Photo Credit: Alia Thomas
Self-described brat-metal band Eville have had one hell of a year already, touring with Redhook and Defences earlier in the year, and playing several festivals across the UK including Reading and Leeds this summer – the Brighton trio are going places. We sat down briefly with them to talk about their latest single, and first 2000trees experience as well as what’s next for the band.
Is this your first time at 2000Trees?
Eva: It is, yeah.
How are you finding it?
E: Amazing, yeah.
Milo: Hot, haha.
Jude: Yeah, it’s very nice but very hot.
What three words would you describe the Trees crowd today?
M: You can say hot again.
E: Yeah, like hot.
M: It’s very like, friendly, so yeah, community, friendly.
E: Very nice, slay. Haha. Very nice people.
Your music is described as “brat-metal” but for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, how would you describe that?
E: Brat-metal is like attitude, girly pop slay, meets heavy brutal metal, you know. It can mean a lot of different things, you know.
J: I mean we made it up, so it’s sort of whatever we’re doing haha. We don’t want to have any rules to it, you know.
E: Yeah, that is important to us that we can do whatever we want. The whole idea is like mixing really sweet imagery or sounds with like brutal stuff, you know. I mean that’s the juxtaposition basically, that’s the idea.
So your live shows are known for like a lot of crowd interaction, a lot of chaos. How do you build that energy on stage?
J: It’s like, it can be gradual or sometimes people can just be straight up into it.
E: Yeah, sometimes they just start moshing without even being told.
J: There’s no rhyme or reason to what a crowd does.
E: We just go out and like give it our all and I think, you know, the energy can be infectious. If you’re going crazy then, you know, the crowd will do the same.
J: And we love having bits in the set to interact with them. It’s so much fun.
E: That is important to us. It really lets you connect with the audience when you can have a minute to like shout at them basically haha.
J: I mean you start off small, you just make them put a middle finger in the air and by the end they’re like getting down on the ground, they’re doing walls of deaths, they’re doing mosh pits.
M: You’ve got to sort of like break the seal with them. Clapping, jumping, that sort of thing.
E: There’s always an awkward bit where you’ve got to test the water on mosh pits. It could go either way – they really go for it, or no-one does haha.
You’ve recently released your latest song, Get With Me. What is the story behind the song and how has the reaction been from the fans so far?
E: I mean it’s just kind of that universal experience that girls go through of like, you know, getting creepy people in the DMs, not taking no for an answer. We just kind of thought we’d put a fun spin on it. Kind of like taking the control back. That was my vision with it, you know – I’m going to take control of this situation. Jude produced it, which was very big for us.
J: Yeah it’s the first one I’ve done production on and mixed it and stuff like that, which is a big passion of mine, so I was very happy to do it.
E: It kind of just came together very quickly and naturally.
J: It seems like fans and crowds really enjoy it as well. There’s a bit right after the first chorus where I scream, “you hairy fuck” and I always see people at the front just screaming that out. That’s nice to see. I never thought that me making that suggestion as a lyric would go that far, I guess haha.
E: I feel like it’s something that a lot of people can relate to, you know, so I think it felt important to write a song about it because it feels like a bit of an unspoken thing.
J: Maybe some of those creepy guys will listen to the song.
E: Yeah. Exactly. I thought if I put this out, maybe they’ll get the message.
Earlier this year you went on tour with Redhook. How was that?
J: It was brilliant.
E: It was so much fun. I mean, it’s always fun getting to tour with your friends – we’re all best friends here, so it’s kind of just a dream really.
J: Yeah. We’re all such close friends outside of being a band as well, so like, you just get to go on the road with your friends and play sick shows, like there’s literally nothing better.
Was this your first big tour?
E: We went on a run of shows with The Hara previously. That was three dates, so I guess this probably was like our first like big tour.
J: That was our biggest one, yeah.
E: Yeah, Redhook were such lovely people as well. They made it a dream. I’ve never been that upset to finish a tour. We didn’t want it to end and you know, they were really kind to us and brought us out on stage. I got to go and sing a song with them on stage, they were just so nice to us.
J: Yeah, it felt like a little community on that tour.
What is next for Eville, and what can we expect from you in the near future?
E: Well, more festivals. Yeah. Definitely, obviously more festivals.
M: Reading & Leeds, very excited about that.
J: Yeah, very excited. Huge bucket list on that one.
E: More shows. More music. The classic big things coming, you know.
J: Behind the scenes, we’re always together and it’s either rehearsing or it’s writing. We just write so much because it’s fun. I mean, we like doing it.
E: Or drinking bubble tea together. We do that a lot haha.
M: Yeah there’s a bubble tea place near Jude’s, shout out Pulse in Brighton, where we go all the time.
J: No one makes tea like you haha.
E: I love that place.
Who are you excited about catching on the line-up here?
E: There’s quite a few people.
M: I was really excited to see Bambie yesterday. Yeah, they were amazing.
J: We wanted to see Julia Wolf, but she’s on now haha.
E: Yeah I love Julia Wolf.
M: In fact, when I was parking up the car, I heard like 10 seconds of her, so I got a bit of it.
J: We caught Lake Malice yesterday. They’re always sick.
What’s the weirdest or most memorable thing that’s happened to you at a festival, either as a punter or an artist?
E: Well, there was this one time at Download, actually, a couple years ago. When the beat dropped in this song that was playing, this guy just threw a pint of beer over my head haha. That was quite memorable.
J: So I have really bad hayfever, and at Download a month ago, I had it so bad. I don’t know how I’m not going crazy right now, but it looked like I was trying to social distance at this point. I had a mask over my mouth, my eyes were constantly just streaming. It was not great. I was glad we weren’t playing it that year. Memorable for an unfortunate reason.
M: I was there with Eva with the pint thing. It went over Eva’s head and all down my back. That was so sticky for like the whole day, and it wasn’t like a cold day either, so yeah that was pretty rough.
E: Festivals are just like a lawless land. I mean, they’re just like a crazy atmosphere, really. Anything can happen.
Lastly, if Eville was a festival, what would it be like?
J: Fest-eville. There’d be a lot of fun things to do, as well as stages, I think. Lots of vegan food options.
E: I really liked what Marshall was doing with the tote bag decorating. That was really cool. We’d have more interactive stuff like they did. That was really sick.
M: Have you guys been to Goodwood Festival of Speed? Because they have booths and stuff for different brands, and I feel like that’s so cool to just walk around there, because sometimes you know when there’s no bands to see for half an hour, there’s not always much to do, so to have like a load of trade stalls around too.
E: Make sure to have a lot of women on the line-up. Definitely.
J: We don’t see women headliners on most festivals.
E: Yeah, so we’d have women headlining. Just all of those groups of people that just don’t really get enough attention, really, at the festivals.
M: And lots of water haha.
E: Yeah, cold water as well.
J: Lots of shade, try and get some air conditioning haha.
E: That’s so true, a lot of shade. Some shade would be great.
J: Those snow machines they put up for, like, the skiing. One of those haha.
Interview by: Alia Thomas
