"Mind the junk,” advises Malevolence guitarist and vocalist Konan ‘Kon’ Hall, as we pick our way through piled boxes of merchandise and memorabilia. The band’s history is plastered on the walls, from their earliest promotional fliers and press clippings from the pages of Metal Hammer to signs from their steamrolling not-so-secret set at this year’s Download Festival, which quite accurately declare, ‘This stage will be mayhem from 14:50 to 15:20.’
Mayhem is something Malevolence have done their best to incite since their earliest days more than 15 years ago. This bruising, pit-stirring hulk of a band have become one of the most talked-about metal acts of the last few years, thanks largely to their insane live shows.
“The most memorable part of shows for us has always been how wild the pit is,” nods Kon. “And that’s what I remember from the shows I’ve been to as well, how sick the crowd is.”
“It comes from us growing up; we were all very enthusiastic participants in moshpits,” adds bassist Wilkie Robinson. “It was part of our identity. As soon as we were onstage, that’s what we wanted to see, really, and it’s never stopped. We’ve took that same energy and it’s just migrated across slightly bigger rooms over the years.”
We’re at the band’s headquarters, on the western tip of what could be deemed Sheffield’s Metal Triangle. Located just outside Kelham Island, an increasingly gentrified industrial site that was once the centre of the city’s thriving steelworks, it’s just a brisk walk from both the HQ of Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes’ Drop Dead empire and While She Sleeps’ Sleeps Brothers base of operations.
“Bring Me were a generation ahead but Sleeps definitely paved the way for us,” says drummer Charlie Thorpe. “We recorded some of our first songs with [WSS guitarist] Mat Welsh at his mother’s house. I remember him saying they were driving their shitty little van to play in Belgium and it was like, ‘Wow!’ I couldn’t even believe it was possible. Having a set of older lads in the city showing us that it could be done with no support or infrastructure, it was very inspirational.”
Malevolence might have been the junior partners in Sheffield’s modern metal triumvirate but they’ve stepped out of the shadows of their older contemporaries. On the day of our visit, the band have just received a slightly shit-looking glass award from the UK Official Charts Company to mark new album Where Only the Truth Is Spoken hitting the No.32 spot.
It’s quite an achievement for a band as heavy and uncompromising as Malevolence, but it speaks to their current ambition that they actually sound slightly disappointed.
“We thought we were going to get a Top 10 but we got smoked by Abba and Oasis and whoever else,” shrugs Charlie to general grumblings of discontent.
They might have missed the upper echelons of the charts but their reputation as an increasingly huge noise is starting to swell out from the underground and into metal’s major leagues.
They’re now festival veterans, and in November they played their biggest headline shows to date, at Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse and London’s Brixton Academy. Today, though, they’re taking Metal Hammer on a hometown tour of the places that helped forge them in that crucible of Sheffield steel.
The first stop is a mural of their band name by the dual carriageway that runs past Hillsborough Stadium, which they commissioned as a piece of guerilla marketing for Where Only The Truth Is Spoken. The artwork is a throwback to the days when they did everything themselves, from booking shows to designing their own merch.
The latter is something that Wilkie still does himself. He and Charlie also continue to run their MLVLTD label – initially started when they couldn’t get anyone to release their The Other Side EP as recently as 2020. Their latest album came out via Nuclear Blast with physical formats on MLVLTD, and they do now have major management behind them.
“A lot of people seem to think the DIY thing stems from punk ethics, but for us it came from being very frugal Northerners without much money kicking about,” Wilkie laughs. “Everything we possibly could do ourselves, we did. Now we’re at a level where some things are best done by professionals, but we still like to keep as much control as possible.”
As the band pose for photos by the graffiti, a sudden change comes over them. They might look like a group of men you’d think twice about before passing in a darkened underpass, but in person they’re friendly, accommodating and enthusiastic. Frontman Alex Taylor is far more softly spoken than you might expect if you’d only heard his bellicose roar and ‘Open this shit up’ shenanigans. They laugh a lot, but as soon as the camera comes out the smiles drop and they assume those scowling tough guy poses.
“Over the years you could look at Malev and not really know who we are,” Alex says, clearly aware of the image they’re selling. “You see the music videos and hear the music and people can make assumptions based off it.”
“There’s some bravado, some macho energy in the aesthetics and the music, but then I think of my experience of meeting people that give a certain vibe with their music,” Josh adds. “You meet them in real life and they’re multifaceted, and there’s other elements of their personality that might not be obvious on YouTube.”
This certainly seems to be the case with Malevolence. They might still revel in a bit of moshpit violence, but any hints of thuggishness are left for the stage. They’re also more than aware of the negative impacts that too much unchecked masculinity can have.
When Malevolence emerged from the lockdowns to play Download Pilot and Bloodstock in 2021, Alex opened up on the stage about mental health and the importance of acknowledging that it’s OK to not be OK.
“We didn’t set out to be a band that talks about mental health, but it just felt like the right time to say it,” he shrugs.
“At the time we’d had a lot of people that we knew took their own lives, and it just felt weird to pick up where we left off and not even acknowledge it,” Wilkie adds. “It did tend to be blokes and it did tend to be people that were involved in this wider community.”
Moving on from the mural, we make the short drive to the Malin Bridge Inn in Hillsborough. There’s a private function on when we get there, but guitarist Josh Baines whips out his phone to show us footage of himself playing Motörhead covers in the back room aged 11.
“My dad would bring me down with my guitar and they used to have a jam night on. I’d play blues covers and then go home stinking of cigarettes, ’cos you could smoke indoors back then,” he recalls.
“Then I’d come down and we’d play Bon Jovi covers,” laughs Kon. “You couldn’t play metal or you’d get booed off. So we wrote some rock songs together and it was my first real experience of playing in front of strangers.”
At the same time, Malevolence’s future rhythm section were also playing together as pre-teens.
“You two got up and played Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes in front of the school assembly when I was in Year 4 and you were Year 5,” laughs Alex.
The two branches of what would become Malevolence finally came together. Kon had been splitting lead vocal duties with a singer who apparently drank too much cider but did at least have a car. Alex would turn up at shows and grab the mic before finally “annoying his way into a try-out”.
The next stop on the tour is a dilapidated-looking building in an area of urban wasteland somewhere between the city centre and Meadowhall shopping centre. They explain that it was home to one of the two practice rooms in which they honed their sound – as well as being the base of many teenage shenanigans.
“We bought loads of fireworks and drove around outside chucking Catherine Wheels out of the window. We set bins on fire and all sorts and got up to no good,” laughs Kon. “We used to walk from town and come here any time at night. It was a hangout as well as a band space, and we would bring all our friends here. It was a way you could do whatever you wanted, while your parents know what you’re up to, without being out in public. Just blast tunes, play music, and have a laugh.”
We gain entry thanks to the fact that Josh’s dad still runs one of Sheffield’s oldest Wing Chun schools from the building - the guitarist used to dabble in the Chinese martial art himself as a kid. The band almost visibly regress as they take in the familiar and admittedly pungent aroma that permeates the air, poke their heads into a toilet straight out of Saw, and find amateurish spray-painted Malevolence tags that are now more than a decade old.
The sounds of a new generation of practising bands ring through the corridors as we enter the Wing Chun studio in which they filmed the video for Eternal Torment from their 2013 debut, Reign Of Suffering. Naturally, the band-members immediately start climbing ropes and taking on sparring dummies.
Piling back into the vehicles, we head for the city centre. We pass Devonshire Green with its skatepark that has provided a space for Sheffield punks, metalheads and alternative types since the turn of the century. West Street Live is pointed out, which, as the venue in which Alex made his debut, the band consider to be the setting of the first proper Malevolence gig. We alight at the Corporation venue at which they played their very next show - a no doubt extremely mellow and low-key affair supporting Hatebreed.
“We played a million gigs here, half of us worked here and we hung out here all the time,” Wilkie says. “To the point where it actually slowed us down as a band. We’d be hanging out and getting wasted rather than writing or rehearsing or concentrating on band stuff.”
As if to reinforce the point, Kon points out the very spot outside where he punched someone out before the recipient of said punch returned with back-up and one of them pulled a knife. “I ran off. And I was on drugs,” he adds to general laughter.
A few people stop to watch as the band pose for more photos outside the venue – known locally as Corp.
“Your new album’s fucking mint,” is the considered opinion of Simon Lee, a veteran of the local scene who played in Sheffield’s first death metal band, Reprobate, and will be hollering on the stage tonight as frontman of his current outfit, Terminal Sun.
For Malevolence, the live shows have always been the most important part of being in a band. They enjoy the process of writing and recording, and the albums have become increasingly assured as they’ve progressed, but for this band there’s still nothing like kicking out an unholy racket and watching a crowd go insane.
Asking for the wildest thing they’ve seen from the stage brings a discussion of some of the more prestigious shows they’ve played over the years. The pit at Alexandria Palace, which they played supporting Architects in 2022, was “ridiculous”, Alex says.
“Bloodstock last year, it was fucking mental to look out onstage and be like, ‘Right you lot, run around that sound tower’, and seeing thousands of people do it,” he adds.
“But then back in the day we were playing in practice rooms in Wakefield, and there was only about 40 people there, but they were kicking the shit out of each other,” recalls Charlie.
“Our early years, some of our shows were obscenely violent to the point where I don’t even want to talk about it or glorify it,” says Wilkie. “That’s what it was at the time, and that was the place we were in. It gets brought up all the time in the comment sections – ‘I remember when this band was hard’ and all this shit. People used to label us as a beatdown band, which was never right, because we always played metal. We just got this name for it because of all the beatings!”
“It was all the bands and all the shows that we used to go to,” shrugs Kon. “I remember walking into a show we were playing, holding two cymbal stands, and I got a fist to the face. Nose popped, blood everywhere, I had to go to the toilet to sort my face out, then straight on the stage.”
We end the day back at the band’s HQ and Kon – who worked as a builder – points out where they ripped out a row of urinals to make room for their recording studio. Of course, they did all the work themselves. He also pulls out his custom Jackson guitar, which incorporates his World Of Warcraft dwarven paladin, Thraiin.
“For a long time I was embarrassed to even mention that I played, but what could be better than combining two of the things I enjoy most?” the guitarist grins, embracing his inner geek.
Malevolence are a band with a lot of front, but some partially hidden depths too. And they are undoubtedly the sum of their background and experiences – local band mentors, chaotic gigs, scummy practice rooms and all.
“I feel like we might be the last generation of bands that grew through actually just being on the road and touring, as opposed to using the internet,” muses Josh. “We built a following playing pubs up and down the UK, out of passion because that’s what we wanted to do. We’re probably the last generation that did it face to face through beating the street.”
“Although,” adds Charlie as his bandmates dissolve into laughter, “we would have done things a lot differently if we’d known any better.”
Where Only The Truth Is Spoken is out now via Nuclear Blast. Malevolence play Slam Dunk 2026.
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