MONDOMETAL: INTERVIEW WITH EVILE
London 29th SEP/2011
@ Relentless Garage
CLIQUE AQUI PARA VER A ENTREVISTA EM PORTUGUÊS
Five Serpent’s Teeth – Release concert.
Eduardo Piloni: When one hears the story of Evile it almost sounds like a fairy tale. An unsigned band plays a supporting stage at Bloodstock, nails a record contract and all of a sudden you guys were touring with bands that you’ve probably loved since you were kids- Megadeth, Exodus and Machine Head. How did it feel back then?
Ben Carter: Well, in a way we were just kids then, we’re still kids! So to us it was like “OMG It’s Megadeth! Dave Mustaine’s walking down the corridor”. It was just bizarre. We’re still maturing and really kind of naive about the industry so to have such a big tour as Megadeth in the first year of being signed was just ridiculous. We never expected that, then we went on the road and were taught so much about how to conduct ourselves back stage and how to present ourselves on stage, how to be a little bit more professional with gigs and it just taught us so much. That continues in good strength because after that we’ve gone on tour with Exodus, you know the festivals we’ve been doing – Bloodstock and Sonisphere and Download in the U.K – everything set us up really, really well. Back then we were just blown away by it all!
EP: Were they helpful with you guys?
Ben: Yeah, definitely! Just their experience rubbed off on us I think and in turn it made our jobs a little bit easier, they made us feel at home on the road with them even though they were so far above us in terms of experience. We learned so much in 6 weeks.
EP: I guess in a way the style of thrash metal you play helped you guys to be inserted into that exclusive niche. I mean, sometimes it just feels like you came straight from the 80’s – the raw and intense grip in which you play…
Ben: I think so, that’s really good. We get guys in their 40’s coming up to us and saying “Thank you!”, and we go “Why?” and they say “Because you made me feel like I was 15 again”. To me that’s mission accomplished.
EP: And you’re not even that old to sound so 80’s.
Ol Drake: I’m the youngest at 27, we’re not young but we’re not old.
Ben: I think what’s good about thrash is I’ve always said it makes you want to feel like you’re full of energy. People who’ve been watching it for 25 years, if it makes them feel like they’re 15 again and you know, job done for us. It’s supposed to fill you full of beans and bring your energy levels right up to make you jump in the mosh pit.
EP: Then there was the American tour – Overkill, Kreator, Gama Bomb… long miles?
Ben: Definitely! 40,000 miles I think it was. Here we have people whining “I’m not going on the bus” for half an hour.
Ol: In America the touring ethic is completely different, because the territory’s so big. The bands over there are used to travelling over 10, 15 hours to get to the next gig to play 20 minute shows. Whereas in England, people won’t travel 2 hours without bitching and moaning about it! It gave us a good wake up call, not that we bitch and moan about travelling, but the work level that you have to put in when you’re over there, just to do your job, increases 10 fold. The States is a much harder market to tour in.
EP: It’s true, and what about the answer from the crowd in America?
Ben: We went down really well I guess…
Ol: Well, when we started, and because we were English and new, you could tell that people kind of stood there like “We don’t care”! But a month later we did the same circuit again and we noticed that the same people that were there in the other gig going “we don’t care” were like “Hey, we got your album now!”. So, every time we went round it just seemed to get a bit better.
Ben: I think it takes people a while to get us, because we’re not strictly old style thrash and we’re not pushing new school stuff so we’re kind of stuck in the middle somewhere, which is quite unique.
EP: Yeah, I think this is more noticeable with Infected Nations, second album that hit top 100 in the UK. That album showed another side of Evile, a little bit more diverse, different from what we had seen before. A tad more technical would you say?
Ben: Yes, our record label actually said to us that we’d written album 3 before album 2 (laughs). Because we’d gone from the pure thrash sound into this almost prong-esque, complicated thrash style and we’d missed out on an album in between somewhere! The big difference is due to us getting a lot of song writing out early on in our career. The songs on the first album they’d been kicking around for 4 years before we actually recorded the first record. We went “Right, let’s see what else we can bring to the table”. I think some fans got it, some fans didn’t and I think maybe we pushed the envelope a little to far that way but I’m glad we did that because its led us down the path to album 3.
EP: Of course, it all ties in really well. How did it come about to get Michael Whelan (legendary for artwork of Sepultura, Overkill and Stephen King) to do the artwork for Infected Nations?
Ol: That was a joke! My brother (Matt) and I were listening to Beneath the Remains from Sepultura, and I just joked with him “lets get MW to do the album cover!” and he mocked me… I said why not? So I emailed him just saying we’ve got this concept for our new album and he replied saying “Yeah! I’m on! Cool! Lets do it!”.
Edu: No way!
Ol: I did say look we’re a small band; we can’t pay you 100grand like Stephen King can! So he did it, in our miserable budget just because he enjoyed it. (laughing).
EP: It seems that money and media attention has gone back to metal, loads of quality bands showing up out of nowhere. Do you feel this vibe going around at this moment?
Ben: Yeah, it seems great again! I think it got shoved underground for a bit by all these other genres coming through like late 90s early 2000s
Ol: Poo (nu) Metal hahahaha
Ben: And a lot of other genre’s coming through that took the focus away, the bands were still out working their asses off but they just got overlooked a little bit and so they got pushed underground. 5, 6 years ago it’s all come back! It’s great to see the bands that started still doing it today, working their asses off, touring everywhere as many gigs as they can. It definitely keeps the door open for people like us to come in, which is great you know? We still look up to our idols and if they’re still doing it, it drives us to do it as well.
EP: But it still is hard to make a living out of it, isn’t it?
Ben: Oh definitely, incredibly hard. People think you’re loaded when you just get signed, but its not like that at all! It’s just a bigger, longer ladder to climb you know? Money becomes an issue, it really does. But if you love it then you do it and you don’t ask questions.
Ol: You do it, but if you have to do it this way lets say for the next 3 albums, it just wouldn’t be worth it! You can’t go on tour, then come home and not have money to pay the bills.
Ben: In the beginning it is just cool to be in a band, but we’re not kids anymore and we’re getting to the stage where we want to start putting money into our future and I think its really, really hard to become an adult when the industry pays you like you’re still a kid. And they expect you to do gigs and travel for nothing, sometimes not eat for a day! Then when you get home and you’ve got no money to pay your bills that’s when you realize “Shit, I can’t grow up like this”.
EP: On the other hand, today it’s the release concert for your third album. By the positive critics and reviews, could it be the break up point?
Ol: I don’t know, man, I don’t think about it. We don’t even want to be rich or anything we just want to make a living out of it, just so we can tour, come home and be O.K.
EP: I don’t want to touch a sad subject because it’s a positive and important day for Evile today. I would just like to know, after what happened to Mike (Alexander, former bassist who died in 2009 during an European tour), how uplifting was the support from all the other bands that came out to the rescue?
Ol: I think, to an extent, we wouldn’t have got through it, as well as we did without all these bands. We had Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica going like “Oh yeah, raffle these off me!”.
Ben: Slayer, Annihilator! Even bands that we’d never heard of and thought wouldn’t have given a shit about what happened us, they sent their stuff through to us in support, or called to send their condolences. It’s really nice that that kind of family atmosphere exists in our genre. I don’t think it exists in any other. Everyone just clubbed together and got us through it and we’ll always be grateful for that.
EP: That is true, when you’re into metal, being a musician or not, you are always going to be an eternal fan – if you don’t live metal, you’re not here.
Ol: Exactly!
EP: You do have another single that was just released, another cover, a Nirvana cover, Ben – you managed to double pedal Dave Grohl’s drums!
Ben: laughs, What can we do?! I think with a track like that because its so definitive on that album, it breaks up the album in so many different ways… I’m sure the guys knew what to do with the lead guitars and everything but the drums are so… pure! Yeah, pure and “grungey” and, how do you dirty up something up that’s dirty as hell anyway?! Double pedal (cracking up laughing).
EP: Musically speaking, I honestly believe you guys needed to dumb down your play, I felt like you could have played that in the toilet!
Ol: Haha no man! The main bass line in it is really cool! (doing a face he’s not sure he believes himself) No disrespect to Kurt Cobain he’s great but he just likes his chords too much, I went over it and I was like ”Aaaaaarghh!”. So I thought “Right, I’m doing that riff on guitar just to make it more metal”.
Edu: Yeah I heard that, I was gonna ask you about it…
Ol: Yeah, and it just worked really well ahaha.
EP: As a thrash metal band, are you not scared of the criticism after pulling out a Nirvana cover, when everyone blames them mostly for fucking up metal in the 90’s?
Ben: I think anybody who knows us now knows that we’re not scared to go completely off the wall. I’ve always said that right from the beginning, a band’s always got to go forward. You can’t make the same album 5 times in a row, you can’t move sideways in your career, you have to move forward and to do that you have to change and evolve. Evile will always evolve you can’t just stagnate in the same water and do the same material and tread the same ground all the time.
Ol: Unless you’re AC/DC where that works, but yeah you gotta go forward!
Ben: I think when people ring us up and say would you like to go a cover for a tribute album we’ll jump at the chance because its something new and something fresh, something different that we can then make our own so we love doing stuff like that.
If people come up to us and say you’re not thrash anymore, we’ll just say “Well, listen to Enter the Grave” – we’re still the same band that made that album, we’ve still got it in us!
EP: Perfect! So now the new album you’re just a few hours way from officially releasing this new album, I can see your smile! How was this journey, man? Rehearsing, studio, recording, and now releasing on tour?
Ol: It’s been great, as soon as Infect the Nation ended I personally started writing riffs from then on. It’s been two years non stop, now it’s just a big blur to be honest – an enjoyable blur! Now it’s like “Wow!”, all that effort will be shown onstage.
Ben: And I think the hard work put in rehearsals really showed when recording. We sat down and got all our parts nailed properly before we went into the studio, which is why we got them down so quickly. It definitely raised our confidence levels to do it live. Now we just have to get over the nerves, bang it out and make people hear it!
Ol: Playing and begging to the crowd… “Like this, like this, you will like this!!!”
EP: Anxious?
Ben: I’m personally really nervous tonight, not because I don’t know what I’m doing, purely because it’s the start of a new era of Evile.
EP: But you must be really proud as well…
Ben: Oh yes for sure, it’s a really great album we’re all really, really proud of it! It’s just those early days when you don’t really know how it’s going to go down live. Once on stage, it will settle.
EP: In Memoriam… is it going to be in the concert?
Ol: Not today, we’re really proud of it, love everything about it! It means something for people who’ve lost someone in their lives, not just in mine. But it will have to be the right time to do it live. A big crowd who want to hear a lot instead of just “Can you play that fast song you do?”. If you’ve got 500 people screaming for thrash you don’t go “Right, we’re going to play a ballad”.
EP: Even with most fans knowing what it’s about?
Ol: You know, I don’t want people to feel like they have to sit through it like “Oh it’s Mike, lets go through it…” We’ll play it when its right, I think it’s a contemplative song so you have to listen to it with your own ears and your own head, in your own way. I don’t think it’s a song that will go down particularly well at a thrash gig but that’s not to say that when we’re a couple of years down the line we wont make it part of the set. Just right now it’s not right.
Ben: I think when enough people care and enough people wanna hear it then we’ll play it. Yeah, then it will become the norm in our set-list.
