Devilskin is my kind of Metal; brutal, honest, thought-provoking and with that balance of Rock and Metal that sets them apart from the pack. Without any shadow of a doubt ‘Red’ was one of the real gems to come out of the pandemic and finally after a couple of setbacks and postponements we get to see them here in Australia in a week’s time making them one of our very first international visitors since Covid. We caught up with Paul to find out what they’ve got in store for us when they land. With Shepherd’s Reign also on the bill it’s one not to miss!
Mark: Hey Paul great to see you mate!
Paul: Hey man, how you doing Mark!
Mark: All good and gearing up for Devilskin’s first headline Australian Tour! Hey wait, that should be you!
Paul: (laughs) I’m not too bad at all. I can’t complain, Good to see you!
Mark: After all the pandemic-induced rescheduling I thought this day was never going to come!
Paul: Jesus I know! We were all getting that same vibe, but it had to happen! You just needed to be teased a few times! (laughs)
Mark: That’s right, it will be worth the wait! It’s great to see you back, it seems so long since the Slash shows and it’s great to see you doing the whole country too and both coasts!
Paul: It’s been a long time coming obviously and like every other band in creation we had the rug pulled out from under us with the whole Covid thing. We kept trying an believing and the dates are now locked in and the Governments are finally letting us do Rock and Roll again!
Mark: Everything’s lined up now!
Paul: Nothing’s going to stop us!
Mark: The last two years must have been ‘interesting’ if that’s the right word…
Paul: I think it’s the worst two years in living memory for Rock and Roll, besides everything else.
Mark: And it will be your 12th year this year, but I guess it just feels like ten!
Paul: (laughs) Oh it’s crazy. We were ten days away from flying out to Europe as you know at the start of this thig, we were going to start the ‘Red’ album tour there then the UK, then back to New Zealand and Australia. We still don’t have the UK dates back yet, but we’re hoping to reschedule those pretty soon. It’s hard, you need to keep your momentum up in these places and Covid has robbed us of that. Same with Australia, we’ve been champing at the bit to get back over. The Download shows were great and the trip with Slash was a wicked experience and we’ve made so many friends over there so we just need to get ourselves back big and loud!
Mark: I guess the question a lot of bands are asking at the minute is when do we put the next record out. I see some almost writing off their last release, others are touring two albums, but with a record like ‘Red’ that is so damned good you need to play that live on its own!
Paul: Oh, we’ve got new material and we’re looking to record as soon as we can when we get back because we’re back in Australia in October…
Mark: For the Steel Panther and Sevendust show! Now won’t that be cool!
Paul: Whoa! And a great Aussie line-up too! It’s gonna be such a great gig so we’ll probably book ourselves a few more gigs around that and make ourselves a bit more visible! And hopefully we will have new material out by then!
Mark: I’ll be there if you don’t make it to Perth. Sevendust are a great band and such lovely guys, have you played with them before?
Paul: No, I’ve seen them the one time they played New Zealand and I’ve been following them forever. The Radio show I had they were a staple on there, just a huge band! Can’t wait to see them live and share the bill with them!
Mark: Everyone’s been having a hard time over the last few years and music is the best medicine as far as I’m concerned.
Paul: There’s so much of that at the moment Mark, no one’s had a good time over the last two years everyone’s been turned upside down and shaken. I guess the cool thig for us – people that love music so much, we can climb inside our favourite albums still and remember those songs and get back to our happy places. We get a lot of messages from people saying exactly that and thinking us for songs we’re written and letting us know how much they meant. That’s so cool to be able to touch people with songs. We all need a hand up, and there’s not always someone there for everyone. Music is a great saviour.
Mark: It certainly is and I think that’s the great think about the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal community we all pull together.
Paul: 100%
Mark: You’ve been doing some biking for a good cause too I saw?
Paul: Yeah, we formed a motorcycle club with some friends, they’re all enthusiasts and we get out and go for a ride when we can. And we decided we wanted to do a charity fund raiser ride for ‘I Am Hope’ which is a charity her aimed at getting counselling for kids. And we ended up raising over $35,000 and we had over 500 bikes turn up, it was mental. I’m lucky we get looked after nicely by the local Harley store, they’re big Devilskin fans. But it was great to be able to help out, the charity told us that means that between 250 and 300 kids can get a counselling session, so we’ve made a bot of a difference in a positive way, because we do have a problem in New Zealand with mental health. It’s all a bit broken, so it’s great to be able to do what we can and Devilskin’s always been about that too. We auctioned off a Devilskin guitar and hoodie pack and merch pack and stuff and someone gave $3100 to the charity for that. So there’s some great people out there and it’s great just to be doing a little bit to help.
Mark: It’s fantastic. There’s massive underfunding and also massive need over here too.
Paul: I think the whole pandemic has given everyone a touch of the Black Dog, there’s no many people who can put their hand up and say they haven’t had dark times. But after every great pandemic comes a renaissance, so hopefully we get that and get back to the music and arts again.
Mark: Let’s pray for the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal renaissance! (laughs)
Paul: (laughs)
Mark: Like any great band Devilskin gets better and better, everything in the back catalogue is killer but I think ‘Red’ has to be the best so far.
Paul: Thank you.
Mark: I think I’ve been listening to it for the last two years so I think when you get over I think I’ll be one of those upfront reciting the lyrics back at you, it’s been a long time since I can remember doing that!
Paul: That’s amazing.
Mark: You’re bringing over a wonderful support act too who I think you tipped me off to a while ago.
Paul: Yeah, Shepherd’s Reign, a great work ethic too, they just keep doing it! Live they give me chills! They’re a sight to behold – live they’ve got so much intense power, it’s captivating. I can’t rate them highly enough so we all put our foot down and said we want those guys to come! So boom! Here we are three or four postponements later and we’ve still got them on board so we’re wrapped! And a lovely bunch of guys, they’ll be a lot of fun on the road for sure. I know our audience is going to absolutely love them.
Mark: We’ve had a few internationals back, we had Cheap Trick and co last months but there’s still plenty of places with reduced capacity and other impediments so for a lot of people you may well be their first taste of Metal in two years!
Paul: It’s a great feeling and hopefully we’ll have a few Kiwis in too from surrounding areas who might want a slice of home they’ve not had for a while too!
Mark: I’ve been telling all of my Kiwi mates so hopefully they’ll be turning up! (laughs)
Paul: (laughs)
Mark: So what is the plan from here is it to go out and blow people away with the album, I know its older for you thank for the rest of us but you’ve not had the opportunity to get out and do the songs live in the past couple of years? How many dates have you managed to fit in since the release?
Paul: Well we managed to do our album tour last October and then we did a bike Festival in the beautiful Coromandel – we just squeezed that one in before the ‘traffic light’ settings here changed and there were no more outdoor concerts, and that’s all just opened up again the other week so the Country’s just been toing and froing and it’s just made it super hard to make plans. Tours and things you need to plan six months in advance and you haven’t been able to rely on anything. But it’s all coming into place slowly but really we’ve not had a lot of live stuff so we’re just chomping at the bit to get out there and play these shows. I know what you mean about ‘Red’ with it coming out two years ago but we all just feel a bit ripped off that everything crashed at the same time as the album release! For example we got to release it digitally but not physical copies and then we had to cope with all these stupid rules. So it just got scuttled, and tours overseas got scuttled so we all felt that the album juts didn’t get the love it deserved and it was cathartic for us to be out there playing those songs. So it’s just been a long time coming and we’re just as excited of not more about this, and the songs and getting to play them. They’re such fun to play live and we all feel we’ve jumped up a level with this album an we’ve moved up as a live band too.
Mark: It’s a special release.
Paul: It is and there’s stories behind every track on that album. It’s funny because ‘Do You See Birds’ track one…
Mark: My favourite.
Paul: I wrote that three, maybe four years ago, way before the pandemic but it was about being stuck in a room looking out a window when your freedoms were gone and you’d got nothing. And ‘All Fall Down’ was about your country being run by a dystopian government and everyone’s getting squashed down the mincer like the Pink Floyd thing!
Mark: What’s the opposite of serendipity?
Paul: (laughs) A couple of years later and we’re pretty much living it!
Mark: It’s crazy how those themes have come to life!
Paul: (laughs) I’m only going to write fluffy love songs from now on!
Mark: You haven’t written any new stuff about even worse stuff happening have you? (laughs)
Paul: No I haven’t! (laughs) And believe me I’m checking everything!
Mark: It’s an album full of great lyrics and some intensely personal too.
Paul: Yeah, songs like ‘Endo’ we were playing that live before the album came out, but that’s a very raw story for Jenny, that’s her battle with endometriosis which has been hell. It’s just horrific – I think it was something like 17 years from first symptoms to diagnosis in New Zealand. And so we have all these women suffering, heaps of them. And Jenny wrote the song and we made sure she was cool to talk about it as it was tipped for a single and she said “Definitely, it needs to be talked about more” which I thought was particularly brave. And some songs are visceral like that.
Mark: One of the things I most love about Devilskin is the lyrics, there’s always either a great story, or a lot of substance or both. You don’t just write about fast cars and high living. Though I do hope you are bringing on particular cocktail with you when you come over!
Paul: (laughs) Ah the Mexican Christmas!
Mark: That’s the one! We’ll have to catch up for one when you hit Perth, though I expect you’ll have an early flight to Melbourne!
Paul: Oh for sure, but there’s always time for a tequila or two! We don’t get over often enough so we want to make the most of every moment, it’s a lovely country.
Mark: Before you go give us just a little teaser about the new material, were you all writing all the way through the pandemic?
Paul: I guess differently we all were and everyone had their moment and their own creative rush. But t was hard for everyone to get together to share it all. Thankfully there is technology but as everyone had different things going on all I can say is that a lot of the songs are just not following the example of anything we’ve written before. I think we’re stepping outside the box a bit. That might be because we’ve all been listening to a lot of stuff Jennie is really enjoying this band called ‘Boy Sets Fire’ there’s an album called ‘Tomorrow Come Today’ but we’re all running through our influences and the stuff that’s coming out, it’s not going to be your standard ‘everything in its place’ sort of thing, it’s going to be a bit more “whack” I guess. And I’m only gonna get a bit more honest with my lyrics. Everything’s up for grabs with the new stuff! And we’ve got plenty of riffs – Nail has this riff museum where he keeps all these amazing ideas he comes up with all the time so we’ve not shortage of ideas and bits and pieces for songs. So what we’ll probably end up doing, jus between us, is putting out an EP before we do the next album.
Mark: Sounds great mate. Good to get things off your chest.
Paul: For ‘Red’ we demoed 30 songs and we had to whittle that down to twelve so we’ve a lot of material too, some of us fought tooth and claw for some of those songs that were dropped. ‘Do You See Birds’ only just got in at the last moment and then once we recorded it we thought “Shit! let’s open the album with it!” So there’s a whole lot of songs we’re just itching to bust out.
Mark: That sounds great mate.
Paul: There’s studio work on the cards when we get back from Aussie!
Mark: Fantastic and hopefully those overseas tours are on the way to being recast too!
Paul: That’s what we’re hoping for. We’d love to get back to the US as well, we’re getting a lot of good responses from the States at the moment so it would be great to get over. Just hoping that the whole world’s gonna chill out a bit now and allow everyone to travel and get on with their Rock and Roll! We need to get back to that Rock and Roll community out at the gigs sharing the love, it’s just the best experience isn’t it?!
Mark: There’s nothing like it, a huge hole in my life for sure for the last couple of years. And I can’t think of a better band to bring it all back.
Paul: Thanks bro. Keep in touch mate, we can’t wait!
Mark: Thanks Paul, always great to catch. Stay safe till you get here!
Paul: I’m not going out of the house if I can help it! Thanks man, take care!
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Devilskin Australian Tour 2022 | Silverback Touring Australia