Interview by Miriam Cadoni
The Manchester doom punk rock quartet is on the rise. Thanks to their acclaimed single “Reincarnate”, Witch Fever has just signed a contract with Music For Nation/Sony Music UK. In this interview the singer Amy Warpole, we delve into Witch Fever, their music and their ideas over gender equality. Enjoy!
Hi Amy, welcome to Femme Metal Webzine. How are you and how these precarious days are treating you?
Hello! I’m pretty good thank you! Currently isolating for 10 days but I’m otherwise fine. Life seems to be getting back to normal very slowly so that’s good.
Even if Witch Fever was founded back in 2016 and the band has released just 6 singles so far, “Reincarnate” is putting the band on a well- deserved spotlight. What insights can you share about this song and its video?
“Reincarnate” is a song we wrote a couple of years ago right after I’d gone through a breakup! The song is about finding yourself after a breakup and empowering yourself to not deal with any shit.
It’s one of our favorite songs, and the breakdown at the end was written specially to end live sets with coz it’s so doomy.
2016 marks the inception of Witch Fever, but how you guys got together?
We met through mutual friends after all coming to Manchester for university. We started with a slightly different line up, Alex joined a year later, and we’ve been just us four ever since.
Also, back in 2019, the singles “Berzerk(h)er” and “The Hallow” were released which sees the collaboration with Manchester’s musical legend Alan McGee. What did you learn for that experience? And, how was collaborating with him?
Alan McGee producing our singles was such a great experience! He’s such a lovely guy and so easy to get along with. Sometimes it can be intimidating in studio settings as a woman as it’s such a male dominated industry, but Alan was super kind and open to all our suggestions.
He knew exactly what needed to be done to the tracks to elevate them. I came away from that experience feeling more confident in my own opinions and knowledge and learnt that I shouldn’t be afraid to tell an engineer or producer what we think needs to be done to our music.
You aptly define yourself a “doom punk quartet” but were the real members’ musical influences lie?
We have such varied music tastes between us! Alisha’s influences come from metal, grunge and post-punk, Alex is really into post-punk, Annabelle loves electronic and noise music, and I’m super into post-hardcore and sad indie!
For the single “Reincarnate”, you partnered up with one of the best producers out there, the Colombian Jaime Gomez Arellano. Considering his musical background, which is prevalently more focused on black metal, how this important background impacted on the final production?
We were excited to work with Gomez because we knew for the new music, we wanted to go heavier than we’d gone before! It seemed fitting to work with someone that works with bands that are heavier than us. We also for sure have metal elements in our songs so to bring that out more was sick!
As I have mentioned before, Witch Fever has already released 5 singles. Do you plan to feature all these songs in the upcoming full-length?
We do have an album planned, yes, but they will all be new tracks! We love the older singles, but our sound has moved on since then.
Together with the release of “Reincarnate”, you have announced the signing deal with Sony Music’s Music for Nations. How that happened and how was the first approach with them?
Ah, yes, it’s been so exciting. A year ago, the label head Julie Weir came to one of our gigs in London, we had a few Zoom calls and got the process of signing a deal in motion! Meeting Julie for the first time was great. She’s a breath of fresh air in the industry and a perfect label head for us.
The band is openly vocal about female empowerment and female anger. What do you think about the currently social condition of women? And, according to your opinion, what still must be improved?
That’s such a big question and has a very big answer. We live in a society that is very much still uphold by patriarchal and racist structures. The cis straight white man is very much seen as the default and most ideal, especially in the music industry. For us as a band we want to see an end to male dominated stages, venues, bookers, audiences, press etc.
Everyone should see themselves represented in these spaces and have equal opportunity to get there! As I’m sure you know safety of women and non-binary people in music of paramount importance as for too long men have got away with misogynistic behavior and abuse, and it has even been viewed as the norm for male rockstars to treat women so badly. This ‘boys club’ behavior needs to end.
Despite this ongoing pandemic, which are your plans in the medium/long term in terms of promotion and/or releases?
We have a few more singles coming, and then an EP release before the end of the year! An album is also underweighting…
So, Amy, we’re almost at the end. Please be free to say hi to your fans and your readers. Thank you so much for this interview.
Thank you for having me!! Thanks to everyone that listens to our music and comes to see us play! Hopefully see you soon.