Korn‘s Jonathan Davis was so excited by ORGY that he created his own record label …
Melbourne’s Everlyne is roaring into their new era with their latest single, Deranged.
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Taking a decidedly darker turn, the track was influenced by lockdown and an internal Jekyll and Hyde situation and will undoubtedly appeal to fans of Evanescence and Halestorm. Before it officially dropped, we caught up with vocalist Mac Shay, drummer Sam Stone and guitarist Nathan Borg for a chat.
Hysteria: Let’s get the band introduced.
Nathan: I play guitar for Everlyne. To give you some background on how things kicked off, my brother Jordan is the bassist. We were in an old band together. That project came to an end almost two and a half years ago, and we were hoping to start something new. When we were in that old band, we came across someone we thought was a really strong vocalist, and that was Mac. So when we were searching for new band members, I asked if she was interested. Strangely enough, she was a fan of our old band. Sam was one of Mac’s uni friends, so he came along after. Everything clicked when we were together though. We became friends straight off the bat.
Sam: Mac didn’t actually even tell me there was an opening in the band; she put out an ad in our unis common room.
Mac: Sam was just like, umm, hello!? (laughs).
Sam: I was new to Melbourne, I had moved there from Gippsland, but I was super keen just to join bands and get out there. I was jumping at every opportunity I had, and then Mac came along with this one, and I decided to join Everlyne.
Tell us the story behind the new single Deranged.
Mac: Over the last 18 months, mental health has been such a massive thing, and it’s been getting to everyone. I live alone, so with all these lockdowns, you get left with all your thoughts. It was written from the perspective of someone losing their mind (laughs). I had that in the back of my head when I was writing the lyrics, and I thought it would work well with the times we’re in.
Nathan: With the COVID thing, a lot of bands seem to be doing that. Look at Bring Me the Horizon with Parasite Eve, for example. I’m pretty sure Boston Manor put out a song about isolation and lockdown too. It was a long writing process for this song though. We started working on it early last year.
Sam: We were supposed to go in for recording last year; we got pushed back about three times because of lockdowns.
Nathan: That gave Mac plenty of time to channel her anger and lose her mind as inspo for the song. (Mac laughs)
This being your first song post-lockdown, how do you feel it came together compared to your others?
Mac: Over lockdown, we were able to sit down and work out what direction we wanted to move our sound into. We wanted Deranged to be a little different from our last two singles. We took that to our dynamic duo team of Callan Orr and Beau Mckee, who brought everything to life.
Nathan: We’d never worked with Callan before, but we heard really good things. We had the song instrumentally written, but Callan knew how to bring out the demonic tones on the track to make it sound more produced than our previous work. We’re hoping this is what the scene is looking for, something a little different.
Sam: It’s not very common that you get to lock yourself away for two months and just solidly work on your craft. For me, I spent most of lockdown working on this upcoming EP and the drum parts. In a way, that’s the one good thing lockdown’s given us.
We want to push the envelope, we’re not a band that plays it safe, and we don’t want to be seen as one. We’re always willing to take risks to make sure everything we put out has impact and influence
[ Nathan Borg ]
Tell us a little more about what you got out of working with Callan Orr and Beau McKee.
Sam: Working with Callan was amazing, not just seeing what he does but how he goes about it. Whenever I work on things now, I ask myself, what would Callan do?
Nathan: He’s a very productive guy. When you get time with him, you know you’re going to get shit done. In an instrumental sense, his production brought out everything we wanted in the track. It would not have had the same dynamic and influence on its final audience if it wasn’t for him. We’ve worked with Beau in the past, and he’s such a dude (Mac laughs). He’s the best bloke to work with and so productive too. That’s what made them such a great duo. And he worked night and day to provide us with what we wanted on this track. We thank them both so much.
Mac: Cal definitely focused on the instrumentals and adding in so many different production elements to make the track sound huge. Most of the work I did was with Beau, especially with the vocal harmonies in the chorus. There are so many layers there. We’d sit there and bounce ideas off each other and just kick the boys out of the room because they’d make too much noise. We’d experiment with all these different sounds to find what would work best. I think this song has a five-part harmony stacked up for the very last line in the chorus. I remember sitting back and listening to it, thinking it was huge.
Tell us about what inspired your change in sound.
Nathan: We want to push the envelope, we’re not a band that plays it safe, and we don’t want to be seen as one. We’re always willing to take risks to make sure everything we put out has impact and influence. We’ll use the word risky (laughs).
Mac: I feel like it’s a calculated risk though.
Nathan: Yeah. When we wrote this song, we wanted it to be the one that defined the band’s new direction. We didn’t feel like we got that much traction off our first few singles. We put a lot more time and effort into this one. I think you’ll see the future direction of the band progressing in this way.
Can you share any details of your upcoming EP?
Nathan: This single is the first one from a wider release, which will be an EP. We’re planning to release two singles and then a four-track further down the line. We don’t know if that’ll be this year or next year. It’ll be timed with lockdown because we want it to be as impactful as possible.
Anything before we let you head off?
Mac: We encourage everyone to keep supporting local music, especially when things open up again. It would mean so much to everyone in the scene and help bring it back to life.
Nathan: We definitely want to play more shows when we come out of lockdown, but we want to give other bands the hope and encouragement to go out and release music and put it to the forefront. We want as many people as possible to listen to this song and tell us what they think.
Purchase and stream here.
