Huddersfield, England-based Evile first began their career as a Metallica cover band called Metal Militia. After changing their name to Evile and playing original thrash cover in 2004, the group released a trio of demos. The group used three songs from their five-song Hell demo in 2006 for their debut full-length album, Enter the Grave, released earlier this year on Earache.
Evile is a product of the new millennium, but their style recalls that of the eighties and early nineties thrash. Even the production on Enter the Graverecalls mid-eighties thrash gems like South of Heaven and Ride the Lightning. Comparisons to Ride the Lightningare no coincidence. The group acquired the services of famed producer, Flemming Rasmussen, who produced Metallica’s Ride the Lightningand Master of Puppets. Vocalist/guitarist Matt Drake contacted Rasmussen via email. Surprisingly, Rasmussen quickly replied, asking Drake to send MP3s of the band, but did not reply after receiving the MP3s. A few months passed, and then thanks to the encouragement from their new label—Earache—Drake contacted Rasmussen again, this time using material from the Hell demo. His persistence paid off, for Rasmussen accepted their offer.
Evile has received mixed reactions for the new album, depending on how each listener feels about the “retro thrash” movement. However, those lucky enough to live across the pond and witness Evile live usually relate only positive comments. Mostly confined to their English surroundings, Evile is creating a buzz around their local shows. Opening gigs for Exodus and fellow Earache thrashers, Municipal Waste and SSS, while embarking on tours with Sanctity, Onslaught and Susperia, led to amazing results such as picking up Paul Ryan management and securing an opening, sold-out show with Machine Head. Machine Head front man, Rob Flynn specifically requested Evile open.
Singer, songwriter, guitarist Matt Drake spoke with Blistering about the new album and on what an amazing year 2007 has been for Evile.
Blistering.com: You recently released Enter the Grave? How do you feel about this release?
Evile: We are all excited, as you can imagine. We’ve always been of the mind that we would get a band together, do a few gigs and thrash people’s tits off. Signing with Earache has been interesting. Since we’ve signed with Earache, we’re just walking around thinking, “wow, man!” It’s just good to be in a thrash band playing stuff like 1982, the mid eighties, early nineties. I’m glad we can get a chance to remind people what thrash metal is all about.
Blistering.com: Enter the Grave denotes your first proper release by way of Earache. What has changed for the band since signing to this label?
Evile: Absolutely nothing has changed. We are still the same band. We are still the same people. We still do the same things. We all still work and have full-time jobs. We’re gonna start doing some proper tours now, which will hopefully start next year. Not much has changed, but people know things about us, which is scary. People know what band I’m in. Someone might come up to me and say, “Ah, it’s Matt from Evile!” Holy shit, that’s really scary. Nothing has really changed; we’ve just gotten a chance to make the songs sound better. People like to hear our CD. Schmier of Destruction actually has our album in his car and plays it while he’s driving around, which is absolutely brilliant.
Blistering.com: Although this album is your first full length, studio recording, you previously released two demos and an EP. How do these past releases compare to the current one?
Evile: They don’t compare at all. They sounded surprisingly good, actually. The guy we used gave us a really good sound, which I think helped us get a lot further with our band. I think the sound he gave us really helped us get out there as a band. I don’t think a lot of people in our area have heard stuff like our first one, Hallows Eve EP. I don’t think a lot of kids in our area have heard metal rage like this.
When they did, they would think, “What the fuck is this?” I think it caught people by surprise. The Hell demo, the one after it, was much faster, which is what you have to do if you are a thrash band. There were two tracks on it, “Enter the Grave” and “Thrasher” that we were proud of. There were two other songs, “Russian Roulette” and “Death Sentence” that we weren’t too proud of. We kicked those two off and used “Enter the Grave,” “Thrasher,” and “We Who Are About to Die” on the album, which really worked out well, thanks to Flemming. Those albums don’t really compare, especially when you have Flemming Rasmussen twiddling knobs to get the sound that he did.
Blistering.com: The style and sound of Enter the Graveis strikingly similar to classic thrash albums like Slayer’s South of Heaven or Game Over by Nuclear Assault. How important was Flemming Rasmussen’s production in achieving this sound?
Evile: It is actually really important. When we first started doing it, we knew we had to get somebody recording the album that fully understood what we were doing. We, personally, are not fans of modern metal music. I can’t stand most modern metal bands. It just does nothing for me. It doesn’t tickle my balls, whatsoever. It’s complete bullocks. I don’t like modern production either. It just sounds too pretty. Everything is turned up too loud, everything is to the max. We wanted to have that old sound, but with a modern feel to it so you still get all the refineries in the sound.
He was the perfect guy for it because the mentality of the recording was straight in there, yet he gave it a wax of live. We didn’t mess around with tweaking every note or making everything sound pitch perfect. That kills the feel. I like it when it has a live sound, it’s so energetic! We started with the guitar first. We doubled tracked the guitars and it sounded fantastic. Twice, we went into the studio where the cabinets were and repositioned the mics. Then we had the perfect guitar sound. It only took about five minutes to do. It was the kind of feel of get in there, press record and go! He was the perfect guy, and a cool dude, as well.
He’s a bit of a mentalist. He’s a bit nuts, a bit scary, but in a really good way. He’s absolutely brilliant. He told us a lot of great stories about Metallica. We went over to his house and his wife cooked for us. He said we were doing a lot of the same things that Metallica did when they were recording Master of Puppets, which is bizarre. He is fucking brilliant! He was the perfect guy for the job, and I pray that we use him the next time because I think the next album will be even better.
