Meet The Band: Evans The Death

FOLLOWING their first two releases, 2012’s self-titled debut and 2015’s Expect Delays, London five piece Evans the Death are back with a brand new album Vanilla, seeing the band’s sound progress into a more aggressive, extroverted and raw direction.

Named after the undertaker in Dylan Thomas’ radio play, Under Milk Wood, the band was formed by brothers Dan and Olly Moss after meeting singer Katherine Whitaker at a Let’s Wrestle show. After numerous line-ups, the band is now completed by James Burkitt on drums and Daniel Raphael on bass.

Evans The Death are also back on the road, with a return visit to Cardiff a year on from their last visit. Andy Howells recently put questions to Dan from the band.

It’s a year since you played Cardiff and you’ve had a bit of a line-up change – what’s been happening with the band?
James has left so Sam Yardley from Porridge Radio will be playing drums with us, other than that it’s the same.

You’ve also got a new album with Vanilla, what’s the inspiration behind it?
Lots of things, mainly just how we felt and what was going on in our heads during that year.

Evans The Death was named after the character in Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, what was the reason for choice, do the band have any Welsh connections?
The name was an arbitrary thing really, although Olly and I have some Welsh relatives. Our 2nd cousin plays in the under 21s football team.

You are back in Cardiff soon, what can fans expect?
Definitely come down early for Neurotic Fiction and Anxiety, we’re looking forward to watching them. Porridge Radio too of course. We’re particularly excited for Cardiff actually, last time was loads of fun, we wrote down all our songs on bits of paper and did a setlist tombola, but I doubt we’ll do that this time.

Are you looking forward to bringing new material?
Yeah, although it’s not all that new to us anymore, we played some of it last time. Generally the newer stuff is more exciting to play because of how the songs are constructed, it’s more dramatic.

What else for 2016 ?
I think we’ll be a bit quiet for a while, working towards another record, we want it to be our masterpiece. A good thing about our name is its high googleability. I suppose our facebook page or twitter is best for news.

• Evans The Death play The Full Moon, Cardiff on July 21. Visit ents24.com for ticket details.
• A version of this Q&A by Andy Howells appeared in The South Wales Argus on July 15, 2016