TLOBF Interview // Malefice

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Malefice, the UK kings of groove-swaddled melodic metal, are generally to be found close to the meat… their first love… heavy music. Any fan of metal will have seen them loitering at the fringes of gigs or wandering the festival highways and byways. They’re learning from the best and, if their incredible live performances are anything to go by, they have been paying close attention. John Skibeat spotted them happily rooting around the backstage area of Sonisphere and grabbed guitarist Alex Vuskans for a chat.

How’s your day going so far?
Not well. I’m hanging out of my arse. I’m trying to drink to play well but it’s having the wrong effect. I’m just getting pissed again! I was running around, literally, with my pants off last night!

Sounds like a fun night! Now… there’s no doubting that Malefice get a huge kick out of playing live. Is that a fair assumption?
Oh absolutely, I think there’s a stereotyped view – “Oh, you’re in a band, you get loads of money” or “It’s all sex, drugs and rock n’ roll”. It’s not that way. There’s no glamour. You sit around for ages waiting to play and the only thing that keeps us here is that we love playing live. We love that there’s people out there who respect our band, who come and watch us and go nuts. I’m really excited about playing later. I don’t care if there are 10 people there. We’re not on the biggest stage .

Do you feel like touring veterans yet?
Yeah. People don’t realise we’ve been doing this for awhile now. I’m now 24 and we started this band when I was 16/17. Money’s not great but I’ve been to India, all round Europe, over to America. You only live once though.

You’ve played most of the best UK rock festivals – Hellfire, Hammerfest, Bloodstock, Download. What’s your take on Sonisphere?
I’m a virgin to Sonisphere. I know a few of the guys came last year but I couldn’t. It’s really well run. You’ve got a nice balance of bands here – appeals to all ages. You’ve got your hardcore rock people as well as the more commercial side – bands like Papa Roach and Good Charlotte – who will appeal to the teenagers. Punk’s covered too with Gallows. I’m really impressed. I have my ambitions and this is another one to check off that list.

Coming after your debut, ‘Entities’, your last album, ‘Dawn Of Reprisal’, has clearly taken you onto a whole new level. What is it like having a major label suddenly fighting you corner?
I’m not big-headed but we are good at what we do and it’s nice that someone with so much prestige has seen where we’re coming from and wants to pick us up and run with us. It’s kind of a dream scenario. It’s a family. I really like the record. There was bits of ‘Entities’ I didn’t like. The third album is going to be a mix of both – the fast, raw, brutal stuff as well as the catchy stuff – this is the album that we wanted to do. We want this to be a statement of who we are.

Have you recorded it already or are you doing it in between gigs?
We’re quite lucky. Ben , our other guitarist, has his own little home studio and we haven’t had this before. Usually we’d go into a recording studio and thrash stuff out. We’re getting to record it rough first. We’re a lot more prepared. Before we felt rushed. We had our date that we were recording and, a month before, we were like “Shit, we haven’t got all our stuff! We’ve only got, like, four songs! Fuck. Cram, cram, cram”. For the new album, we’re recording in October but we’ve already got 16 songs. And the beauty of it is we’ve got it them all recorded so we can splice all the best bits together.

That’s an original way of composing an album!
Yeah. We’ve got some great stuff. We were on the Devildriver tour and we were staying in the south of France for, like, three days and we listened to everything and went “That’s good, that’s weak. Why don’t we put that bit into that song” and stuff like that. I’m confident for this album, man.

Do you get any pressure from Metal Blade on deadlines?
Not really. We don’t feel threatened by it. We want to do the label proud; we want to represent. Before, we’d play stuff and then get absolutely annihilated; maybe have an off-show, but in our heads it’s cool. Now it’s more professional. We have a purpose. I couldn’t ask for a better label. They’re going to take over the world!

Are there any particular bands out there that are inspiring the writing process?
I think you’ll always take influence from metal bands, but when I’m writing a record I try not to listen to metal. If I start listening to God Forbid or Pantera, without thinking about it I’ll start writing stuff that sounds a little bit like them. We do listen to the classics, though, like Metallica, Nirvana, Pantera, Iron Maiden. Good, honest music, not like manufactured shit. You have to keep it honest. We’re in it for the long run.

The reason I ask about influences is because you guys seem to always be at UK gigs even when you’re not on the bill.
I’ve noticed it a lot with UK bands that people think there’s a lot of rivalry between us. When we were younger, back in Reading, there were a lot of bands like Sylosis or Exit Ten. It’s funny, none of the bands would bitch at one another but fans of the bands would make up that there was a rivalry between us. I want Sylosis to do well and I wish them all the best. They’re ridiculously talented and they’re really nice guys. “Oh Malefice hates Sylosis” or “Sylosis hates Malefice”. It’s simply not true. UK is thriving! America is bigger, has a load more bands, but I don’t think they are better than UK bands right now. No way.

Any thoughts on a title for the new album then?
No. . ‘Eat Your Face’, maybe. I want it to be something stupid like ‘Your Mum’. That’ll be my ultimate title. It’ll be, like, ‘Malefice – Your Mum’. That’ll be brilliant. Dale will come up with it. He has free rein on stuff like that. He does a good job. I haven’t got time for that. Maybe we’ll just call it ‘Malefice’.

You say ‘Your Mum’. I just saw a guy with a t-shirt that read ‘Your Mum Should Have Swallowed’.
Shit! Now that’s a t-shirt! Maybe we should use that.

Favourite band you’ve seen recently?
I have a few. Extreme – old school. Billy Idol – amazing. I mean my favourite band I’ve ever seen live, they blow my mind, is Metallica. I love them. That’s the pleasure of touring though. They’re the first band I ever toured with and I watched them every night. They’re the kings of metal right now.

I saw from your Twitter page that you were watching the World Cup on your European tour. Who were you cheering for?
We watched England-Germany in Germany. When England lost 4-1 I think the bartender felt so bad for us ‘cos we looked so annoyed. He gave us a free little bottle of Jager each. Then we drove out and we were, literally, getting beeped by everyone because we had the ‘GB’ sticker on the back of the van. But after that we were going mad for Ghana, man. We had a day off and went to Prague, to an Irish bar. There was like a 100 Germans in this bar and there was 7 of us and we were killing them. We were the lairiest fuckers in there.

And how did the tour itself go?
Brilliant. It was a struggle, though. We’ve been lucky in that we’ve done tours in tour buses, stayed in people’s houses, but this was more like back-to-basics. Eleven-hour journeys; sleeping in the van. I slept on a shelf in the van. Everyone was getting pretty pissed off. You get woke up in the morning by German police wanting to search your van to see if you’ve got drugs on you. But, you know, it’s stuff to tell your kids, isn’t it? Tour was a blast though. It’s always a pleasure to tour with DevilDriver. We got to play with Anthrax, man!

Good luck for the show tonight, man.
Cheers. That’s probably my favourite interview I’ve done