Vexed: “This album was the most cathartic, therapeutic thing we could have done”

The feeling of darkness can manifest itself in many ways. It can create a vacuum exhausting any forms of light, it could be a feeling of loss, or it could be a coping mechanism whilst dealing with significant life events that have left you feeling broken. For Vexed, they’ve embraced their darkness to unleash a second album brimming with pure, unaltered bleakness in the form of Negative Energy.

The three-piece have been through hell and back to get here – from releasing their debut album during a world in lockdown to dealing with personal loss and turmoil, and even questioning whether this was the right thing for them to do anymore. After falling into a place of anguish, the band originally tried to fight their way through many negative factors by creating something “uplifting”, but this was not meant to be.

“I was trying to write sort of inspirational lyrics that would help people get through tough times, and nothing was coming together out of it,” admits singer Megan Targett of her mindset going into album two. “It just felt very not authentic – we ended up scrapping all the songs that we’d written because it just didn’t feel right. It was like we were forcing this positivity out of ourselves.”

During the release of debut album Culling Culture, Megan’s life was turned upside-down. “My grandpa who raised me – I basically called him dad – was diagnosed with a terminal illness,” she recalls. The singer then took the decision to quit her job to care for him at home. “We thought we’d have another sort of two years with him, but he actually only lasted three months, and so the whole campaign [for Calling Culture] was just awful.”

Megan was not the only one dealing with loss in this time, as Vexed’s drummer Willem Mason-Geraghty and guitarist Jay Bacon were experiencing sadness close to home. “The boys were also going through great losses in their own families,” Megan sighs.

What happened next was a moment that remains an outburst of pure cathartic energy, with all three members sitting down as friends rather than bandmates to really open about how they were feeling. Negative Energy started life as an “everything happens for a reason” album, but once they admitted they were not okay, the real creative juices started to flow.

“We just sat down as a group of friends and were just like, ‘Yeah, we’re not okay, we can’t keep doing this,’” admits Megan. “None of us could write an album, we were all absolutely miserable and really struggling. But then we suddenly trusted each other and knew exactly what we needed to write about. The second that we admitted to each other that none of us were okay the creativity just started coming out.

“So, we just decided that we were going to write about how painful the last couple of years have been,” she continues. “How terrible things have been, and that we did not try and put a positive spin on it – we just put all our negativity into it. It was the most cathartic, therapeutic thing that we could have done as a group of friends.”

As a result, what Vexed have created is a record bursting with visceral rage, created by a build-up of loss, rage, anger and good old-fashioned human emotions. On Negative Energy, they have laid bare their hurt like the thundering cry of Thor’s hammer smashing against the surface of the Earth’s crust.

On top of the theme of loss, Negative Energy also delves into some of the fabrications of everyday society, with topics like religion, abuse of power and cults being scrutinised. Recent single X my <3 (hope to die) is very much an ode to the negative sides that religion can have on people and how they live their lives. Megan herself comes from a religious Catholic family, but over the last couple of years she has distanced herself from the faith and removed herself from the ways of thinking that do not match her beliefs.

“I’ve always been an ally for the LGBTQ+ community, I’ve always been pro-choice, I’ve always done these things that say some members [of the Catholic church] and other people didn't agree with,” she says. “The horrific things we've seen across the world in the last couple of years and things that are happening right now where people think it’s okay to make laws on other people’s bodies, on who you can love who you can’t love. All these things outraged me so much, and it makes me so angry. I just thought, ‘You know what? I’m out.’”

This step away from a community you’ve known your whole life can be a very daunting thing to do, but for Megan it has left her feeling “liberated” and free to follow her own beliefs and support other communities that are being marginalised. “It was very liberating and freeing knowing that I could think how I wanted to think and do what I wanted to do,” she says. “And I wasn’t a bad person, and I wasn’t going to go to hell for thinking those things.”

On the contrary, with a newfound sense of freedom and having experienced the cathartic release of writing and recording Negative Energy, Megan is even more of a force than before. Vexed’s story ’til now may have been dark, but their future has never been brighter.

Negative Energy is out now via Napalm Records

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