2025 was the year Malevolence well and truly carved their name into British metal. As he takes a well-earned rest, Alex Taylor looks back at making one of the albums of the year, working with British cinema’s hardest man, and having people gawking at the band’s big faces on the side of their tour bus.
When K! catches up with Alex Taylor, he's at home in Sheffield, enjoying an unusual period of winter relaxation.
“We're normally on tour at this time of the year, and then we’d get back just before Christmas, so to have the whole of December just being back at home, it's nice. You get to enjoy the whole run-up to Christmas markets, all that cozy shit.”
Malevolence have earned a bit of time to put their feet up. This year, Yorkshire's heaviest have put out their Top 40 album Where Only The Truth Is Spoken (and announced it by pretending they'd been caught doing a robbery on CCTV), hit Australia, done a hometown gig in a working men's club, and then flexed their muscles with their two biggest headline shows to date. And now Alex is feeling festive, and had himself a Christmas dinner already. It's been a hell of a year – here's how it went down…
You’ve been very busy boys, haven’t you?
“Yeah. It's been one of the most successful years of our career by far. It's mad looking back. I struggle to even remember what’s happened, because it's been a bit of a whirlwind. There's definitely been some some stressful points, but I'm very proud of everything that us and the team together collectively did. We got a message the other day saying our album campaign for Where Only The Truth Is Spoken had been nominated as one of the best marketing campaigns in the music industry, which is crazy. But even that, I'm like, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot we did that.’”
Well deserved. We didn’t see anyone else doing a video with Brick Top from Snatch…
“Working with [actor Alan Ford], getting him down to the to the music video for If It’s All The Same To you, and the relationship that has been built from that, that was a highlight. From the moment we met, he was a really nice bloke, really interested in the campaign as a whole, really interested in the band. He was an intimidating guy, and when we first met him, everybody on set was scared to go and talk to him, because you see this guy in the film, you think he's going to be an absolute dickhead. But he's a lovely, lovely bloke. He keeps in touch, and having him introduce us at the show at Brixton was awesome. It was perfect.”
Where Only The Truth Is Spoken felt like a real moment for Malev. How’s it been on the inside of all that?
“Any album is always a few years in the making, but this album in particular, some of these songs we've been working on for nearly three, four years. To finally be able to put it out there and drop the singles and the music videos was just like, ‘Finally!’ There’s a lot of work and stress, especially in release week. We were pushing for a chart position, which is something that we've never done. And the amount of work and time and effort that goes into that was beyond anything we’d anticipated. But we learned what it takes. It’ll take a year before you can really step back and see what the album has done for you as a band, but at the moment, the response has been incredible. We're all very, very proud, and it's kind of motivated us to get back in the studio. We're already writing at the minute – we're keeping the train going.”
You ended on a high with your massive shows at Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse and London’s O2 Academy Brixton, so it all paid off…
“Yeah! Obviously, Victoria Warehouse is a very big room, and we didn't know if we were capable of selling it to a good point, let alone selling it out. But the fact that it sold out months in advance was so rewarding. The show was fucking crazy as well – one of the craziest shows Malevolence have ever played. So, yeah, it was a really, really good end of the year.”
Having your faces on the side of your bus was a nice touch, too.
“Bands don’t do that anymore, but it looks sick as fuck. It was pretty funny, having the bus cruising down the motorway and seeing people gawking out their car windows, trying to read the dates. We'd get off in the morning at a service station and people would be taking photos at the petrol stations of everyone getting out, looking like they just woke up. And then behind us on the bus, there's our big heads – brilliant.”
You also played a working men’s club in Sheffield as an album launch, which looked bananas…
“Yeah, that was a fun one. It was a place called Crookes Social Club, which is five minutes up the road from where we all live. When you think of a working men's club, that's literally it. There's snooker tables, it still smells of cigarettes inside, it's a proper Phoenix Nights kind of vibe. We put 500 people in there, and had a no-barrier, old-school Malevolence show, which is something we've wanted to do for a long time. It was a celebration, and all our friends and family were there. We know we don't play Sheffield a lot, and it's partly due to the fact that there just aren’t many places we could play at the moment. There is a plan for a bigger Malevolence show in the works – it's always on our mind. We're long overdue a big hometown show. Hopefully next year we can figure it out and see what happens.”
Are you a Christmas guy?
“Yeah, man. It’s the one time of the year that all my family gets together. I'll be going to my nan's and spending Christmas down there with them, just relaxing, catching up with family, and enjoying the quiet period. I’ve already had a Christmas dinner. I had one right at the start of the month – it's Christmas month, so you can start early. We're from Yorkshire as well, so the Sunday roast is effectively a Christmas dinner. I went for a walk on Sunday with some friends. We stopped off at this perfect little country pub and got a full roast. It’s the time of the year that just calls for it.”
What do you want for Christmas?
“World peace. Or new socks. I've got to that age now where I need some new socks.”
Have you got any New Year’s resolutions?
“I'm not really a resolution kind of guy, but I'm trying to do the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in my spare time. I started training for that in the last couple of weeks. I want to try to raise a bit of money for some charities. I've not even thought about which ones I'm going to do it for, but it's something that I've wanted to do for a long time. A couple of us are having kids early next year, so we've got a bit of time off, which means I can focus on training for that.”
