ALT BLK ERA were thrust onto festival stages and racked up a host of award nominations without even releasing an album. But with debut LP Rave Immortal now out, Nyrobi and Chaya dissect what their music actually stands for, how it was informed by Nyrobi’s experiences of chronic illness, and why their sisterhood is stronger than ever…
Nyrobi Beckett-Messam will be spending her 21st birthday in the studio. “I just love music so much that doing anything else wouldn't feel like my birthday,” the ALT BLK ERA vocalist tells Kerrang! excitedly from her home in Nottingham.
For Nyrobi, who has loved music from a young age, she feels at her most comfortable being creative. As a child, she wrote poetry, penning her first song around the age of eight. She would often celebrate her birthday by sitting her mum and her younger sister Chaya – the other half of ALT BLK ERA – down and singing an album’s worth of songs for them.
It’s part of the reason her mother enrolled her and Chaya in a songwriting course a few years ago. The other side to it, however, was that Nyrobi was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in late 2020, an illness that left her feeling exhausted, housebound, in pain, and meant she needed lots of sleep.
“Back in 2021, when Nyrobi was sleeping 22 hours a day, she would wake up just for this songwriting course that our mum found on Facebook, and it really helped her get out of bed, wake up, eat…” Chaya recalls.
As part of this course, they had to put on a live performance. It was the first time Nyrobi left the house in almost a year.
“I wore the biggest freaking shoes I could find,” she smiles. “They were these three-and-a-half inch platforms. Where was I going?! I hadn't walked nowhere in ages, and I was like, ‘Yeah, let me get these high-ass shoes and go and walk far!’”
Since that initial performance in skyscraping footwear, ALT BLK ERA have been on an upward trajectory. Aged just 17 and 20, they’ve already dominated stages at Glastonbury, Download and beyond, and have just dropped their debut album Rave Immortal, which hit Number One on the UK Rock & Metal chart. Rather than being riddled with adolescent angst, however, Nyrobi reveals the record “is about the journey of my disability and coming to terms with it.”
Opening track Straight To Heart deals with “the feelings of isolation that I felt when I first became disabled and noticed that my friends had moved on and left me”, the singer explains, adding that the song, “is about being abandoned”.
Usually songwriting late into the night (as that’s when Nyrobi is most active), putting pen to paper proved to be quite the cathartic experience with lines like, ‘Save me, they left me in the dark / Wasting away under the stars.’
But putting the song out into the world was an even more powerful experience. Despite the older sister initially being in tears when the single was released, she was soon inundated with messages from from fans offering support or telling her how they resonated with the message.
“The release, emotionally, was a little bit daunting, but the support was overwhelming in a positive way,” Nyrobi reflects. “It was worthwhile.”
Symptoms like exhaustion don’t always show up in a way that can be seen, so it can be hard for people who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome to get the support they need from the people around them.
“I still feel like people don't view me as disabled, because it's not a visible disability, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not a good thing,” Nyrobi explains, acknowledging that it can be difficult for those with symptoms like exhaustion to get the support they need. “It's a good thing when they treat me just like a human being and not a different entity, but it's a bad thing when they don't acknowledge that I do have needs and I do need help.”
The second track on the album, Come On Outside, is a brighter follow-up to Straight To Heart – a sister song in both senses – that recounts how Nyrobi’s health improved with Chaya’s support. She says the song is, “about my journey to health and how Chaya helped me through that. So I say Come On Outside is really about our bond as sisters. [We] have a really good relationship, and I'm not sure how rare that is, but it seems to be pretty rare.”
Bandmates are there to share work and ideas, but for Nyrobi, it’s all the more important that she has someone to rely on.
“I think I've been really fortunate in the way that I have my sister… She does a lot of the admin or the day-to-day work. For instance, yesterday, I was just out of it. I was so terribly ill, I didn't get any work done. I just slept the whole day. And it's really unpredictable like that,” she explains.
“I did so much work yesterday,” Chaya agrees. “So much work.”
Normally, Nyrobi spends a few hours in the morning and evening on all matters ALT BLK ERA, taking a break in the afternoon to rest.
“It's almost like we have to move around it… we have to plan knowing that my body fluctuates and it could be a bad day and it could be a good day. I think it's normal for us now,” Nyrobi says. She says having an access rider – a list of accessibility requirements, including not doing interviews before 11am – is “an absolute lifesaver”.
Prescription medication helps when it comes to performing live, too. “We like to go 100 per cent,” Nyrobi explains. “I don't want to be thinking about the chronic pain. I'd rather be thinking about the audience and the show and interacting.”
With chronic fatigue syndrome, pushing yourself to be physically or even mentally active can lead to a crash.
“For the first two years, I'd do a show, and then for three days I'd be out, and then it [would] slowly go down to two days, then one day, and now you might even see me the day after. I'll get up in the afternoon, for sure. I've just gotten so much better progressively,” Nyrobi says, thanking her mother’s advice of listening to her body.
“I think the biggest surprise for me was to go from not being disabled to being disabled all of a sudden,” she continues, reflecting on her former life playing rugby and earning a black belt in Taekwondo. “With my illness, it's really stripped away so much of my personality, because I used to be [into] music, drama and contact sports, I was really active, and suddenly I couldn't do any of the things I loved.”
Rave Immortal, then, is a push back. It’s a concept record, following a group of people having a party, only to get into a confrontation with their downstairs neighbours (Upstairs Neighbours and Come Fight Me For It) who end up chasing them outside (Run Rabbit and Catch Me if You Can). Along the way, songs deal with parasocial relationships that turn obsessive (Hunt You Down) and what happens when there’s one friend in the group you don’t quite gel with (My Drummer’s Girlfriend). It all culminates in the title-track: an exuberant burst of energy and electronics.
“Rave Immortal is being able to do something that I love, with my sister, with our fans, forever without restraints. Even if you're not disabled, but the restraints that society put on you or your job or your family, to be able to be 100 per cent yourself,” Nyrobi elaborates. “That's what Rave Immortal stands for.”
But what it really offers is escape.
“It’s where we leave behind the jobs that we hate, the life that we hate, our physical bodies that may hold us back, and we step into Rave Immortal through that portal, as the lyrics dictate,” she explains. “And we step into something bigger than ourselves…”
In ALT BLK ERA, Nyrobi and Chaya aren’t just sisters, but coworkers and collaborators. “Every time we speak to someone with siblings, [they're] always like, ‘Oh, I would kill my sister if we had to work together.’ I'm like, ‘Damn, you guys need to work on your sibling relationships!’” Nyrobi laughs. And with their mother serving as their manager, ALT BLK ERA truly is a family effort.
“Since lockdown, we've just been spending 24/7 with each other,” Nyrobi turns to Chaya. “Have we ever spent a day apart?”
“I remember when we did. I was bored!” Chaya replies.
Their differences keep things interesting. Nyrobi is naturally more bubbly and chatty, doing most of the talking, although she often turns to Chaya to ask a question or get her opinion. Chaya, who is more reserved and wry, doesn’t hesitate to fill in the word Nyrobi is looking for – or push back against what her sister says.
Songs usually start with Nyrobi before moving on to the approval process with Chaya. “If I get past the sister checkpoint and she likes it, then I'll keep working on it a bit,” she explains.
But not every song earns the go-ahead.
“We can be honest with each other in ways that a friend can't be, because a friend couldn't tell me that what I just wrote was terrible, but Chaya just told me that a song I wrote yesterday was terrible,” Nyrobi laughs. “So it's just a different relationship and you can be so much more open, and there's no sugar-coating.”
“We can be honest with each other in ways that a friend can’t be”
While Nyrobi takes charge of the creative side, Chaya handles the admin and style choices. “Finding outfits might be my least favourite thing about being an artist,” Nyrobi sighs.
“That's my favourite thing!” Chaya counters gleefully.
The fact that they are each other’s negative image – filling in the spaces where the other one isn’t – has informed their aesthetic as a band.
“Black and white is our thing. It's been our thing for years. I think it's going to be our thing for at least another decade. When you see the black and white, it's very much ALT BLK ERA, and it represents that yin and yang, one exists with the other and how we're both individuals, but we still work well together,” Nyrobi says.
This individualism also extends to their music tastes. Chaya’s into more alternative artists like Movements, Sleep Token, Story Of The Year and Cane Hill. Nyrobi’s listening is a little more eclectic, as a fan of Chip, Skepta, Ashnikko and Headie One. This soundclash is in-part responsible for the album’s different styles, bridging genres and eras: the indie rock of My Drummer’s Girlfriend and the drum’n’bass on Crashing Parties.
“Because we mix so many different genres, there's something there for everyone,” Nyrobi muses. “So if someone's like, ‘Oh, I don't listen to alternative pop,’ I'm like, ‘Cool. Well, I've got a song for you!’”
But at the same time, it’s not a calculated move to draw in more fans – or to stand out.
“It's not like, ‘Let's go and disrupt the industry and mix a few genres together!’” Nyrobi jokes. “We have a song and we want to do what's best for the song. So if it needs a guitar, the song's getting a guitar. If it needs a bit of drum’n’bass, the song gets drum’n’bass. So it's never intentional, it's always really natural. And I think maybe that's what draws people to us.”
Nyrobi was scrolling on her phone when she saw that the MOBO account had mentioned ALT BLK ERA on X (formerly Twitter). “I was like, ‘Why would they do that?’ So I click on the notification, and I just freeze, and I run downstairs,” she remembers.
ALT BLK ERA had just been nominated Best Alternative Act at the MOBOs – for the second time.
“It feels a bit surreal when it happens,” Nyrobi says. “We're never actually 100 per cent sure it's real. We're always checking different apps to make sure that it wasn't a mistake. I remember the first time we were like, ‘Are you sure? Maybe they got it wrong.’ It's like, ‘Well, how do they accidentally write ALT BLK ERA and put our picture on there?”
The band are up for the same award again this year. “It feels really empowering to know that other people know the challenges that we face as sisters. And for disabled people to see that, ‘Oh my gosh, there's a disabled person at the MOBO Awards. Oh, there's a disabled person playing Download.’ So I think that it's good that I can empower the community as well,” Nyrobi says.
“It feels really empowering to know that other people know the challenges that we face”
Last summer, Nyrobi posted a TikTok of the band at Download, featuring her with a walking stick.
“People in the comments were saying, ‘Oh, now I feel comfortable going out with my walking stick, because someone like you goes out with a walking stick.’ And that comment just really got to me, because I remember not feeling comfortable using my stick in public, but the fact that now I've helped someone else feel comfortable is huge,” she smiles.
“I didn't want people to think, ‘Oh, she can't play Download, she's disabled, or she can't be whatever.’ I wanted to prove who we are and what ALT BLK ERA can do without people casting their thoughts on what they think disability is, because I barely understand the full scope of my disability,” Nyrobi says. “I don't want other people putting me in boxes because they want to assume things about my disability.”
But now Nyrobi has taken on the role of speaking about it – in interviews, on social media and beyond. She wrote a blog for Young Minds on her experiences with an invisible illness and was even a guest speaker for Attitude Is Everything, an organisation geared towards increasing accessibility in the music industry.
“I really do want to get into more activism about it, and really raising awareness for hidden disabilities everywhere,” Nyrobi enthuses. “I think that's what my future is going to be… It just adds to the book. You know when celebrities write a book when they're in their 50s, 60s?”
“You think you're gonna write a book?” Chaya asks, somewhat skeptically.
“Yeah, ‘Chapter Two: Discrimination’,” Nyrobi laughs. “I think if there are any stories where people have [discriminated against me] and I find out, it's going to be raising awareness in the future. So I guess it's just doing my bit in the wider activism.”
Indeed, for a lot of music fans, ALT BLK ERA is their chance to see themselves in music.
“We have a lot of older fans that will say, ‘Oh, I wish I had you guys when I was younger. Where were you?!’ And we weren’t alive when they were younger…” Nyrobi laughs.
But for fans of all ages, the band’s headlining tour kicks off in April – and the pair are already teasing over-the-top production including balloons and a runway.
“Come and see ALT BLK ERA in 2025 so you can tell people in 2055 that you were there at the first UK tour. They're going to want to say that,” Nyrobi grins.
“It's going to be a flex. Trust me.”
Rave Immortal is out now via Earache Records.
ALT BLK ERA tour the UK this April – get your tickets now.
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