HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Pray For Villains – DevilDriver

Seventeen years down the line, and YouTube user brucewayne420’s upload of DEVILDRIVER at Download Festival 2007 remains on the video sharing website. On what would be the last year that the second stage at Donington Park was in a tent, the groove metal bludgeoners from Santa Barbara, CA would go down in history with their attempt to create the world’s biggest circle pit – Guinness World Records may not have verified it, but it became one of the festival’s highlights for that year and put the band on the lips of the UK, thus setting themselves up for a bumper fourth album that celebrated its fifteenth birthday last month; the still excellent Pray For Villains.





To be fair, the hype surrounding DEVILDRIVER was already on a speedy upward trajectory. They had formed in 2002 under the leadership of Dez Fafara, then still the frontman of nu-metal icons COAL CHAMBER, when he moved from Orange County in California to Santa Barbara and began jamming with musicians he met at several barbecues he hosted. Completing the original lineup were guitarists Evan Pitts and Jeff Kendrick, bassist Jon Miller and drummer John Boecklin; shortly after the release of their self-titled debut in the autumn of 2003, Pitts would be replaced by Mike Spreitzer and form the ‘classic’ lineup that would go on to release four records together.

At the time of Pray For Villains, the band’s follow-ups to their debut – 2005’s The Fury of Our Maker’s Hand and 2007’s The Last Kind Words – had meant the wheels were fully in motion, with such anthems as Clouds Over California, End Of The Line and Meet The Wretched delighting fans of other groove laden groups like MACHINE HEAD and LAMB OF GOD (the latter song would be the soundtrack of choice to their attempts at getting large groups of people to run fast and bear left). They had also gained exposure through their cover of IRON MAIDEN’s Wasted Years for a Kerrang! compilation and – more famously – with their songs Devil’s Son and Driving Down The Darkness featuring in US medical sitcom Scrubs, playing through the speakers of delivery driver Lloyd’s van.

Produced by Logan Mader of – appropriately – MACHINE HEAD fame, along with additional guitar duties by the legendary Andy Sneap, Pray For Villains was announced in April of 2009, with the title track released on May 21st. The opening song to the album, it remains a hugely impressive track, Mader’s production job still as crisp a decade-and-a-half after its initial release. The other dozen tracks still hold up too, to the point that there are certain sectors of the metal community who consider this DEVILDRIVER’s peak and that they’ve never quite reached the same heights in subsequent years. For an album so visceral, its choruses are incredibly catchy; Dez’s vocals might be growled, but they’re clean enough to allow the likes of Pure Sincerity and I’ve Been Sober to be returned by a fervent crowd with interest.


There was also a wide range of subject matters, from the personal to the fictional and the joyous, for listeners to digest. Forgiveness Is A Six Gun is believed to be about The Dark Tower series of novels by Stephen King while Waiting for November takes a more heartfelt route as it talks about the funeral of Fafara’s mother-in-law. However, purely because of the city it references, it will come as no surprise that the full-throttle Another Night In London would make the most waves on these shores, bolstered by its music video shot over two nights at the capital’s legendary Garage when the band supported the album on a UK tour that had no fewer than four supports in BEHEMOTH, SUICIDE SILENCE, TRIGGER THE BLOODSHED and MALEFICE.




Released on July 14th, Pray For Villains would sell 14,600 copies in the US on its release week and sit pretty at No. 35 on the Billboard 200; it would, however, enter at No. 4 on the US Top Hard Rock Albums, a position it would replicate in the UK version of the same charts. The album would garner strong reviews, with both Blabbermouth and Metal Hammer giving the record scores of 9/10. “Pray For Villains is DEVILERIVER’s jackpot moment…this album is going to blow your fucking head off” gushed esteemed journalist Dom Lawson in the latter; that same issue saw the review of their performance at that year’s edition of Download cite them as ‘metal’s most fearsome live band’ and that ‘if they continue to deliver sets as tight and brutal as today’s they’re sure to take over the plant. A month later, the band were gracing the front cover of that same magazine.

Yet, for all the hype at the time and the acclaim it garnered, Pray For Villains has become something of a lost gem in the DEVILDRIVER back catalogue. Even though it represents a real high point in the band’s career, no songs have received a live outing since the back end of 2012, which may have something to do with the revolving door of musicians that have been in the band alongside Dez and Mike since the release of fifth record Beast.

In 2024, DEVILDRIVER are a solid representation of the phrase ‘What could have been’, their star seemingly having been on a constant wane since the turn of the 2010’s, but for those who remember their explosion, Pray For Villains will forever be a monolithic piece of work.



Pray For Villains was originally released on July 14th, 2009 via Roadrunner Records.

HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Horrified – Repulsion

The history of legendary and pioneering US grindcore band REPULSION is a storied one to say the least, and their story has a lot of twists and turns, but it is one that includes the creation of one of the most influential album in extreme music history. What makes the story of REPULSION all the more interesting is that 1989’s Horrified is the only album the band ever released, but when that album is a bonafide classic, you can see it’s impeccable legacy. To truly reflect on its impact, we need to go back to the very beginning, to where that saga started.





Starting as thrash metallers TEMPTER in Flint, Michigan in 1984 and featuring guitarist Matt Olivio and vocalist Scott Carlson, that band soon morphed into the death/thrash metal focused GENOCIDE. The band would release a series of well-received demos in Toxic Metal (1984), Violent Death (1985) and The Stench Of Burning Death (1986).

In the middle of GENOCIDE‘s reign in 1985, Carlson and Olivio relocated to Florida to complement the lineup of quintessential death metal band DEATH but while that tantalising prospect with Chuck Schuldiner‘s band didn’t amount to much, Carlson and Olivio returned to Flint and back to GENOCIDE with a renewed focus. With the addition of drummer Dave ‘Grave’ Hollingshead, who brought a powerhouse hardcore approach to the band as well as guitar player Anton Freeman and Carlson playing bass as well as vocals. The band would first release Violent Death and then The Stench Of Burning Death demo to acclaim in the metal underground but ultimately, the life of GENOICE was at its end at this point and what came next was something even more deadly and deathly.

That next twist came later in 1986. GENOCIDE became REPULSION and their blend of death metal and hardcore punk gave birth to a faster, heavier and above all more brutal form of music that has become known as grindcore. With their Slaughter Of The Innocent demo gaining acclaim in the metal underground with tapes traders all over the world, the band then recorded what be their first and only album in Horrified.





Recorded at Silver Tortoise Soundlab in Ann Arbor, Michigan in June 1986, Horrified‘s mix of brutal vocals, rumbling bass, hardcore punk inspired riffage and intensely fast drumming was the perfect mixture of metal and hardcore. With the album’s death and horror obsessed lyrics and gruesome song titles, Horrified is indeed an apt title. With the album recorded and the album circulated across the tape trade world to create a massive buzz, REPULSION seemed poised to take over the extreme underground but a period of inactivity ultimately blunted the band’s signalled the end… for now.




Fast forward to 1989 and that inactivity was soon to be dispersed with an explosion of activity. First of all, Horrified was remastered and finally brought out on Necrosis Records, a sub-label of Earache Records. Horrified and REPULSION gained a new lease of life (or death!) as they reformed for live dates, bolstered by a new host of rabid fans following the official release of their debut album.


In this remastered form, Horrified is a lesson in sonic horror and violence through its raw and retained lo-fi sound and amped up brutality. From opening track The Stench Of Burning Death, all the way to the title track, or classics like Acid Bath, Radiation Sickness, Black Breath and Maggots In Your Coffin, cemented the detonation of grinding deathly madness. Both in its original form and its official release, the influence of Horrified is beyond doubt and helped REPULSION become the forefathers of grindcore.

The bands that REPULSION influenced with Horrified is undeniably impressive with CARCASS, NAPALM DEATH, CANNIBAL CORPSE and ENTOMBED all citing the record as an influence. What is more impressive is that Horrified became and continues to be the blueprint for grindcore today, thirty five years after its proper release. A truly impressive feat, and the fact that the record still sounds heavily powerful and fresh to this day is testament to its brilliance.



The album has been re-released a number of times over the years from the likes of Relapse and Southern Lord, alongside numerous demo material from the GENOCIDE and early REPULSION days, has only fuelled the myth of REPULSION and the enormous impact their music had on the extreme metal world.



Although the band would split again following its release, adding to those twists and turns, they have made sporadic returns from the wilderness to play live in the mid 1990s and the late 2000s. Although there has been no new music from REPULSION, and we can pray for a day when that may come, for now, we have the very special Horrified.

INTRODUCING: LØLØ

“When I was younger, my dream was to be on Broadway,” LØLØ – real name Lauren Mandel – explains. “I never even thought about writing songs, but I always kept a diary. So, when I started to learn guitar in ninth grade, my guitar teacher suggested that I should write songs, which at first, I refused to do because that would be like people knowing my diary entries and I was too embarrassed.”





Her guitar teacher told her that he wouldn’t come back unless she wrote a song, and as she was worried she’d lose him, she tried writing a song that night, and ended up writing ten songs as it came really naturally to her. This marked the start of LØLØ‘s journey to becoming a musician. “After that, I was like, ‘screw Broadway!’” she laughs.

After releasing three EPs – 2019’s Sweater Collection, 2021’s Overkill, and 2022’s Debbie Downer – LØLØ knew that she always wanted to make an album because she loves listening to albums as a music fan. “I always want to add more to the story. Even with the EPs, I put the songs in a specific order, so it told a story. With an album, you have more tracks, so there is more inside scoop of the overall story with more material. But then I wrote the song U & the tin man, that I realised that there was more to this, including crazy visuals and a story. From there, I wrote more songs, but it wasn’t until I wrote the song wish i was a robot that I realised there was two sides of the same coin: falling for people that have no emotions who treat me like shit, and then wishing that I had no emotions, so that I didn’t have to be affected by all of these things and life in general.”

That is why LØLØ‘s debut album is called falling for robots and wishing i was one, a brilliant pop-rock album. Most debut albums skim the surface of who an artist truly is for the sake of testing the waters, but that isn’t the case with LØLØ. Her debut album is raw and honest about heartbreak, feeling emotions too deeply, and it also perfectly captures the zeitgeist of being a woman in the modern era. The track list for the album tells a story of a woman falling in love with a guy and the crazy feelings that come with romantic love, and then realising that he’s still texting his ex girlfriend. “As the album goes on, it tells more of the story,” she explains.


The cover of the album shows LØLØ as a punk Dorothy holding the heart of a robot as they are on a yellow brick road with a emerald castle in the background. “It was inspired by u & the tin man because I thought it’d be cool if I was a punked-out Dorothy because The Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite movies and my dream was always to be on Broadway. I wanted to be Elphaba in Wicked because that’s my favourite musical. I felt like my album was the same vibe as The Wizard Of Oz is quite whimsical and Dorothy learns that she needs to grow up. The film is also about her learning about love and courage, so I felt like I was Dorothy trying to navigate through this crazy world that we’re in. It’s my first album, so go big or go home.”



The majority of the album was recorded in Nashville. “The recording process was very easy for this. In the past, I’ve sung the demo, and then gone back and re sung it until it was perfect, but this time around, whenever I wrote something, I’d sing it and then left it at that. It was cool because it meant that I got to do the majority of the album with the same producer, who’s called Mike Robinson and it was really fun. I’d go out to Nashville for a week or two every other month, we’d get a bunch of songs, and it was like a fun little getaway where I’d write a bunch of songs, and then we just slowly put it together.”


Even through the album has fifteen songs, there were some songs that didn’t make it onto the final product. “Once I knew what the album was about, I knew I needed a song about this, that, and the other to fill in the rest of the ideas to go with those themes, so there was a bunch that I tried writing that I didn’t think were good enough. Then there was one song that I thought was good enough for the album, but it didn’t really fit the theme of falling for robots and wishing i was one, so I didn’t put it on because I’m a stickler for a theme,” LØLØ explains.

The album never falls into the trappings of chasing the next big thing, but instead involves LØLØ “writing about what was super specific for me, but I’ve always been asked: ‘Did you date my ex?’ because of my lyrics, and I always hope I haven’t dated their exes,” she laughs. “But I think it’s really cool that even though the lyrics are very specific to what have happened to me, we’ve all had shared experiences.”

The shared experiences is why people love LØLØ and why she is quickly growing into one of the most exciting new artists of the 2020s. She isn’t afraid to be raw about life, and falling for robots and wishing i was one exemplifies this, and is one of the many reasons why LØLØ is a name to watch.



falling for robots and wishing i was one is out now via Hopeless Records.

Like LØLØ on Facebook.

HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Miss Machine – The Dillinger Escape Plan

There isn’t really a ‘best’ DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN album. Obviously you can have a favourite – perhaps the batshit frenzy of their 1999 debut Calculating Infinity, or the glorious swansong of 2016’s Dissociation, or indeed any of the outstanding efforts that came between them – but the point is it really would be hard to argue against literally any pick from such a relentlessly consistent discography. If however, there can be a ‘most definitive’ DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN album, then surely such an honour belongs to Miss Machine.





Look, the aforementioned Calculating Infinity was seminal – there is no doubt about that. The world had never and has never heard a record quite like it and it’ll be getting its own Heavy Music History treatment in just a couple of months’ time for its 25th anniversary, but the reason its 2004 successor is up for the prize of ‘most definitive’ should be obvious enough: there are elements – and even people – on Miss Machine that would further define all THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN would become known and revered for that simply weren’t present in the maniacal violence of their first LP.

While it would be untrue to suggest that there was no method to the madness of its predecessor, there was definitely a lot more of it to Miss Machine. Suddenly a band whose biggest hook up to that point had been the panic chord/chug-chug trade-offs of the iconic 43% Burnt were doing full-blown choruses and playing riffs you could actually bang your head to without the help of a calculator – not at the expense of the extremity that made them so compelling in the first place, but somehow in addition to it. If Calculating Infinity had taken more of the hack and slash approach of a deranged killer claiming their first victims, Miss Machine was that same killer five years on: still wildly unpredictable, but also more methodical, and definitely with a few more weapons in the van.


Of course, there is a fire-breathing, head-walking, stage-defiling elephant in the room here. Having parted amicably with original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis in 2001, DILLINGER’s nationwide search for a replacement led them in the October of that year to the inimitable Greg Puciato for easily the most pivotal line-up change of the many in the band’s storied history. With all due respect to Minakakis, Puciato proved significantly more versatile, capable not only of the shouts and shrieks tracks like Panasonic Youth and We Are The Storm required of him, but also of a proper croon that made the likes of Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants and Unretrofied border on once unthinkable levels of accessibility. That Puciato would remain with TDEP until their dissolution in 2017 – arguably becoming as much of the face of the band as their sole permanent member and mastermind Ben Weinman – says it all really: definitive.


Puciato’s recruitment wasn’t the only event set in motion by Minakakis’ departure that would shape Miss Machine either. While only between full-time vocalists for a few months, the band were still quick to turn to a notable early fan of theirs for help in the interim, collaborating with an obvious kindred spirit in Mike Patton for what was to become 2002’s Irony Is A Dead Scene EP. Brief though it was – Puciato had actually been in post for the best part of a year by the time Irony was released – Patton’s involvement had a lasting impact on the band, the EP itself being perhaps unsurprisingly the weirdest release in their entire discography, and crucially allowing them to develop the experimental tendencies they would dispatch a little more measuredly but no less confidently in Miss Machine’s flirtations with jazz-fusion and industrial influences and even straight-up melodic rock just two years later.



And thus Miss Machine presented a fuller picture of all that DILLINGER were and would be capable of in the years to come, their truly hair-raising violence left firmly intact even amid the finer songcraft and bolder experimentation and moments of genuine catchiness. As Aubin Paul of PunkNews wrote in one of the many glowing reviews the album received at the time: “Despite the bands [sic] reputation as progenitors of “math-core” – a reputation they could easily have rested on for the next decade – Miss Machine is possessed of an unmistakable progression and once again demonstrates why the band is one of the most innovative forces in modern music.”

Those words get to the crux of what makes Miss Machine so particularly special in DILLINGER’s back catalogue, and they bring us back to the whole ‘most definitive’ argument we’re trying to make here. This was the album that announced that the band were even more than masters of extremity and violence they had already proven themselves to be, that they would always seek to evolve and innovate – as indeed they did on four more albums to follow, though perhaps never with quite as much of a leap as the one they landed here – and ultimately that they transcended even the barely visible boundaries of a genre they helped pioneer in the first place. If a friend ever asks you where to start with THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN there really is no wrong answer, but as a jumping off point for pretty much any other release in their discography surely this is the obvious choice.



Miss Machine was originally released on July 20th, 2004 via Relapse Records.



Like THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN on Facebook.

INTRODUCING: LØLØ

“When I was younger, my dream was to be on Broadway,” LØLØ – real name Lauren Mandel – explains. “I never even thought about writing songs, but I always kept a diary. So, when I started to learn guitar in ninth grade, my guitar teacher suggested that I should write songs, which at first, I refused to do because that would be like people knowing my diary entries and I was too embarrassed.”



Her guitar teacher told her that he wouldn’t come back unless she wrote a song, and as she was worried she’d lose him, she tried writing a song that night, and ended up writing ten songs as it came really naturally to her. This marked the start of LØLØ‘s journey to becoming a musician. “After that, I was like, ‘screw Broadway!’” she laughs.

After releasing three EPs – 2019’s Sweater Collection, 2021’s Overkill, and 2022’s Debbie Downer – LØLØ knew that she always wanted to make an album because she loves listening to albums as a music fan. “I always want to add more to the story. Even with the EPs, I put the songs in a specific order, so it told a story. With an album, you have more tracks, so there is more inside scoop of the overall story with more material. But then I wrote the song U & the tin man, that I realised that there was more to this, including crazy visuals and a story. From there, I wrote more songs, but it wasn’t until I wrote the song wish i was a robot that I realised there was two sides of the same coin: falling for people that have no emotions who treat me like shit, and then wishing that I had no emotions, so that I didn’t have to be affected by all of these things and life in general.”

That is why LØLØ‘s debut album is called falling for robots and wishing i was one, a brilliant pop-rock album. Most debut albums skim the surface of who an artist truly is for the sake of testing the waters, but that isn’t the case with LØLØ. Her debut album is raw and honest about heartbreak, feeling emotions too deeply, and it also perfectly captures the zeitgeist of being a woman in the modern era. The track list for the album tells a story of a woman falling in love with a guy and the crazy feelings that come with romantic love, and then realising that he’s still texting his ex girlfriend. “As the album goes on, it tells more of the story,” she explains.


The cover of the album shows LØLØ as a punk Dorothy holding the heart of a robot as they are on a yellow brick road with a emerald castle in the background. “It was inspired by u & the tin man because I thought it’d be cool if I was a punked-out Dorothy because The Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite movies and my dream was always to be on Broadway. I wanted to be Elphaba in Wicked because that’s my favourite musical. I felt like my album was the same vibe as The Wizard Of Oz is quite whimsical and Dorothy learns that she needs to grow up. The film is also about her learning about love and courage, so I felt like I was Dorothy trying to navigate through this crazy world that we’re in. It’s my first album, so go big or go home.”

The majority of the album was recorded in Nashville. “The recording process was very easy for this. In the past, I’ve sung the demo, and then gone back and re sung it until it was perfect, but this time around, whenever I wrote something, I’d sing it and then left it at that. It was cool because it meant that I got to do the majority of the album with the same producer, who’s called Mike Robinson and it was really fun. I’d go out to Nashville for a week or two every other month, we’d get a bunch of songs, and it was like a fun little getaway where I’d write a bunch of songs, and then we just slowly put it together.”

Even through the album has fifteen songs, there were some songs that didn’t make it onto the final product. “Once I knew what the album was about, I knew I needed a song about this, that, and the other to fill in the rest of the ideas to go with those themes, so there was a bunch that I tried writing that I didn’t think were good enough. Then there was one song that I thought was good enough for the album, but it didn’t really fit the theme of falling for robots and wishing i was one, so I didn’t put it on because I’m a stickler for a theme,” LØLØ explains.

The album never falls into the trappings of chasing the next big thing, but instead involves LØLØ “writing about what was super specific for me, but I’ve always been asked: ‘Did you date my ex?’ because of my lyrics, and I always hope I haven’t dated their exes,” she laughs. “But I think it’s really cool that even though the lyrics are very specific to what have happened to me, we’ve all had shared experiences.”

The shared experiences is why people love LØLØ and why she is quickly growing into one of the most exciting new artists of the 2020s. She isn’t afraid to be raw about life, and falling for robots and wishing i was one exemplifies this, and is one of the many reasons why LØLØ is a name to watch.

falling for robots and wishing i was one is out now via Hopeless Records.

Like LØLØ on Facebook.

ALBUM REVIEW: Digital Apocalypse – A Night In Texas

Australian deathcore merchants A NIGHT IN TEXAS return with a new vocalist for their fourth full-length album. After the departure of Ethan Lucas, the band were somewhat quiet, but behind the scenes they were in the studio cooking up Digital Apocalypse.





Bouncing back after some time of not releasing music and losing a band member is always a difficult thing to do. Some bands come back stronger while others can be a shell of their former selves. A NIGHT IN TEXAS have mostly come back stronger, although there are some moments of change that don’t quite fit.

In the sea of a new rising deathcore bands from Australia, A NIGHT IN TEXAS stand tall as one of the pillars of consistent technical deathcore export, and with newly appointed vocalist Sam Cameron taking the reins on this album, many people were wondering how he’d be able to surpass the band’s previous offerings in terms of vocal delivery. On album opener Programmed To Suffer you’ve got layers of winding synths and technically precise guitar riffs from dual string men Cory Judd and Angus Gasson as Cameron’s vocals shift from thunderous growls to feral shrieks with ease.


Drummer Anthony Barone unleashes his full potential on The Destruction Of Everything with his lengthy double kicks behind the crunchy guitars and demonic vocals. Following the trend of various deathcore bands there are a few background symphonic vocals that just intensify the songs to another level. Throughout the rest of the album the band cross the lines between deathcore and djent with their technical sides sometimes overpowering the songs they’re playing before returning to the one-note-power chords that break your neck in seconds.




While the album itself from front to back is great and has some brilliant moments, there are a few things that don’t fit. The change in production is the main thing you’ll notice. Previous albums sound clear, while Digital Apocalypse sounds muddy and does often drown out some of the best background guitars on the album. And while it does add a layer of DIY production to the vocals that makes it feel rougher, some of Cameron’s highs get drowned out in the mix which is a shame because his highs are glass shattering.

Still, even with a few down moments, it doesn’t change the fact that Digital Apocalypse is a great debut for Cameron, and a huge follow-up for the band.

Rating: 7/10



Digital Apocalypse is set for release on August 2nd via Unique Leader

INTRODUCING: Reliqa

The phrase “there’s something in the water” gets thrown around a lot, particularly when Australia’s burgeoning metalcore scene is involved. Over the years it’s given us everything from arena heavyweights to – more recently – forward-thinking music unafraid to blur the lines across sounds from nu metal to pop and prog. New South Wales quartet RELIQA are the latest in that proud tradition, with their debut album Secrets Of The Future dropping on Nuclear Blast this month. We caught up with vocalist Monique Pym – at opposite ends of the day with time differences – to get the lowdown on all things RELIQA.





“All four of us have been friends since the start of high school,” she explains of their beginnings – in fact, for all of them, this is their first band. “We’re friends first, band second. This more or less didn’t start out as anything, we were just friends making music together.” RELIQA’s formation very much lined up with Monique discovering heavy music. “Being friends with them, that’s when I was introduced to heavy music, I wasn’t raised on it. I felt this infectious, dude where’s this been all my life?! Listening then eventually turned into creating, and I started coming into my own as a singer.”

That firm basis in making music as friends came with the underlying feeling that they could, perhaps, eventually turn it into something more. They started going to local shows, and eventually got booked to play some. One thing led to another, and after releasing a few EPs, Nuclear Blast found them and saw – rightly – that RELIQA had something special on their hands. “All four of us have very different listening styles, personal genre preferences,” she begins. “That creates disparity in what you’re coming together to create, but that diversity is something we’ve intentionally tried to explore.”

From Mon’s love of melodic metalcore through to pop, to Miles’ (“the token classically trained member” she laughs) interest in not only prog like POLYPHIA or PLINI but also jazz, and even Brandon [Hutcheson, guitars] being a fan of hardcore alongside K- and J-pop, there’s a huge variety and they’re very conscious not only of a disparity but a real sonic tension across the influences they each bring in. “A lot of bands say they’re genreless; I’m not trying to say anything like that, I just think it’s quite a tough one to pin down,” she grins of their own expansive music.


All of this comes to a head with their upcoming debut album, Secrets Of The Future, one that Mon describes as more than just a debut album, but like a debut for the band all over again now that, through Nuclear Blast, they’re being exposed to a much wider audience. Shifting from what she describes as an almost “production line style” of songwriting whereby one member would deliver demos and the others would help refine, to a far more collaborative process where they tried to “explore the tension between ideas more.”



That’s as apparent on tracks like The Flower as it is Sariah or Keep Yourself Awake; the former sees Mon flowing between twisting melodies and a rap flow, while Sariah is the closest they come to a full ballad with its towering chorus. Keep Yourself Awake meanwhile, finds itself a toe-tapping groove and settles into it, something Mon says they were very conscious and comfortable with doing this time around to help showcase the various styles and tensions between them, giving each time to shine. “It’s part of why we called it Secrets Of The Future too,” she explains. “It feels modern to us, it feels far reaching into the future.”


With such a broad-ranging sound, is there any worry people won’t get it? “It’s a tricky one to introduce people to,” Mon accepts. “There is insecurity in me that the atmosphere we’re creating for ourselves is alienating to anyone. It’s a risky move to make an album that doesn’t confine itself to one aesthetic.” She needn’t worry; Secrets Of The Future oozes authenticity and an unbridled love of exploration. “We like to take risks,” she grins. “People that have latched on, have latched on hard. It feels authentic.”

It’s almost an oxymoron, to be so assured of their identity, and that being ambiguous. “That question of who really is RELIQA, it still exists and it will continue to exist,” Mon enthuses, “the beauty is in leaning into that, this uncertainty of our identity becomes our signature.” The singles so far, Killstar (The Cold World) and Terminal are again, very different-sounding songs, something that she hopes will appeal to people who perhaps don’t typically enjoy either progressive music or metalcore. “There’s something for everyone on that journey, which I really love.”

RELIQA have had a steady rise; for years they’ve put in the work, and to sign to Nuclear Blast is the start of seeing that pay off; to them, it’s an opportunity to seize with both hands. “We’re not afraid to be a little fish in a big pond,” Mon stresses. “Our pond started very small and we outgrew it, but we took everything we learned to the next one. Too many bands think they have to give off big fish energy!” She’s very conscious, as are her bandmates, of where they came from, and that humility shines through; “our roots are the Central Coast, we’re just a bunch of nerds making music together,” she grins.



Secrets Of The Future is out now via Nuclear Blast Records/Greyscale Records.

Like RELIQA on Facebook.