For Noah and the Loners, punk is not just a label, but a state of being. The band, who are one of the latest signees to Marshall Records, have been developing a reputation for their barrage of two minute freak-outs, in which they vent every frustration, be it political or personal, and bring a refreshing new voice to the genre. ‘I don’t see the point of writing a song if you’re not saying anything’, says frontman Noah Lonergan, ‘and I don’t think we’d be the band we are if the music wasn’t so personal’. Formed of Lonergan, Amber Welsh, Joseph Boyle and Noah Riley, the teens have spent the past two years chipping away at making their music a true reflection of themselves, and in the process becoming one of the most exciting new bands in punk.

For Noah, it’s been a long journey to having this band. Initially meeting Amber through school, the pair discovered a shared love of music and eventually formed Polarized Eyes, a band that ended almost as quickly as it started. ‘I think we did all our growing in that band’, says Noah, ‘and we had all the awkward stages of not knowing what music to make. As soon as we formed Noah and the Loners, we knew what we wanted to sound like.’ It wasn’t long before they recruited college friends Boyle and Riley, and the four-piece started bonding over a shared love of bands like Shame, Buzzcocks and Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes. ‘I feel like we’ve found ourselves,’ says Noah, ‘but we’re still growing.’

Outside the music, it wasn’t an easy process, with Noah facing hardships around coming out as transgender in secondary school. ‘I went to an all-girls school, which was difficult’, he says, ‘and I got bullied because I didn’t fit in. I found myself in the music block all the time because it was the one place where it didn’t really matter what you were, everyone wanted to play music. I could be myself, or I could be by myself.’ This self-realisation came just as Noah first started playing guitar, and the intertwining of music with personal experience informed part of the idea of what Noah and the Loners would be. ‘I think it’s important I talk about my experience, because other people may not have that opportunity.’

The experience inspired not only Noah’s more personal lyrics, but also the band’s leanings towards politics. ‘The world is not a good place for trans people right now’, he says, ‘so I want to be as vocal as possible. Sometimes I just want to vent my frustrations, but other times I actually want things to change.’ And the band sees fit that change happens everywhere, not just around trans rights. Take single ‘Protest Anger’, a relentless four-chord stomp with shades of Soft Play or The Clash that talks about the Sarah Everard vigil and the resulting restriction on protest rights in the UK. ‘I started writing the lyrics when I saw this woman dragged down by police at the vigil’, Noah says, ‘and later she came out and spoke about how we’re losing our right to protest, even though she wasn’t allowed to. Hearing her speak made me so inspired, I needed to do something and the only way I knew how was to write.’

The lyrics of Noah and the Loners, whether personal or political, are always intensely diaristic. Early single ‘Teenage Tragedy’ recounts Noah’s first encounter with an ex-girlfriend over the band’s most pop-inclined track to date. ‘I wrote that song two months after that night’, says Noah, ‘but we had to go through so many demos to get it right.’ The song went from its original indie pop form to its current state, a sharp two minutes of Blink-182-esque pop-punk hooks. But even if the song carries an easy, infectious chorus, the lyrics are always deeply personal to Noah. ‘For me, writing is therapy’ he says, ‘I write poems as a way of releasing the emotions. The song takes place later on, but the lyrics come from a very direct place, and I think that’s really important to the core of the band.’

Through their heavy, hook-laden music and personal, empowering lyrics, Noah and the Loners have made leaps and bounds in their nascent career. Off the back of two singles, they’ve completed a UK headline tour, as well as performing at SXSW earlier this year. ‘We always took the band seriously, but that was when we started properly believing in it’, says Noah, ‘we played five shows and came away with so much positive feedback from people who’d never seen us before.’ With a slew of gigs and festivals in their sights, the band are ready to put their newfound live reputation to the test.

For the incendiary punk upstarts, there’s no limit to what they want to achieve. They’re already pushing their sound in new directions, working with producer Neil Kennedy (Boston Manor, Milk Teeth) on new music – ‘it’s really solidified who we are as a band, it sounds like how we want to sound’ – and gearing up to play as many shows as they can. Noah and the Loners is a band on the cusp of becoming one of the UK’s essential punk outfits, bearing both an intense political message and the heart to deliver it with pride, all while performing with an intensity that belies their youth. They’re following in the iconic lineage of UK punk, of bands with something to say and the courage to say it, and it won’t be long before they too are counted amongst the greats.