HACKTIVIST // PREMIERE—New Single ‘2Rotten’ & Chat With New Singer

Hysteria is proud to premiere Hacktivist’s new single 2Rotten, and officially welcome Jot Maxi as the band’s new vocalist. 

After the amicable departure of vocalist Ben Marvin, the band have chosen Maxi as their new member to continue on their genre-bending path of domination. Fans will be well aware of the rapper from his stint on Rotten, taken from the band’s debut record Outside The Box.

Both Rotten and 2Rotten feature the concept of World War IV, with Maxi saying of the track’s dystopian themes: “When I speak about the future, World War IV seems natural to say. I think we’re already in a state of World War III. With 2Rotten we’re speaking from a futuristic stance… I love the idea of the cybernetic ‘do we control them or do they control us’.”

INTERVIEW WITH JOT MAXI

LISTEN TO HYSTERIA RADIO FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW – 31 MAY @ 6PM 

Hysteria caught up with Maxi before the announcement to gauge how he’s feeling. He’s relaxing in Marseilles, the south of France where the new vocalist is enjoying “hot sunny days in the Mediterranean sea”. Life’s clearly pretty bloody peachy then? “The UK got too much for me so I left… maybe I was lost, but now I’m here.”

Maxi’s a charismatic figure, clearly ecstatic about his involvement with a band he highly respects. He hasn’t just been plucked randomly from a sea of imitators. In fact, he’s almost been there since the start. “I remember meeting Ben and J [Hurley, vocalist] on a night out and they said ‘we just joined this next level band!’ Obviously a bit later I had my collaboration on Rotten… I wrote my verse, and everyone else wrote around it. It just worked so well. After that when Ben left I was gutted. I said ‘Guys, you need to keep this going; this is something big.’ They instantly said ‘We’re just taking different paths.’ I was like ‘WHAT?! Different paths?!’ So now we’re doing it!”

That path hardly even crossed Maxi’s mind when he signed on. He didn’t exactly sign in ink though. “Timfy James our guitarist sent me three or four demo tracks, and I just recorded straight on ‘em. I didn’t even think about how much it would change life. Now I’m on a plane every two weeks flying back and forth. We’ve already got some mad stuff coming. It’s so loaded. We’re working on the next chapter.” So did he have the new chapter in his head as an outsider for the band? Was there any point beforehand that he thought “I would love to do this”, even without any foresight of what was to come?

“No I’m not Ben’s replacement, it’s a new chapter.”
[JOT]

It turns out that’s almost exactly how he viewed the band’s rise. “From the start I was like ‘that’s so up my street’. I never was like ‘I really want to be a part of that’, I just looked at the band and thought ‘wow, you guys have got something going’.” Although, it seems there was one twist of fate that never eventuated which could’ve had Maxi on the Hacktivist train much earlier. “At one point, I’ll be honest with you, Ben couldn’t do the USA gig for some legal hang up. I was thinking ‘if they need someone to do it, maybe I could do it?’ But that was just a passing idea. So when Ben left and I was speaking to Timfy it just seemed natural. It made perfect sense so I said ‘let’s do it!’”

Learning the lyrics proved to be a difficult task for Maxi; that’s no thanks to his own cognitive skills he jokes. “I have a really bad memory. For a whole month I only allowed myself to listen to the tracks I had to learn. If I wanted to listen to other music, it had to be Russian rock or Russian rap. Chinese rappers or something. I couldn’t listen to English vocals because I didn’t want it to cloud my memory because I had to learn the tracks. For the first month it was intense… now they feel like second nature.” Maxi is staunch in his reverence for Marvin’s lyrics though, and clearly has no misgivings that he’s going to fill his shoes. “I’m not about to compare myself to Ben… Ben’s lyrical style and mine are really different, but we can adapt it. I’ve got major respect for Ben Marvin. I’ve come up after him and it’s a major respect to him. I never knew I would enjoy doing someone else’s lyrics so much. If someone said ‘do you want to go on tour and do 12 songs of some other guy’s lyrics?’ I’d be like ‘What? No way!’ But then I listened to all the songs and I connected – so major respect to Ben. I feel like I can adapt to the tunes, but we’ve got new stuff coming out too.

“Everyone who says ‘oh are you Ben’s replacement?’

No I’m not Ben’s replacement, it’s a new chapter.”