Devilskin Are Back On Tour In Australia…

Get ready to rock out at Froth & Fury Festival with New Zealand’s very own Devilskin who are insistent on making up for lost time over the last couple of years. This will be a perfect opportunity for the band to unleash tracks from their killer album Red from 2020 that didn’t get all the time in the sun that it deserved featuring the incredible vocal prowess of Jennie Skulander, whose unerring gift for melody will captivate you from the first note. Hi Fi Way spoke to Tony “Nail” Vincent about returning to Australia.

So good having Devilskin back in Australia for another tour? Are you excited?
Yeah! Pumped! I can’t wait. It’s been a little while since we’ve been to Australia. We’ve got some good friends over there and we can’t wait to get back and connect with our Australian friends.,

Froth & Fury in Adelaide is a killer line up. Have you had a chance to check out the line up and is there anyone you are keen on seeing?
I’m going to try and absorb as much as I can. I’m really looking forward to seeing The Halo Effect and The Butterfly Effect as well. Suicidal Tendencies, obviously, there’s some bands that have been around for a long time that I’ve never really been able to have the privilege of catching, so I’m going to try and absorb as much as I can.

Does the band approach festivals any differently than what you would your own club show?
I think with a festival you’ve got a very limited set time. Your length is limited and that affects what songs that you play. Obviously with our headline shows here in New Zealand we like to mix it up with our sets a little bit and play some of the different tracks from some of our other records as well. So, with festivals we play the classic bangers, the ones that have been on the radio and we like to mix it up with some of the ones that please us as well.

Do you notice much difference between Australian music fans and other fans around the world or maybe even sort of back home in New Zealand when you play?
I think the Aussie fans and Kiwi fans are quite similar, they like having a beer and they like having a good time and they’re pretty much on an even stevens playing field. When you’re in Europe, I found a lot different sorts of crowds, particularly the Scandinavian countries, they are right into the heavy stuff and places like Belgium were more of a stand back and stare kind of crowd. They stand back, they’re absorbing it, they’re enjoying it all the same, but it’s just received differently that’s all.

Have you had much of a chance to tour around the world this year?
Not this year. We haven’t toured to Europe since Covid.

Are you itching to get back on a much bigger scale?
A hundred percent, we are chomping at the bit now, the band’s full flight into writing music at the moment and doing pre-production to get in the studio to record some more new music, so we can head back over to Europe and do it all again.

Are you looking to test out some of these new songs on this Australian tour?
We might, we might play something. I’m not going to give too much away, you’ll have to come to the gig man!

Do you think the Devilskin sound has changed much on the new songs that you have been working on?
Yeah, I think it has already has. I think it’s evolved quite a lot. I think there’s a little bit more maturity in our music now. Our approach to music has completely changed through the course of Covid. Obviously we couldn’t get in a room together and we couldn’t jam out riffs, so we had to come up with ways of doing that, which is done digitally now. It’s the way that we write music moving forward, we’re emailing files, writing a lot of stuff at home and collating the songs through the airwaves basically, then getting in a room together and bashing them out.

Do you any pressure to top Red given you set the bar really high with that album?
I think we are all competitive in our own right anyway and I think that we all strive to try and write the best possible music that we can write. I’m personally always striving to try and write something better than what I did last time. I’m always trying to move forward and challenge myself as a songwriter.

Were you blown away by the fan reaction to Red?
The reaction we got from fans was great and it could have been so much better too thanks to Covid. But, we couldn’t help the way that the world at the time, it was just that the cards that we were dealt at the time. We are making up for lost time anyway while we are here.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Beyond The Back at Lagerfest, tickets HERE…

And Froth & Fury Festival, tickets HERE…