”.

Jon: “Twice!”

Marco: “Twice!!”

Jon: “We just came off the Maid of Stone festival as well at the end of July, and it was fantastic. The most amazing reception”.

Marco: “Agreed”.

What’s next for The Heat Inc?

Marco: “We recently released a cover of ‘He’s Gonna Kill That Girl’ on this official Ramones tribute album, and it’s the most incredible privilege to be on there and to be part of that. We’re on a record with Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Alain Johannes (Queens Of The Stone Age), Chris Cornell, Jesse Hughes (Eagles of Death Metal), Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Wayne Kramer (MC5), and Kid Congo of The Cramps, The Bad Seeds, etc.”

Jon: “This is a new Ramones tribute album, from Marc Urselli, and he’s got a Grammy, so I guess that’s pretty cool? You know? I mean, it’s only the Ramones, so… no pressure… so long as it’s not shit? Right?”

Marco: “They released the album…”

Jon: “Both of them”.

Marco: “Both of them, in June via Magnetic Eye Records. This is our version of ‘You’re Gonna Kill That Girl’, made in collaboration with Oscar Dunbar”.

Jon: “It’s not the track I would have originally chosen, but I couldn’t be happier with it now”.

Marco: “Next up, we’re looking to release both the latter half of album one as well as our second album in the first quarter of 2026. It’s happening”.

Jon: “It is”.

I’m sure it will be a great success. Thank you, guys.

Marco: “Thank you, Paul!”

Jon: “Thank you, Dangerous Minds“.