On the verge of the release of their debut album, "Enter The Grave", Evile are preparing to head out on a UK wide tour. We spoke with axe wielder Ol Drake at this exciting time for this emerging band.

We’re an original Thrash Metal group from the North of England. We aren’t calling ourselves “Thrash” to jump on the Thrash bandwagon, we call ourselves Thrash because that’s what we are. we’ve been playing this for years. If you like your Thrash old and fast, check us out.

Exciting times ahead for you guys with the release of your new album “Enter the Grave” being released any day now. How do you describe the sound of the album?

When we set out to record the album with Flemming Rasmussen (Metallica ‘Master of Puppets’ & ‘Ride the Lightning’) his main aim was to make it sound like it was recorded back In the glory days of Thrash. The album sounds raw and energetic. There were no samples used, all you hear is all that was played. We wanted to get as near to a “live” sound as we could whilst still maintaining the  feel of a studio album.

How much of the material is taken from your previous demos “Hell” and “All Hallows Eve”, vs. new material?

Quite a bit. “Killer From the Deep” is the first song we ever wrote together as Evile, so we thought it would be a worthy addition to our debut. “Enter the Grave”, “We Who Are About to Die” and “Thrasher” always go down a storm at shows, so we just had to include them. The “Hell” tracks represent what we’re about. Those tracks got us where we are, so to not include them just wouldn’t be right. Plus we had fans demanding we put these certain tracks on the album, so why not?

What was the writing process when it came time to get songs together for the album? Who does what within the band in terms of the writing?

All 4 of us have input to the songs. We’d be in our rehearsal room, and I’d start playing a riff. If it’s a good Riff, we’ll start playing on it and building on it. If it’s crap, we’ll build on it and do a 23 minute Prog Jazz Fusion Reggae Funk Extravaganza. When writing we don’t complete parts until everyone’s happy with what we’re doing. We spend a lot of time writing to get a song the best it can be.

The album has that real ‘old school’ Thrash cover art. How / who / where did the concept come about?

We’d been trying to think of concepts for the art for Months. It was going from an image of just a guy with a knife, to looking out from a grave with the killer standing over, to a gravestone with the logo on etc etc. We were playing a gig in London, and we stayed over at our buddy Tom’s house (Guitarist/Singer from London Thrash band Mutant). When I woke up in the morning I basically just saw it in my head. A guy plummeting into hell via a grave, with vast landscapes or fire and……Hell-ness. I told Matt and whoever else was awake about it and they thought it was cool, so we built on it. And then we played around with Tom’s Wii.

The process for the recording was awesome. Working with Flemming made it so much more relaxed and comfortable because he’s such a nice, relaxed guy. We were at Sweet Silence Studios (Copenhagen) for about a month. There were some factors of stress involved. The album we wanted to make demanded more time than we had, so some sacrifices had to be made, but nothing we couldn’t work with. Other than that we had a great time. To see Flemming dancing in the corner of your eye whilst doing your tracks is suspiciously awe-inspiring. 

The band has a UK tour scheduled for mid September 07, how are you looking forward to the tour? Any plans to hit the road across the rest of Europe?

We have a lot of plans. We’re going to get to as many places as possible. Europe, USA, Japan. You name it, we’re going to try to get there. Yes, even Uranus.

The album is to be released by legendary underground label Earache. How did the deal with them come about? Is this a multi album deal, and what factors lead you guys to decide Earache was the right home for you?

The Earache deal came about after playing Bloodstock Open Air in 2006. The label boss Digby Pearson saw us and was apparently impressed. After receiving a copy of the “Hell” cd, he basically asked if we’d be interested in signing. The thing about record deals is, we’ve never gone searching for one. We didn’t send thousands of CDs out to every Label in the world in the hope someone would take an interest. We were just playing Thrash, having fun. We accept we won’t be rich beyond our wildest dreams playing Thrash, but that’s not what we want. We just want to play and be able to live from it. We went with the Earache deal as we basically wanted our music out there, and Earache do that, and do it well. Plus I’ve been a fan of Earache bands for years; Morbid Angel, Carcass, Deicide etc.

Given most of the line up were in pre-school during the mid 1980’s Thrash explosion, you cite the likes of Sepultura, Exodus, Metallica, Annihilator and Slayer as influences. What drew you all to this style of music? Who brings what influences to the band?

Me and Matt were brought up on Rock. Stuff like Queen and Guns ‘n’ Roses. Naturally over time we just progressed into Metal. I can’t remember how it happened, it just did. I know Mike’s been a Heavy Metal fan since he was young. He saw them all, Slayer back in the day, Pantera etc. Ben’s been into Metallica since he was young. Infact I just remembered, Ben introduced Metallica to Matt at school. Ahhhh. Personally I try to bring in a bit of Death Metal, not to the point of Blast Beats and Cumming Blood, but just some of the no compromise brutality.

Thrash Metal as a genre is once again on the rise commercially and creatively. What do you attribute the re-found interest in the genre?

When Testament re-united with the original line up, you had their old fans coming back for it, and you had kids wondering what this big deal is. They’ll check it out, and they’ll tell their friends, and they tell their friends, and so on, and so on. I just think Rock and Metal comes full circle now and then. People have an urgency for a certain type of music at a certain point of time. Thrash just happens to be the one now. I think they miss the speed and aggression which is highly lacking in today’s music. They miss the BALLS which this music NEEDS.

Having toured with a number or UK Thrash bands over recent years, what’s your take on the UK Trash scene; good, bad or non existent?

Right now the UK Thrash scene is thriving. There’s so many bands that no one has even heard of that are blowing people away every night. People just need to know about them. A few to check out are Mutant, Deceptor, Pitiful Reign, Gama Bomb.

Two things I can’t decide between. 1. “We can’t wait to see you out there kicking the shit out of each other whilst we Thrash your heads off”, or 2. “See you at the party Richter”.