It’s said that people are products of where and how they grew up.
Leigh Kakaty, vocalist of Pop Evil, certainly seems to buy into that idea. He says his group’s music is very much a product of his Muskegon, Michigan roots. On a musical level, that experience translates into a Rock band that stylistically is anything but a one-trick pony.
The ability of Pop Evil to show musical variety within their melodic Hard Rock/Metalcore sound and offer a cohesive point of view lyrically has never been more apparent than on the group’s most recent album, a self-titled full-length released last year.
“The big thing with Pop Evil is we’ve always been that band that had that yin and yang effect,” Kakaty says. “We never really got into music because we wanted to play one style of music all the time. We’d get bored.
“I think that’s a direct reflection — that I don’t think fans always realize — of the Midwest. It’s kind of like we’re the test market, especially Michigan — we’re the test market for a lot of things. So we were always exposed to all kinds of different genres. Even on our local Alternative Rock or Rock stations, it was always a bit of blend of Rock, Metal and Alternative. So we’re very much a product of that.”
Kakaty feels Pop Evil showed it could touch on different styles within the Hard Rock spectrum on its first four albums. But Pop Evil is the best representation of the band’s music, particularly when it comes to finding a heavier and harder edge to the Pop Evil sound.
To achieve the goals of the fifth album, Pop Evil needed to go about the writing and recording process a bit differently. The first step was to get management to agree to allow for more time to make the album.
Having felt rushed to make each of the first four albums, the group members — Kakaty, rhythm guitarist Dave Grahs, lead guitarist Nick Fuelling, bassist Matt DiRito and drummer Hayley Cramer — knew more time would be needed to explore the different directions they could take the songs both musically and lyrically.
Management agreed, feeling confident that the hits Pop Evil had generated (“Trenches,” “Torn to Pieces” and “Deal with the Devil” off of the 2013 album Onyx and “Footsteps,” “Ways to Get High” and “Take It All” off of the 2015 release Up) meant the band no longer has to tour quite as much to make ends meet financially.
“The big thing that changed was the success we’d had,” Kakaty says. “We were finally now in a position to go off the road. In the early years, I mean, we’re basically the janitors of the music business. We have to work holidays. We have to work nights and weekends. We basically had to play every month just to keep our lights on or we don’t live. We have bills. It’s basically a job. It’s not really entertainment or fun.”
The more generous schedule gave Kakaty time, as the main songwriter, to explore different approaches to writing songs. One foray involved getting together with a couple of musical friends whose backgrounds were more in Heavy Metal to help him explore how writing songs in different keys might open doors to a fresh sound. He hit pay dirt early on with “Waking Lions,” a song that combines crunching guitars with melodic vocals sung in a lower register.
“Once I wrote ‘Waking Lions,’ it rejuvenated me all over again. I was like ‘Wow, this is finally the heavy with the melody that we always wanted,’ ” he says. “Screaming has never been my strength, so I didn’t know how I could get the heavy across vocally. And then as I dove in there with Kato (Khandwala), our producer on this (album), he’s like ‘Dude, you’re melodic. Don’t run from it. Just give it to them.’ And once we started to really explore that, it was like, ‘Wow, this is what I’d been searching for, that I just never had the time to explore or maybe I wasn’t even good enough to challenge myself differently on the earlier records.’ ”
The result is the band’s most fully realized album, Kakaty says. It is the heaviest of the group’s albums, thanks to songs like “Art of War” and “Colors Bleed,” which boast pile-driving beats and razor-edged guitars. But there are also slightly lighter rockers that balance Pop hooks and heft (“Be Legendary” and “God’s Dam”), a lighter ballad (“Rewind”) and even a particularly ambitious multi-faceted track, “Nothing But Thieves,” which moves from ambient tones to Industrial Rock to Metal and is topped with a melodic chorus that verges on Pop Rock.
As writing for the self-titled album progressed, Kakaty also began to lock onto a couple of key lyrical themes that took the band away from the songs about dysfunctional relationships and mortality that frequently surfaced on the earlier albums. On tracks like “Colors Bleed,” “Ex Machina” and “A Crime to Remember,” the singer reacts to the divisive socio-political tone that has defined America recently and calls for unity and equality. Kakaty also returns to the self-empowerment theme of some earlier Pop Evil songs (particularly on “Waking Lions”), urging listeners to fight to overcome obstacles and recognize their own self-worth.
The musical range and lyrical punch of Pop Evil, Kakaty says, helps make it an album that provides the kind of rich listening experience the band intended.
“We try to spend a lot of time making sure we can give you an album where you can literally listen to… and (then) want to start it over and listen again,” he says, mentioning the opening and closing songs on the album. “We have thought about that from the beginning, but hopefully we’re (now) able to steer it a little more direct and we can really identify ourselves with our fan base, (so they) know that when they think about Pop Evil, there’s going to be a little bit of mystery, (like) ‘I wonder what they put together on this album?’ ”
The next mystery from Pop Evil won’t be answered until the band releases the next album, which is likely a year or so down the road. For now, focus is back on touring. Kakaty says the stage show and production is “awesome,” but it took a bit of effort to dial in the new songs for live performance. Still, the musicians enjoyed working everything out.
“Obviously, every band with a new album wants to play all the new stuff,” he says. “But we want to be responsive, too, because fans don’t want to be bombarded with all new songs. They want to hear old ones that they’re familiar with. Just kind of finding that blend has been a bit of a challenge, and finding ourselves with that new music on stage has been a bit of a challenge, but that’s what makes it fun.”
The most recent single off of Pop Evil’s self-titled album, “Be Legendary”:
Pop Evil plays Bogart’s Wednesday, April 10. Tickets/more show info: bogarts.com.
This article appears in Apr 3-10, 2019.