Jess Allanic knew she wanted to be a musician from a young age. Growing up in Guarenas, on the outskirts of Caracas in Venezuela, her mum enchanted her with stories about rock legends.
“She told me these amazing stories of going to see Queen, Van Halen, The Police, Guns N’ Roses… all these amazing bands who came out there to play,” she says. “I was 10 or 11 years old, and I would just study everything I could about it. At school I did a presentation about Black Sabbath! I knew I wanted to move to the UK… that’s where my heroes were from.”
But Jess didn’t move straight to the UK. First, she persuaded her parents to let her relocate to France when she was 16, and lived in a convent next to her new school. There, nuns would tell her off for making too much noise as she practised electric guitar.
It was in France she met future Calva Louise bassist Alizon Taho. Her grand plan was still to move to the UK, although neither she nor Alizon could speak English. That wasn’t going to hold them back, though.
“I learned by watching English shows with subtitles,” Jess remembers with a smile. “I would put a book over the top to cover them and practice.”
“I got a job for a furniture company,” Alizon recalls. “I had to phone people to make appointments, so I just learned a script.”
The pair’s shared love of music meant forming a band was almost inevitable. When Jess found out Alizon had been learning to play the cello since he was six, she was thrilled; it reminded her of the Jack Black movie School Of Rock.
“I was like, ‘You play cello! Have you seen School Of Rock?! 'Cello, you’ve got a bass!’” she quotes.
Jess and Alizon eventually moved to the UK, and found their final co-conspirator in drummer Ben Parker, originally from New Zealand. Ben’s dad had also raised him with a love for classic rock, much to the annoyance of his neighbours.
“I’d drive them mad,” he says with a chuckle. “I’d just be hitting pots and pans in the garage. Stealing my grandma’s cake tins and whacking them with spoons!”
The trio formed Calva Louise in 2016. Hailing from Venezuela, France and New Zealand, they’re proving that music transcends national and cultural barriers. While their 2019 debut, Rhinoceros, sat more in the field of indie or alt rock, 2021 follow-up Euphoric added a spiky, dance element that’s still apparent in their songs today. With 2023’s Over The Threshold, they hit a more metallic note that they expanded on with 2025's exceptional Edge Of The Abyss.
Their sound isn’t the only thing that’s evolved. Watch the stunning, futuristic music videos for songs such as Third Class Citizen, Over The Threshold, Under The Skin and W.T.F, and you might think there’s mega-money behind them, but Jess taught herself VFX and video editing. It paid off when the band started blowing up on TikTok, some videos earning more than a million views.
One attention-grabbing move is when Jess flits between playing riffs to rival Matt Bellamy on her guitar, and playing a ‘sliding keyboard’ that she can swing around towards her, seamlessly switching between instruments without breaking her flow. Thankfully, Alizon and Ben have helped bring Jess’s wild ideas to life.
“She’ll phone me like, ‘I need a door… a door that can open in the middle of the room’,” Alizon says with a laugh. “I’ll just look at the ideas and make a list of props.”
On Edge Of The Abyss, Jess sings several songs in her mother tongue of Spanish, so she wouldn’t be restricted creatively.
“The Spanish songs just came out that way uncontrollably,” she says with a shrug. “It was what was in my heart. Previously, I’d stop myself and think, ‘No, it has to be in English’, but I knew I had to do it.”
“I’ve genuinely had fans tell me I’m their Duolingo,” she adds. “They’re learning the language from listening to our songs.”
Blending metal with jazz, blues and Latin American influences – the Puerto Rican alternative hip hop band Calle 13 is a favourite – the end result sounds truly unique to Calva Louise.
“One of my biggest Latin influences for the album was actually a Venezuelan artist called Simón Díaz, who was not rock or metal at all,” explains Jess. “He played the cuatro [a four-stringed instrument] a lot. We were listening to him religiously. He made a type of music called joropo with odd rhythms and timings. It’s traditional folkloric music from the plains. ”
“We definitely connected over a love of Carpenter Brut and Ghost, and there’s a love of theatrics there too,” adds Alizon.
“I couldn’t believe you could put different genres together to create such an amazing piece of art and poetry, and that’s also what inspired me to write more in Spanish,” agrees Jess.
Unsurprisingly, this multi-cultural band dream of travelling the world. And having already played sold-out venues in the UK with Bloodywood and toured the US with Vukovi, they’re on the way.
“We want to play everywhere,” asserts Jess. “Music translates to everybody.”
Edge Of The Abyss is out now via Mascot.
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