Meet HMLTD’s Duc Peterman, the jazz-schooled guitarist who rejects the “macho side of guitar playing” and wants his tones to sound like a giant parasitic worm

James Donovan and Duc Peterman of HMLTD perform at Heaven on October 25, 2022 in London, England.

When their debut album West Of Eden landed in 2020, London-based art-punk collective HMLTD established themselves as one of the most ambitious outfits to emerge from the UK music scene in recent years. With flamboyance and wit, they took aim at toxic masculinity and the patriarchal-capitalist society of the West. 

With gleeful abandon, they cut and spliced elements of glam rock, punk, EDM, and ’80s synth-pop together like an old iPod Shuffle possessed. With custom-built sets, extravagant outfits and experiments into multi-sensory stimuli (such as the smell of burning human hair), they transcended the notion of ‘the rock show’ to immerse their audiences in full-blown works of surrealist avant-rock theatre.