James caught up with Evile back stage in Nottingham before their headline show to talk about their new album, current tour and plans for the future.

We last interviewed you at Bloodstock back in August, what have you been up to since then?
After summer we went straight to America again for a few months, had a very up and down tour with highs and lows. It was really good actually there was some fantastic gigs; San Francisco was amazing, LA was amazing, we did a show in Ottawa, we’d never there before but there was hundreds of kids out there going mental which was very surprising. We got Christmas off luckily and we’ve just been writing since then. Now we’re just out here escaping from writing and playing a few shows.

You have been working on your third studio album for some time now, how is it shaping up so far and when can we expect it to be released?
It’s going to be coming out tentatively mid July I think, don’t know if it’s set in stone yet. It’s coming along quite well its coming quite slowly though, we write quite slowly and unfortunately the fact we have to work full time as well as be in a band; personally I work full time, so I’m finding it quite hard to get up at 6 in the morning, work all day, get home at 7 and write all day till like 2 in the morning then get 4 hours sleep and do that all week and then do house stuff on the weekend and write, I’m finding it hard to fit it all in. But we’re going to get there I mean a lot of the vocals are coming together slowly, it’s getting done. It’s sounding like we haven’t gone too far; I feel we went a bit far with “Infected Nations”, Experimented a bit too much with different things and we want to get back to knitting “Enter the Grave” and “Infected Nations” together to try to find the third level.

What themes and stories will you be covering on the new album?
Not telling, I want to keep it quite vague, not the lyrics I just don’t want to give it away because I want people to think about it themselves and put their own thoughts into it instead of me going, “This one’s about cats” it’s not about cats but I’d rather people read it themselves first without me telling them first and make their minds up. Sorry it’s not really a good answer is it? Ha-ha.

How do you go about writing your material? And has the process differed this time around?
Just the same; it’s the same as “Infected Nations”, “Enter the Grave” was different because we never planned to get signed so we were just mucking around in the rehearsal room writing riffs and going “Oh yeah that sounded quite fun yeah repeat that bit again, yeah that sounded cool” so that was kind of a 4 way writing process but when it came to “Infected Nations” it was mostly me and Ol sat down, Ol throwing at riffs out and me kind of guiding, well I threw riffs out as well and he was like “Ah this bits shit don’t do that” we kind of bounce off each other then we give it to the other people and see what they think, then share idea’s and form it that way, we do it quite slow so we ended up rushing “Infected Nations” and trying too much. I’m still very proud of it but I think we went a bit far so this time we’re trying to reel it in a bit and do what we do best, yeah it’s mostly just me and Ol doing the core writing – mostly ol and we bounce off each other.

How do you think the album will compare to your previous album releases?
I think people... I don’t know actually because so far it feels like both albums it does feel like a mix of the 2, it feels like we’ve taken the best bits of both and put it into 1 almighty album if we can manage to do it. I don’t know, I’m not sure how it will compare because I think people might expect us to go further and maybe experiment too much; people might expect that because of the second album they might think we’ll slow down a little bit and sell out, people might think we’re going to do that but other people might also expect “No I think they could do a damn good bloody fast metal album again” a lot of It’s a lot faster this time, a lot faster. There’s a song we’re doing live now testing it there’s no vocals for it and it’s full on, balls out, it’s called “Bitch”. I think people are hopefully going to be surprised and realise we don’t plan to ever lose our way and we want to try and do what we do well and stick to that with flourishes here and there of different things and ideas thrown in, we don’t just want to be a generic thrash metal band we want to be that awesome metal band that’s what we want.

You have been signed to Earache for some time now, how have you found the label to work with?
Very good, they are very good at making albums; they do it really well. They’ve always put albums out and are always into new idea’s especially when it comes to releases and special editions any ideas you’ve got you can throw them out and they are like “We’ll give it a try” and that’s fantastic you can get some really cool stuff out for people; which we haven’t had chance to do yet but with this one we’ve got more time we’re going to put some thought into different version and cool things we can do for it like special editions. So yeah they are very good to work with.

You are currently towards the end of a mini tour across the UK, how have you found the shows so far?
Yeah very mini, actually I’m very surprised, way above my expectations; I’m quite pessimistic I thought that less people would show up this time because we’ve played the UK quite a lot so I expected people might be like “I saw them at Sonisphere I won’t bother seeing them again I’ve had my fill” but more people showed up this time the numbers have gone up since last year so, I’m overwhelmed, I’m really happy, its good. I’m just excited for London that’s always the manic one, the first one in Manchester was so ridiculously intense, that as soon as we started the first song, stage divers and they were just coming forward and over and behind me my guitar neck was up all the time trying not to kill people with the spiky bits on it and the amount of people that came over and hit my mic stand into my face I had to dodge my mic stand at least 5/6 times and I got hit with it, I was more worried about my guitar than my face; it was mental and I expect London to be 50 times worse it was last time we did it was insane, I’m going to get 3 rows of gaffe tape and tape the entire floor over the mic stand so there’s no way people can knock it. In fact on the Manchester one I’d written the lyrics for the new song because I can’t remember them at all because when I learn something new I forget something old so I taped it on the monitor I spaced it just right so I could see them without my glasses on its a bit blurry but I could manage and then first song some guy came over the monitor and whipped the lyrics away they just vanished don’t know where they went in him probably I don’t know, so I’ll just have to sing something’s and yeah’s. So I’m expecting worse.

You have shared the stage with many bands, but who has been your favourite band to tour with so far?
Megadeth. By far Megadeth, Megadeth was amazing, it was beyond belief. The first show we did that was out first proper big professional tour so we had no idea what we were doing, we got to our first show and it was just us and Megadeth on the bill and that was just mind-blowing there’s nothing quite like it to be standing on stage just turning round and seeing Megadeth behind you on the big banner, and we just played to so many people as well you just can’t fault it, it was so much fun it was great; and we crashed into a roundabout too which was cool.

Can we expect you to play some of the UK festivals this summer?
Don’t know yet, I hope so I’d like to because Sonisphere last year was the best show of the year for me it was incredibly good, we just packed out the tent I don’t know how we did it but the tent was full and I loved it, it was great, I’d love to do it again this year because they’ve got the big 4 this year isn’t there? If we could get on that the big 4 that’s my dream done I can quit, I’m done that’d be the greatest thing. I’d love to but we don’t know yet it depends because we did it last year so they might be like “Well you did it last year so”.

You seem to spend a lot of time on the road touring, what do you get up to between shows to keep yourselves busy?
Drive? We did 5 and half months in America last year and some of the drives were 15 hours plus without days off you need to play and go so you can get there; if you’ve got a long drive you need to at least need to think about sleeping for 5/6 hours before you can keep driving again. I don’t know, a good cup of tea and chat about the golden days; we’re really boring Ha-ha.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of starting up a band?
Do it. Do it as much as you can all the time. No better advice than that. Just keep doing it get as good as you can at what you do; practice, practise, practise, gig, gig, gig, gig, gig. Do it. Just do what you want to do, that’s all we did; gigged and practise, gigged and practised. There’s no guarantee you can gain from that just do it because it’s cool and fun.

Where do you hope to see Evile in a year’s time?
I don’t plan that far ahead, I’ll be happy if we’re still going by the summer to be honest with you, I’d like to think opening for Girls Aloud or something I don’t know not sure. You never know when it’s going to end it could end tomorrow “We had a good go it was fun” so I’m going to be boring and say I’ve got no idea. Ha-ha.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Alright it’s quite funny actually because we had this conversation the other night. For some reason we decided that a giraffe would be very good for selling merchandise, they are quite tall and the shirts at some point would just sit down the neck; so if you use a larger size at the bottom you could display all your shirts up the giraffes neck, that’s what we figured so I’ll say I’d be a giraffe so then I could proudly display peoples merchandise from a great height and people could say “That giraffe looks quite good in that shirt I’ll have it” That’s what we figured, giraffe it is.

Thanks for your time is there a message for your fans reading this?
Thank you for being fans. Thank you for supporting British Metal and keep your eyes open for a new album, some good stuff coming your way.

Interview By James Webb