We grab the old stuff and put it on steroids

At Graspop 2017 we talked to two members of the up and coming band Evil Invaders. The young members founded the band in 2007 and they just released their second full album “Feed Me Violence”.

Thank you for taking the time to talk to us! How are things in your world?

We can’t complain. The world’s awesome! *laugh*

Awesome! I just saw you on stage. You sure play with a lot of energy!

Thanks man! Yeah it was cool. Kicking ass and dealing trouble *laughs* It was cool. A lot of people showed up!

Absolutely, it was a respectable crowd size. How is it to play a festival like Graspop for you?

It’s always awesome. I mean, it’s the third time we play here with this band. It’s always great. There are a lot of familiar faces in the crowd. Also every time you see new faces, new people that tell us it’s the first time they check out our band and really like it. So it’s always great for us to play big festivals.

I get that! I myself did not hear about your band until recently, when the label dropped the album on my desk, and I was blown away!

Which one, the old one or the new one?

I believe it was the new one.

You heard it? Did you like it?

I absolutely like it. I did not have time to listen to all of it in depth, but what I heard was really good!

Thank you very much!

What can you tell our readers about this upcoming release?

Well, it’s in the same style as what we did before, but different *all laugh*. It’s true man, it’s true! It’s like, we approached the music from a different angle. We  put more contrasts in it. Some stuff is way faster than anything we did before, while other stuff is way slower than anything we did before, so there are ups and down on the record. And the downs are still cool. Tempo wise, I think it’s a nice mix of speeds.

I agree!

And the fast ones are fast all the time, all the songs are on a consistent speed. As in speedmetal! But we tried to evolve during our songwriting process. I’d say it’s still Speedmetal but in a heavier way. It uses certain influences from other genres as well, but in basis it’s still the same as our earlier stuff. It’s like when you add some new spices to your food. To make it tasty! *laughs*

Some new ingredients this time around, cool! How did you actually land on Thrash and Speedmetal? You’re quite a young band, young people. Usually your generation is drawn to Metalcore or Nu-Metal. Those kind of flavors.

I don’t know man. I was always more excited about the old stuff, like Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, you know? I evolved from there. I always listened to like classic rock and stuff, Heavy Metal from back in the day. Until suddenly I ran into a band called Exodus… *laughter*

Exodus, nice!

The tempo of the Damned record. I don’t know, I heard it and it was Whoa. Dude. This shit is violent! And it still has this old vibe in it! That’s stuff I like. Just, in an aggressive way. I knew this what I really want to do. If you listen to our music, of course it’s not just Thrash metal like most bands play today. It has this old touch to it, which I miss in most of the modern Thrash metal bands. It’s really cool to actually combine influences from bands like Mercyful Fate and King Diamond with, let’s say Exodus or Overkill, even Savatage. I don’t know, mix in even some Death metal. Not the new stuff, the old school Death metal. We hear a lot of different things and we try to create something new, with old influences.

That’s a lot of different flavors for sure. If you even throw some Savatage in the mix along with Overkill, you get an interesting combination!

Yeah. We listen to a lot of different stuff, and you can hear that in our music. I even think you can hear a hint of Glam rock sometimes, like in the intro of Oblivion. A little cheesy stuff next to the Grindcore blastbeat stuff *laughs*.

Which albums would you say, influenced you most?

For me that’s “Bonded by Blood” by Exodus, “Melissa” by Mercyful Fate, “Epidemic of Violence” by Demolition Hammer, “Bomber” by Motörhead… Actually, everything by Motörhead from the ‘80s. *laughs*

I love to hear that those classics are still working for a younger generation of artists!

Because it’s great! You can’t deny that. It’s the foundation of what this music is built on. That’s the cool thing. When I think about Thrash metal, on albums like “Feel the Fire” by Overkill, it does not sound like Thrash metal today, you know? It sounds like Heavy Metal on steroids *laughs*. And that’s what we want to do. We grab the old stuff and put it on steroids. And then we create our thing with it. We sound more like early Overkill than today’s new bands.We take the older stuff. We’re not just inspired by Thrash metal, but also by Hard Rock, Heavy Metal from the early days. Those are our main influences.

I love the mix!

Thank you very much!

It’s a shame that President Trump doesn’t seem to like the mix *laughs*

*laughs* Fuck that guy. Well, I don’t even think he has anything to do with that shit *laughs*.

I really had to laugh. A band called “Evil Invaders” was sent back at customs. How did that happen *laughs*.

Exactly, why! *laughs*. Actually it’s kind of a funny story. A guy wrote me a message when he landed in Miami not too long ago, and there was like a rally against that, you know! Send refugees back, stuff like that *laughs*. He was just walking there with his Evil Invaders sweater. He said people were just booing at him and he didn’t know what happened until he looked down at his chest. People rallying to send refugees back and he’s there with his Evil Invaders T-shirt. That’s pretty funny.

You were sent back home, but how many shows did you originally planned on playing there?

Actually just one. We were there for just one show. We weren’t even going to get paid, so it’s kind of weird that they sent us back, you know?

It’s hard to work your way around that.

You have to approach it in a more clever way I guess. There was a lot of misunderstanding about what kind of papers we actually needed to get in. We’ve been playing Japan, South America, Russia, and we never had problems. There was always clear information available, and we informed ourselves. Like alright, we need this to play there, and that to play there. It never was a problem. Then in the US it was very weird. It said, if you earn money, you should have a workers visa. So we decided not to bring any merchandise, and we were not going to get paid. That meant we would not earn money, so on paper a tourist visa would suffice. We checked, and people confirmed it. Then we arrived there and they said yeah, but… *laughs*. The guy who runs the show you will perform at asks for an entrance fee. So he gets paid, so you need a workers permit. Then they start about a performer visa or something.

It might be easier to play in North Korea then? *laughs*

Well basically nobody gives a flying fuck if you just go under the banner of promotion, which you are doing basically. We get a place to sleep, some food, we play. It’s promotion. Which is good for you if you’ve never performed in a certain place. Food and a place to shit, perfect. Well we did have a place to shit eventually, but it was just being filmed by four cameras *laughs*. In the US the word promo doesn’t work.

What is this year going to look like, tour wise? Are you planning on going back to the US?

Well yeah, of course. We need to play there. We need to play everywhere, you know? Just, right now we know what we need to be able to play there, and we need to organize an entire tour to actually refund the money that we have to invest in this tour. It would be cool to join a big tour as a support act, some established band. That would be ideal.

So, do you hear that, promoters out there? These guys need a ride! *laughs* .

The plan right now is to release our album on September 30th and tour from there on out. First Europe, probably in October / November. After that perhaps Japan, Russia, everywhere. Maybe Asia.

What would be the dream, to play? Do you have any places you really want to visit?

The moon! *laughs*

The moon… That’s the first time I hear that one *laughs*

For me it’s not really important where I play, as long as the experience is great, you know? For me, my dream would be to do something like Metallica live in San Diego, you know? *laughs*. I just don’t know if shit like that’s even still possible with today’s music industry. But the sky is the limit. We’re just aiming for that, and we’ll see where it goes. Keep our feet on the ground, but we can still dream, you know?

That’s the best way to do it.

We work our asses off to really make that possible, we will see how far we can go!

Exactly. Are you guys going to check out the rest of the festival?

I hope so! Of course, once you guys let us go *laughs*.

Of course. In a moment *laughs*. What bands would you like to go see yourselves?

I think there’s still time to check out Europe. I really want to see that. They’re such a good live band. Rammstein…

Of course Rammstein.

*laughs* He doesn’t like it, because it’s German.

Well, it’s an acquired taste. It took me a few years to start appreciating the band.

Well it’s a great band. The performance is fucking amazing, the show is fucking amazing, I just don’t like the music myself.

I myself used to have a thing against electronic drums, but over the years that kind of faded for me. I can see through the use of electronics now. It’s all good.

It’s something you’ve got to get used to. I think for me it was… I checked them out even before I discovered bands like Exodus, you know? I was like in elementary school and I saw Sonne on TMF (a former Dutch music tv station, The Music Factory) and thought wow, this is Metal as hell. That guitar, I like it! From then on, as a kid, it was one of my favorite bands. The stepping stone to other things.

My first Rammstein live experience, I did not go to see the show. It was at Waldrock and we decided to stay at the camping, which was next to the festival back then. While barbecuing we saw a huge flame coming from the stage, over the audience and we were like “holy shit, why aren’t we there?” *all laugh* Yeah, the show is great.

That leads me to our last question, and that’s, do you have any last words for our readers?

Yes! Check out our new record, it will be available on the 29th of September, and we just released a new video clip so check it out! Evil Invaders – Mental Penitentiary! And… Don’t eat the yellow snow. *laughs*

*laughs* Very cool! Thanks for your time, enjoy Graspop!

Our pleasure!