Adelaide Metal Genre Bending Group Ekosa Drop New Single ‘Deliver Us From Evil’

Deliver Us From Evil, the new single and video from Adelaide metal genre bending group Ekosa recently landed. A groove filled blast of chugs, drums and lyrical insightfulness; the song is the band’s introduction to what promises to be a huge year for the group.

A run of shows is lined up over the next fortnight, ending with a support slot in Adelaide with Allegaeon in March. There also promises to be an album, the band’s first since 2023’s Eye For I as Rory Amoy, the man behind the giant kit, takes time out to discuss it all, and more, starting with the epic video, directed by Adelaide’s own Josh McCawley of Lethal With A Lens fame.

‘He’s an awesome guy to work with. The guy just gets the vision behind everything. He goes the whole nine yards. You can tell him your vision for something and he’ll understand it exactly, he gets your ideas and then executes them to such a level where it’s exactly what I was thinking! It’s got the kind of artistic direction and all of the nuances behind it, because he gets the technicalities of everything. He understands where the best place for the lighting is. In fact, it was actually Josh’s idea. We gave him full creative control over the video. Let’s give Josh the lyrics. Let’s give him the meaning behind the song and just let him run with it. What you see for ‘Deliver Us from Evil’ is basically his interpretation of our idea.’

The video is a dark, static filled, visceral nightmare of an unnamed person watching a hidden tape of a dark entity peddling evil with lyrical content of walking the narrow line in a world of extreme pressures for flavour.

‘The meaning behind the song is about … I mean, I think it says it in the opening lines of it. The lyrics are ‘strengths not a choice, it’s an obligation.’ It’s about confronting the shit in the world with strength. You must be strong in the face of adversity. When I read and heard the lyrics for the first time that Theo had written, I understood what he was going for, which is that all of the evil in the world ultimately stems from some kind of weakness. If you think about things that are going on in the world, oftentimes the worst parts of humanity or the worst examples of how human beings can act towards one another stem from a position of weakness, and it’s often trying to compensate for that weakness where we see a lot of that stuff happen. It’s about being courageous and being strong as though it’s a duty that you must embrace because the alternative to being strong is being weak. And if you’re weak, then you find that you are leaning towards being cruel to other people.’

The dark tone of the video and roar of the music compliments the lyrics perfectly. An incessant groove that will not take no for an answer.

‘The single reflects that we’ve got a whole lot of different influencers. That groove element has been part of our style for quite some time. We all love Gojira, things like that and we’d be kidding if we said that they weren’t a major influence of ours. When I wrote that first riff in the song, I was just channeling Gojira the whole time and nothing was going to happen with the track, it was just going to sit there. Then Theo and Michael came around to my place one day and they said, “That’s fucking awesome. That’s a sick riff.” And we did something with it. It’s hard to stand out from the crowd of bands these days. It’s a very saturated music scene. You almost need to go, ‘we are an insert genre band’

While Rory does acknowledge the Gojira influence, and cites bands such as Fit For An Autopsy too for those who must lump bands with other bands yet when playing live, aspects such as didgeridoo playing frontman, sit comfortably with the groove and power of the band. Scenes you will see when you check them out on their upcoming tour.

‘High energy, big grooves, heavy riffs, a lot of crowd interaction. Just something that you can go and just bang your head to and just get into it. That’s what we’re all about! And a lot of the new tracks too. People can expect to hear some new songs from us from the new album on these shows.’

That segue has the perfect timing of an elite drummer, which Rory is, to talk of the new album

‘It’s a much more refined version of Ekosa, playing heavy into that groove idea. A lot of the new ones sound very … I get reminded of the ‘Singularity’ era in Northlane when I hear some of the new tracks mixed with a bit of Meshuggah, like a Lamb of God-esque kind of vibe, but still keeping true to that progressive groove. We’ve got these two songs which go back-to-back on the album. The first one’s called ‘Dead Sea’, and then the second one’s called ‘Senescence’. ‘Dead Sea’ is about the very multifaceted situation in the Middle East and what’s been going on there for quite some time. ‘Senescence’ is a story about what happens to the mind as you get old and age and the relentless march of time and they go seamlessly back to back. There’s this huge groove which just sort of marries the two together. It feels like Ekosa’s a band that’s energised now. We’ve been through the experimentation phase, we’ve done the prog stuff, we’ve done the long form eight, nine, 10-minute songs, and we’ve taken all of the stuff that we learned from that and distilled it into a more concise and refined package, which keeps true to what we are. The album will be called ‘The Future Ancient.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

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LISTEN

Deliver Us From Evil is out now…

TOUR

Catch Ekosa on the following dates…