Interview: VEXED @ Misery Loves Company

Interview

27 Oct

VEXED are one of the quickest growing (and heaviest) metal bands in the UK music scene at the moment. The recent release of their second album Negative Energy brought an unreal level of chaos to our ears since which we’ve all been wanting more.

At Misery Loves Company Fest, I had the pleasure of meeting the band - Megan Targett (vocals), Jay Bacon (guitar), Willem Mason-Geraghty (drums) and Al Harper (bass) - to chat about their history, influences behind the new LP and their hopes and plans for the future, including some ambitious genre fusions. Here’s what they had to say…

Super excited to see your set today! My first review for The Scene was for your album Negative Energy so it’s very exciting to be able to meet you and watch you play today. I’m wondering if you can tell us a bit about VEXED's motives, message, and ambitions as a band, and what are you trying to bring to the table for your audience?

Megan: For me personally, it's all about freedom. That can sound a bit cringe sometimes and a bit pointless. But, old bands I've been in, being a woman, I've been so restricted, and told you need to look like this, you need to wear this, you need to sound like that. Whereas with VEXED, I’m free to do whatever I want and be exactly who I am.

Jay: Well, that's kind of the whole point of why we started it. Because we just wanted to do whatever we wanted to do. It sounds really selfish, but instead of making music we think people want to hear, we just do whatever we want to write at the time, whatever that might be. And if it goes well, it goes well, and if people don’t like it, then it is what is it.

How did you come together?

Jay: Just like the scene wasn’t it, playing shows in different bands. It just kind of happened. We met through playing in different bands and were like, “well you're not a dick, so let's start a band”.

Al: I’m not sure about that.

Megan: We met Al at Tech Fest he was in a different band.

Willem: No it was before Tech Fest, it was at a gig in Bedford.

Megan: Oh, shit! Yeah, it was. We were supporting his band in our old band. We all just got along and realised that we hated the bands that we were in so started another one.

When reviewing Negative Energy I listened back to your previous album Culling Culture and I noticed a tonal shift between the two, moving from a lot of clean vocals to really dialling up the growl. What motivated you to go for that change?

Megan: Going back to the whole being expected to be a certain thing, that those old habits were still in that first album. You're a woman so you're expected to be pretty and do lots of cleans. Then after we worked out the kinks of the first album and realised what we wanted to do. I realized I actually really fucking hate singing. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do, without putting pressure on myself to be typical. Quite a few people were surprised how heavy it is. I do love singing but only occasionally and then I think it has more impact anyway.

Jay: We knew after Culling Culture we wanted to do a heavier album. When we write heavier the opportunity for cleans naturally diminishes so more screams were included.

Willem: It was more of an angrier vibe as well so it just fitted better. It was a conscious decision. The singing fell into place with those songs, you just knew where they needed to be clean and where they needed to be screamed.

Al: It was more selective and intentional. As opposed to having singing on all the tracks it was sprinkled where it was gonna have an impact.

What are your future plans, is there anything you are going to change for the next project you’re working on or are just enjoying Negative Energy? To simply phrase it, what’s next for VEXED?

Jay: As far as the writing is concerned we have a rough idea of what we want to do. But when you sit down to actually write everything always changes, nothing ever turns out in the way you think it will be when you go into it. I quite like that because you end up with something completely different than you planned and it comes about super organically. As far as our approach to writing, it will just be whatever sounds right.

Megan: We have started working on other bits, but we are just really enjoying Negative Energy because of the pandemic we were stuck with Culling Culture for so long. It's really nice to just let Negative Energy have its time. With the new stuff we're working on. We're going to really try and push ourselves a bit and try to be stupidly heavy but also bring in more grime and rap.

Willem: Yeah, dirty, grimy.

Megan: I said the other day, like the Prodigy, but on meth.

Following on from that, where do you kind of see yourselves a year from now?

Willem: I'd love to be playing America.

Megan: America would be cool.

Willem: Who knows?

Megan: We may or may not be planning that who knows? It’s so annoying having to bring it up but the pandemic really did ruin everything for us. We're so far behind in what we had planned, that we're now trying to make up for lost time, and we just want a gig, gig, gig, gig, and gig.

Al: It feels like we lost two years, so we're trying to make that backup.

I really love “Lay Down Your Flowers”, your collab with Lochie from Alpha Wolf, do you have any future collabs planned?

Megan: We've been talking to Frankie from Emmure. He's my number one vocal inspiration. So we'd love to work with him. But to be honest, we'd really like to work with some grime artists as well to bring in more than just the metal scene.

Willem: But we are not sure if they want to do metal music.

Megan: The dream would be to get Jme on a track that would be sick.

Jay: Luckily a lot of grime artists do fuck with metal as well so we just need to find one that we like that also enjoys metal.

I saw Graphic Nature today and they walked on stage looking like they were about to shoot a drill music video.

Megan: We're really good friends with Graphic Nature. They know what's up, they're really nice guys.

If you all had your memories wiped music-wise, and you got to pick one song to listen to for the very first time what song would it be for each of you?

Megan: From VEXED?

It could be from VEXED or any song ever.

Jay: It might be a bit egotistical to pick one of our songs.

Megan: All of our catalogue, Jay what would you choose?

Jay: Fuck it, “Purple Rain”.

Al: The Vengaboys probably? I don’t know.

Willem: Maybe “Country Roads”.

Megan: I'd go for “Wolves Run Together” by King 810.

VEXED are riding high after releasing their second beast of an album, Negative Energy, earlier this year via Napalm Records. Catch VEXED on tour with Cabal in the UK and Europe in January 2024: