Darkest Half Hour

Twice WAM-nominated The Devil Rides Out have released a new five-track EP, Ugly Creatures which is rooted in the emotional turmoil surrounding lead singer Joey K's losing his father. “Our music is now definitely on the heavier end of things. With all the styles these days it is difficult to say if it is heavy because if you say one thing people are going to perceive it as another. Certainly the band has very eclectic tastes, with respect to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. This latest EP is the heaviest thing we've done. I think that was partly because of our singer who lost his father to suicide last year. That was obviously a very emotional time for him and he poured that out into the songs,” says Ewing.

The new EP features all new songs Ugly Creature, Empty Sky and The Righteous Walk as well as a powerful doom reworking of their track Watch It Burn entitled Burn Again. An added bonus is also the inclusion of an unlikely cover of Abbe May's Blood River. Ewing says they sought the talents of local filmmakers to make clips for each track.

“Joey K made the first one [Righteous Walk] and a colleague of mine here at ECU, Baz Hardy, made the other one [Ugly Creature]. Richard Eams did one of them [Burn Again]; he was a student of mine ten years ago and now teaches at Murdoch. And Cat Hope who is a lecturer at WAAPA and a good friend of mine did one [Blood River]. There is one more to come up, which is being done by an ECU student Robert Bremner, who is really talented; he's doing the last one, which we're launching in January.”

From the film noir vibe of Righteous Walk, shot amongst the familiar streets of Northbridge to the anti-consumerist take of Burn Again taken at the derelict Old Fremantle Power Station, all the clips give the EP another dimension.

“Baz's clip is an interesting one because he's done photos for us for as long as I can remember. He's also taken hundreds of live photos of us, so what he's done is taken us through thousands of still photos in that clip which are taken from gigs at the Amplifier and Rosemount. Those are the two main venues, maybe Mojos as well, and we put all the photos from those places together. They [then] shot the sequence with the actress-dancer here at ECU.”

Ewing is looking forward to playing the band's first show for the year and launching the final clip at the Rosemount in a few weeks' time. “This will cap-off what had been going on last year with the video launch Empty Sky by one of my students Robert Bremner. I taught him last year and was really taken with his work while doing one of the units here at ECU, [though] I had never intended with this project to use students' work.”