SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND: EVOCATUS // Metal Of Honour

Evocatus have just released Path to Tartarus, their second album of heroic, war- and mythology-themed thrash metal.

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With immediate plans to take the album on the road looking bleak, guitarist Vaughan Jones and vocalist Nich Shields were keen to discuss their epic songwriting, along with other ways and means to get their creation in front of people.

Path to Tartarus is quite an epic album. The shortest track is over five minutes long. You’re not a band that holds back when it comes to longer songs, that’s for sure.

Vaughan Jones: I don’t think we’ve done too many short songs at all. On the last album I think there was a couple of four-minute songs, but we really went all out on this one.

You’re from Muswellbrook in NSW. How much of a music scene exists there?

Nich Shields: Originally all of us guys were from Muswellbrook, but as time went on we dispersed into different areas. I guess we call ourselves Newcastle-based now. It’s the central meeting point for everyone. A couple of the guys live there, there’s one in Sydney, and I’m the only one left in Muswellbrook. It’s such a big scene there, so much. There was a couple of other bands from Muswellbrook at first, but they all made their way to Newcastle or down further.

How have you found working out of Newcastle?

Nich: It’s been pretty good. Like any scene, it fluctuates up and down, but there’s a steady stream of gigs. There’s a couple of venues that put on pretty regular stuff – possibly even weekly at the [Hamilton Station Hotel] with pretty cool line-ups. There used to be a pretty cool place called The Vault, and before that it was called Club Lead, running out of a couple of different venues and run by a couple of really dedicated promoters that were running really high quality shows. Unfortunately the main guy moved away and that wasn’t happening anymore; a couple of other guys, pre-pandemic, picked up the venue…

Vaughan: Badger’s Lair, it’s called now.

Nich: Yes. There’s a bit of a scene and some pretty good bands coming out of Newcastle, for sure.

I think a lot of the lyrical content comes from our name.
[ Vaughan Jones ]

This is the second full length album now. Do you think that it’s all really starting to come together for you as a band. Do you feel you’re beginning to really develop a sound and achieving what your goals are for Evocatus?

Vaughan: I feel that we developed our sound on the first one, and then we built on that this time, and really took it to the next level. And I think we’ll continue to build on that now we have a new writing influence in Cal (Douchkov) coming in, our next record will probably be different again. Cal came in pretty much at the tail-end of the current record, Path to Tartarus, so he’s got a couple of solos on there but wasn’t really heavily involved in the writing. The writing was mostly done by myself and Phil (Keong), our previous guitarist, so I think we’ll see a change in direction – or maybe a change in something – with Cal coming on.

So have you already started to write new material?

Vaughan: There’s a few ideas that have been floating around, some riffs and things. We’re not heavily into writing just yet. What we’ve been doing at the moment … this record has been ready to go for quite a while, and between artwork and final package to put together – that’s been ready for a while too, but we didn’t want to jump the gun and release mid-pandemic and having people hear it and like it, maybe buy it and enjoy it, but not play shows to back it up. Earlier in the year, we wanted to push the release out to later in the year in the hope that we could play a bunch of shows to support it straight off the back of the release. At the time it was a stab in the dark. We had no idea what it was going to be like. It’s getting better. There’s some shows starting to come up in Newcastle again now.

But you can’t hold it off forever. It has to come out at some point.

Vaughan: That’s right.

Going just off the song titles on the new album, Evocatus definitely has certain themes and subjects when it comes to material.

Vaughan: I think a lot of the lyrical content comes from our name. When we changed our name, we already had quite a few songs for the first album written, so it didn’t seem so apparent. But writing the lyrics for the second album, Evocatus being a very Roman name drew me to those types of scenarios, and so I just kept going with it!

As we said, there are some pretty epic songs on this album. Walls of Troy is one that really sticks out. It has everything you’re aiming for there. All of your songs are pretty long, but that one covers the whole scope.

Nich: That’s the ten minute song on the album, yeah!

Vaughan: I can’t remember how long ago I wrote that one. We basically went through and wrote all the guitars and drums and everything, and – well I don’t know about the rest of the guys, but it felt to me like we needed a little bit more. So that’s when we went back and wrote the symphonic parts, and that’s what really brought it all together. Then Ryan Huthnance, the producer-mixer-masterer, went through all the symphonic stuff we had and really elaborated on it and made it really outstanding.

What are your plans now for getting the album in front of people?

Nich: That’s the hard thing, man. We wanted to delay the release to a point where, hopefully, we could play some shows, and like we said, they’re starting to dot up. It would be nice to … I don’t think we could say we could be so lucky as to tour the album, because cross-border travel is probably a way off yet, so hopefully we can pick up a couple of shows in Newcastle and Sydney, like we play most of the time, anyway. A release party or gig would be cool. It’s not on the horizon yet though, so we’ve been pushing the album as hard as we can online. Which is something we didn’t do with the last album three years ago. We dropped the ball and missed the boat with that one!

Vaughan: The single is out. The video’s out. And this is the first interview we’ve done, so hopefully there’s more of these!

Artwork and videos are always an important aspect in the final package. Tell us about the clip.

Vaughan: We got the artwork done by a guy from France called Pierre-Alain Durand, and it was just phenomenal. When we were looking at what singles, or videos, to do, we chose Tartarus and thought we’d use the artwork for the video. The lyric video that came out of that was next level. We gave the artwork and lyrics and everything to another guy, and he brought it to life.

Nich: We commissioned the album art from Pierre. For our last album, Mortem in Deos, we chose the artwork from a catalogue of his works, and that really solidified itself as the type of imagery to go with Evocatus. So naturally we went straight back to him when it came time for this record, Path to Tartarus. Instead of picking from his catalogue, we told him what we wanted, themes and imagery from the album and let him have his way with it. What he came back with blew us away. As Vaughan was saying, we wanted to release a few lyric videos, which is a popular thing at the moment. It’s an easy way to get your music out there and seen on screen, so we went hunting around to see who was making good ones and we found Manthos. It’s incredible what he was able to animate with just a single image. We couldn’t be happier with it.