- Sep 3, 2021
- 16 min read

EVERLYNE: New Single 'Deranged' | INTERVIEW

Oh Honey, we’re all mad here!?! But at least we’ve got tunes like Everlyne’s Deranged to feed the insanity…. I mean to help cure the insanity *insert nervous laughing*. Before their big release I caught up with the Melbournian alt rock outfit to chat about their groundbreaking new single.

Interview Date: Mon 23 August 2021

(few days before release date)

Everlyne are:

Mac - vocals

Nathan - guitar

Sam - drums

Jordan - bass

Alright let’s go! So, Nathan and Jordan you guys are brothers aren't you? and you're the ones who started the band? I just want to know about what happened with that epiphany or realisation moment when you guys were like, ‘oh, we should totally start a band!’ ?

Jordan: This is kind of like the child of another one of our projects that we had a few years back when we were playing in a band with a couple of mates, we started writing original music, there were some ahh... creative differences is a term that I think you’ld probably hear a lot.

Some Band Politics?

Jordan: Yeah, and there was a whole heap of other random stuff that didn't work out.

But, we ended up running into a singer who was probably about 16 or 17 at the time on our journey while we were playing shows and stuff with that band. That singer just happened to be Mac and when everything fell through with the other band we kind of just wanted to get something else going, and the first person that was on our minds was Mac straightaway. We were just really excited to get her in on it, and we had heard her voice and knew what she could do.

Nathan: I think that like when Jordan and I actually spoke about it,we had played a Battle of the Bands competition, just like a local one for FReeZA the year before I think it was, and we remembered Mac from that year. Anyway, so like the next year came along and there was another Battle of the Bands and I’m sort of pretty tight-knit with the local guys at our youth centre and Mac used to work there, and they asked me to come and do some judging on it because I had performed on it before this is a local musician. I was like yeah no probs! And Mac was there and after her one of her performances I just approached her and asked her if she'd be interested in just coming down and having a bit of a crack.

We only knew like how to play a few covers and our old stuff, which Mac knew some of the words to our old stuff, we just gave her the lyrics when she came down and did a bit of a audition I guess you could say, yeah.

Then the struggle came when we tried to find a drummer, and that was all set in stone ha I guess?

Mac: What a joke!

Nathan: Haha so Sam was a friend of Mac’s through Collarts, and we tried a couple of other drummers I think before Sam and they were a bit average and Sam was no better but he was a good bloke! So yeah!

*Full band laughs*

He just got to join cause he’s cool and chill!

Sam: That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me Nathan! Haha

Nathan: You’ll probably notice in this interview, but we raz (stir) Sam up a lot. Buy yeah, that’s pretty much the story of it.

What does the band name ‘Everlyne’ mean?

Sam: I remembered that we were having a struggle for the longest time to come up with a name, I'm talking like what was it? like 4-5-6 months?

Mac: It took us months! We're sitting there going, Hey, what about this? and we're like, mm… no that's garbage.

Sam: I don't know if this is how we came up with the name, but Mac and I went to the same university, so, we used to rehearse that their campus on Brunswick Street which I'm just gonna say is a block or two down from the Evelyn Hotel…

Nathan: So we chucked a cheeky E on the end of the Evelyn Hotel and there we have it!

Mac: And just changed how it was said haha.

Nathan: It was literally as crazy as the story gets hahaha.

Really? Have you guys played at the Everlyn?

Mac: Not as a band, not as Everlyne.

Cause imagine that ‘Everlyne at the Everlyn’ !

Nathan: Yeah would be a good tag-line!

Absolutely!

So, I’ve actually seen you guys play with Color and Shade supporting them with The Motion Below and Vermont back in July 2021 (in between restrictions), and Mac you've got some really strong/ really powerful vocals, I was actually standing next to Luana from Paperweight, and she said like, ‘Oh, Mac’s got to be like classically trained or something’.

Are you? Could you talk a little bit about your vocal background?

Mac: Well, I suppose you could say I'm classically trained. I've worked it out the other day that I've actually been singing professionally for about 15 years, and I'm only 21 So that's a long time. I originally started out in the Australian Girls Choir, that's how I got my start so that's where obviously I got a lot of background training there. As Sam mentioned before we went to uni together, and we both did a Bachelor of Music there, I suppose that would definitely factor into… I don't know if I call it classically trained, but I've been singing for a long time and I come from a musical family as well.

Yeah, you would have had to have a lot of training to build up those chords. What would you say to someone who is interested in getting into singing this while we're on the topic?

Mac: Oh my goodness…

Nathan: play guitar instead haha

Mac: Haha. Umm… I've never thought about it, I've had a few people that have come to me asking if I could teach them before. But I suppose, the best advice I can give is just listen to a lot of artists that you like, see just look at how they I suppose present themselves as a singer. That's how I learnt in the beginning, I just learnt by listening to a lot of singers, I was into musicals and all that sort of stuff when I was growing up, so that was a massive thing and that's how I started to figure out that I could sing. Vocal lessons do help quite a lot, they teach you a lot of little techniques, little tricks that you can use along the way that help either strengthen your voice or help with breathing and all that sort of stuff. Obviously, there's like tutorials and stuff that you can watch online with different exercises you can learn to do, there's just so many things that you can.

If you want to get into singing, if you want to get into professional singing, there's so many things you can do to make yourself just stand out there, and make yourself the best you can possibly be.

That is some very good advice.

Okay, I want to get into this new single, so it's called the Deranged and it's got this very much like Paramore meets The Last Martyr kind of vibe to it. You guys describe this song as “a girl that is slowly losing her mind and hearing voices”, and that it's very Jekyll and Hyde. Could you guys extend the meaning behind the song?

Mac: I suppose I'll take this one because I do write all the lyrics. That is kind of what I was going for, it was very much like… obviously with the whole like isolation thing going on at the moment that was playing a lot of my head and I started thinking… well, I know that a lot of people when they get left by themselves because for me I live by myself so I'm left alone with my thoughts a lot.

I started thinking about that, and I was writing this song about the descent into madness, I suppose, and suddenly voices in your head and then you start talking to yourself, and like creating another persona to talk to.

And I suppose this song is like an amalgamation of, what that can eventually lead to and she's hearing voices in our head, but she's got, whether it's like a friend or like a significant other that she doesn't want to know about the voices in your head, so it is very much like a Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing going on.

Sounds like you might have gone a little bit crazy in lockdown then, is that what you’re trying to say? Haha.

Mac: Hahahah.

Nathan: I think we all did.

Mac: Yeah well. I’m not gonna say no but…. Haha.

When was this song written?

Nathan: I remember writing the instrumental for this, it would have been maybe May of last year, or maybe even a bit longer ago. Yeah, it would have been written friggin ages ago and it was probably really good that we worked with Callan Orr and Beau McKee on this one. This was the first time we had ever gone to Callan to do any sort of pre-production or anything like that, and he

was really good at setting the scene at the time for this sort of song and it actually lent itself to the lyrics that Mac wrote, being so dark and being presented in the way it is with the sort of like ambient sense.

And yeah we wrote this song yonks ago, and the lyrics were the last part of the process which would have been probably when we were leaning into working with Beau. But I reckon the initial stages would have been easily like a year to a year and three months ago.

Jordan: I guess every time we had a chance where restrictions got eased with the COVID stuff that was going on, we would try to chip away at it again, you know just get that little bit more done.

Nathan: Me and you were then living together at the time, and we were still living at home, and I remember that one day, I think this was the song actually, we just sat down and we were sitting on the bed and we just did it in like two hours. Got the instrumental done for it, then like at every rehearsal that you go to every time you play the song, there’s just something else you add and we would just build on it. If we weren't in that situation I doubt that song would have been written with such fluency.

I like that the song was originally written on a bed, I like that, it’s very old school.

Nathan: It was! We were getting so lazy in lockdown! and we were just like, man, if we don't do something and if we don't write some music-like it sounds very forced, but it wasn't. Yeah but it was like, if we don't sit down and write some bloody music, we're gonna go through this whole lockdown and try and wing it afterwards.

And luckily we did that because then we ended up sort of stemming onto writing other songs as well.

It was all a part of the creative process.

Were you guys able to work on this song much together like in the studio or for rehearsals?

Nathan: I reckon in little bits and pieces. Jordan and I definitely, and then when we went into see Callan, he definitely added little strings to it. We went to him and said that our big influences were this, this and this, we want this to...you know, have little Bring Me the Horizon vibes here, and little bits of Evanescence here, and little bits of this and this and he goes Say no more, and that's the kind of guy that he is. We did plenty of instrumental adding to the song with him and I think Beau is more orchestrated around let's get these melodies sounding really, really hookey and let's make this some really produced work.

Now I wanted to talk about the music video, what's with the symbolism with the little life-source light on the wrist, neck and the chest?

Nathan: go on Sam!

Oop someone’s excited about it haha, go on.

Sam: Yeah so, when we were originally coming up with ideas for the music video, you know, like, in the very first part of the brainstorming phase, I remember one day Martin (Martin Wood Imagery), who directed, produced, and you know helped write most of the music video, he came into the Scripture with this and he goes, Guys! I've got a great idea! All I need you guys to do is come up with a symbol. So, the idea was that we knew there was going to be like this ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ idea that's going to be a thing, so there's going to be a good-person/ bad-person thing, you know, all supervillains need a symbol, so I just came up with like,

What about a diamond but with an ‘E’ in it?

Nathan: I remember that we all just looked at you like What?

Mac: we were like mm.. No haha

Sam: so they were like no, but then nobody else came up with a better idea, so we went with it.

Mac: To me, it looks like a really pointy Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings, so I was okay with it haha.

Nathan: So technically, it's meant to be like a diamond with like the three stems of the E through the middle of it, but it just kind of looks like a diamond with a pattern to it. I remember when Sam showed us the mock-up for it for the first time, he was in a restaurant or something but he like drew it on a napkin with a red texta. It literally was like he spilled four glasses of water on it and smudge it, and he was like This is soo sick guys! haha

Sam: I was working in a pub at the time and was having like a five minute break, and just like wrote it down on a napkin. But hey, it works!

The brief was just something that's simple and geometric, you know that we can work with for like big set pieces.

Are you gonna implement the diamond symbol into more music? Like into every single music video or a background backdrop, when you play live? Are we going to see more of it?

Mac: ooh, that’s a great question, we will have to get back to you on that.

Jordan: It's actually pretty funny with the symbol, I think Martin originally pitched the idea to us that he was going to, you know, we were going to build it out of wood, and then set it on fire.

It was gonna be like this huge symbol and it's gonna be on fire and it's gonna be huge and, like, everything! Then it turned into what it was, which was awesome, but we asked him after everything had come together, we were like, Man, can we take this and set it on fire now, like that was the plan like that's what we want to do we want to take this, this big symbol and set it on fire... and we are still waiting on it haha. It must be in the mail.

What was it like on the day of shooting the music video for Deranged?

Mac: We had it across two days for this one. The first day was… ugh my god, it was such a late night. The tail end of the shooting was all done at my house, and you guys left my house at like 4:30am? and I was already falling asleep.

Nathan: I remember driving with someone at like 3am to Maccas to go get coffees and we were like we've only got one more shot to do, and then when we got back, it was like two and a half hours later, so we ended up going until like 5:30am.

A lot happening on the video shooting actually. Day two we ended up going to this industrial area in Preston..

Mac: Oh God!

Nathan: It was like half residential, and we started shooting around 5 or 6pm.

For the performance scenes?

Nathan: Yeah it was. So we started shooting around 6pm and we stupidly didn’t do the drums first, sort of in light hours. Then we started on drums at like 9 or 10pm…

Sam: We should point out that it took like an hour to just stuff all the drums with like blankets. Clothes…

Nathan: the cymbals were practically made of tape haha

Mac: they were literally wrapped in so much duct tape

Sam: and like I love music video stuff but like the way that we were set up was killer, ‘cause I was playing drums in the background of all the band shots, and everyone's solo shots. So like when we were doing Nathan’s shots, I have to be playing when we're doing Jordan’s I have to keep playing. By the time we got to doing me solo, it was about maybe 10:30 at night, and we got halfway through the first take of my solo shots, and all of a sudden there's smashing on the door, and this guy has run across the road from his house in like nothing but his work shorts and starts like screaming at us, and Martin.

Mac: He was so mad! I don’t know how Martin dealt with that, like he just stayed so calm and so just really like, Hey man, we're just doing this, this is my job too, and this dude was screaming abuse at him, he was just he was having none of it he was just swearing his head off! I was sitting there just trying to hide, personally, I was like I don’t know what’s going on haha

Nathan: So you'll notice if you watch the video, there's no solo shots of Sam hahaha but it was disguised well!

It was a good eventful afternoon / evening. We ended up getting it all sort of locked away and after Sam did all of his shots with everyone else he could sort of pack everything up.

Mac: I think some lessons were learnt that night! haha

Do drums first

Nathan: or in the middle of the bloody desert.

Exactly. One of my favourite bits I like in the song is when Mac you whisper ‘Do you wanna know why?’, first off how much fun is that to sing?

Mac: Look, when I first did it, I got the weirdest looks from Nathan, I used to cop so much shit from him. He was like, are you right? Is there something wrong with you? hahaha

I was very unsure with it in the beginning because it was something so different, and when we took it to Beau he was like Yeah this is cool! We can layer it and have like a bunch of different like really whispery bits and then we can just have like some low bits. Just the way he layered it, it was just so cool and I loved it.

Nathan: I was so iffy about it at the start, but then when I heard it in the actual mix I was like Yeah, that’s mad, keep that!

Mac: We won him over, you know! haha

Is Deranged going to be part of an EP or is it staying as a standalone single, what are you guys working on?

Mac: We definitely have some more stuff in the works. Over the next couple of months, definitely keep your eyes peeled for some more stuff coming out.

Nathan: You can answer the question directly! I’m gonna answer it directly haha

Mac: We’ve never addressed this man! I don’t know! Haha

Nathan: it is gonna be part of a four track. So this is standalone single number one, there will be a single number two, but with COVID and all that we're trying to play it to our advantage in a way, whereas, we're not stuck in not releasing music after our first single for six months so we're trying to spread it over the sort of Christmas period where everyone's away normally on holidays and not really paying attention to anything during December and January. So we've got to be mindful of that too. But yeah it'll definitely be a part of a bigger release.

That’s very good to hear!

If you guys could tour with anyone in the whole world, alive or dead, who would you jump on a line-up with?

Mac: Personally, I've got a couple of answers, I’ld love tour with school Paramore, would have been an awesome group to tour with. Another would be one of my favorite bands called Halestorm, I would LOVE to go on tour with them, that would be wicked, like I could die happy!

Nathan: I think I would want to tour with some heavier bands, so I’m big into Kingdom Of Giants, Bring Me the Horizon would be another one I reckon, and probably The Ghost Inside they were one of my favourite bands as a teenager so that would be pretty sick.

Jordan: It would be so cool to tour with The Ghost Inside considering everything that’s happened to them over the past 5-10 years.

I would say Sleeping with Sirens, because I think people would hear Mac’s voice and Oliie’s voice and be like *Happy* Mmm…. oh not Ollie, who is it?

Mac: Yeah I was going to say, that’s Kellin Quinn

Jordan: Yeah Kellin

Mac: Jesus Jordan!

Nathan: I think it’s the same *sarcastingly* haha

Jordan: so Mac and Kellin’s voice would be on par here.

Yeah that would be very interesting to hear their vocals intertwined. Maybe you should hit up Kellin for a collab on Twitter? Haha

Mac: Jordan, that’s your job!

Jordan: Okay I’ll make it happen haha.

And Sam, who would you want to tour with?

Sam: Argh I’m torn, cause it’s like would I go on tour with my drumming heroes even though they would show me up? Haha. I would probably go with guys like Northlane, Nick Peterson from Northlane I’m a huge fan of him, Listened to a lot of his stuff when I was like 16/17, so probably them, also they have just mad tunes!

Awesome! Do you guys have any final words you'd like to say on behalf of the band, anything about the new single Deranged, or any messages you want to get out to your fans?

Mac: Probably that we cannot wait to hit the ground running with some more shows when we get out of lockdown, that's definitely a big goal that we've got coming out of this.

Have you got possible plans for a single launch?

Jordan: It's a bit hard at the moment to kind of do anything. But the one thing you can be sure of, is that as soon as we're all out of this situation we're all in at the moment, we are gonna hit the ground running. We're going to be playing shows and the new music is going to be coming at ya.

Nathan: As a young band or a new band on the scene, it's probably pretty important that we make some connections with other bands and start getting familiar with more and more people in the same, working with, you know, new people and as many people as possible as well. For sure.

Single launch is tough because COVID had some good, I guess, effects last time where shows were canceled for such a long period of time, and then everyone would buy everything and anything just to get out and see everyone, and would sell out shows here, there and everywhere. I think there was probably like a run of maybe four months in almost every show that was put on in Melbourne was sold out, and it was awesome..

Jordan: We played three or four pretty sizable... like for us pretty sizable shows over that time, , and you know we got to play our music and see some awesome people in and around Melbourne. Hopefully, something like that happens again towards the tail end of the year.

Nathan: Pre save the song!

Have you got merch as well?

Mac: We’ve got merch incoming.

Sam: Unfortunately, none of us live within 5kms to go pick up the merch haha.

Nathan: We've got shirts that we've just had printed by Jack Smith, and he's the guitarist for Future Static. He does a bit of graphic design work around the scene and he did our single cover artwork and our merch designs as well as, shout out to the big man!

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That was Mac, Nathan, Jordan and Sam from the Melbourne based band Everlyne. Their new single Deranged is out right now! And has been added to the Loud & Livid | Moody Music Spotify Playlist