On the Rise
Eversame

While Eversame has been through a couple of different formations over the years, they’re now composed of singer Paulína Struhárová, guitarist Matúš Ratveiský, drummer Patrik Urban, and bassist Richard Špirko. Pulling influences from under-the-radar Central European groups like Small Town Life and Amelie Siba, along with American cult bands like Duster and Glixen, the four-piece is simply voracious for sound.

“Today I was sitting on a bus on my way to school and I cried because I was listening to Paramore. That’s one of my favourite bands ever and I just realised how much I love them,” the band’s lyricist Pauline Struhárová tells me. That passion comes through in the music.

Now based out of the country’s capital, Bratislava, the band recently followed their drummer here so they could keep recording songs, 20-year-old guitarist Ratveiský tells me through the haze of my computer screen. While most of the members are in university, lyricist Struhárova is in the final throes of high school, or gymnasium, as it’s called in Slovakia. The band may be young, but you wouldn’t know it from their thrashing emo-grunge sound. Songs off their 2023 debut LP tell me where the flowers are, for example, come steeped in a palpable weariness. A lively patchwork of the band’s most successful sonic experiments, the songs are led mostly by Ratveiský.

“It’s really spontaneous. I just go to the rehearsal space, plug in my guitar, and try some effects. Maybe fuck around with the chords,” he says. “The instrumentation I do is like a sketch, and all the band members give it their touch. It always ends up coming together.” The result is a collection of tracks marked by grit, gloom, and raw production.

Eversame’s music, for many fans, is innately cathartic. “When we talk about it with the guys from the band, we always joke that people cry to our music because it’s so emo,” Struhárová says. With her signature confessional-style songwriting, Struhárová’s personal lyrics ground the songs in naked honesty. “Mostly, I write about love and friendships. I do care about politics – I just can’t express it in the lyrics,” she says. “The politics do influence my moods, though, so the angry stuff does have influence.” Blending her intimate words with grungy instrumentals, the band hopes to give listeners an outlet for their own pains. The instrumentals are just as important to that story. “Overall, I just want people to like the music and keep coming back to it,” Struhárová says.

And people are coming back. The band might have had humble origins – recreating Nirvana songs in a converted garage as kids – but now they’re playing their own music in front of hundreds of their own fans. Some of the members are still teenagers, and others freshly in their twenties, but already they’re fulfilling lifelong dreams – even the more unconventional ones. “At the baptism of our new album this year in March, we played a show in Žilina. There were around 200 people,” Struhárová recalls. “I’ve always wanted to do this, but I never got to because there weren’t so many people at the concert, but as the lights turned on and I saw all of the people, I was like, this is my moment. So I asked everyone to crack their knuckles at the same time. It was the best moment of my life, I swear.”

Their searing sound aside, that growing stage confidence has helped give them a larger presence, too. The band recently signed with a new booking agency, Upsurge, after the release of their second album, LOVE ENDS FAST, AND NEVER – and they’re already fleshing out songs for a third album release. The excitement around Eversame is mounting, and while the band still has roots in grunge and emo, they’re no longer hoping to match certain sounds. Instead, as the music the band listens to changes, they allow their own music to evolve, too. You can feel that embrace of spontaneity in their last record.

While their first record, tell me where the flowers are, leaned on the more pensive side of midwest emo, their latest roars with distorted guitars. LOVE ENDS FAST, AND NEVER came out this February, and both Struhárová and Ratveiský smile at the mention of the collection. Struhárová says she loves the softer sides of the album, including the closing track, “still, endlessly”. The grimy rock ballad is a walk through the mind of someone who feels that the world is against them. “It is definitely the most honest song in terms of the lyrics that I came up with. I literally talk about real people in the song, which was scary to do because I didn’t know how they were gonna feel about it,” Struhárová says.

Ratveiský, on the other hand, has a soft spot for the track “nothing”, a rhythmic dirge swirling with grim distortion. “It’s the most fun to play, for me. There are some great riffs on there. Then there’s this breakdown half [way through] the song, and we slow down at the end of it. It’s just a lot of fun,” he says.

Flying past their initial goal of paying homage to their musical heroes, Eversame are now finding fulfillment in solidifying the Eversame sound. It’s a gratifying process that Ratveiský says he wants for the fans, too. “What drives us now is to motivate people to play instruments,” he says. After all, playing music has led to more than personal fulfillment for the four-piece: it has given them a much-needed community too, which, in a small city, isn’t easy. “The thing that keeps us going in Slovakia is the scene. We all know each other. We’re all friends. We help each other out, and it’s really great,” Ratveiský says.

Eversame spent years playing to half-empty venues, but the support of the music community helped them keep the momentum going. With hundreds of people coming to fill those once vacant spaces today, the group’s tenacity is paying off. After all, as Struhárová points out, some of the band’s dreams have already been fulfilled. “People should come to our show so we can all crack our knuckles together,” she cheekily quips.