Hello and thanks for answering our interview. Could you introduce the band to our readers with a brief background?
MADDIE: Hello! Yes, Sevit was originally formed by Cam B., but this new lineup is almost like a whole new band. Our guitarist, Brian, was also a member in the past lineup, but Mario and I joined in September of 2022. Our first show together was opening up for post punk legends, The Chameleons, in Fort Worth TX (my hometown), which was so surreal! Genre-wise, we combine elements of darkwave, synth pop, and post punk, to create a uniquely Sevit sound.
CAMERON: Absolutely and thank you for the interview. My name is Cam B. for short – I write, play synths for the band and program the beats. Mario Tremaine is the lead vocalist. He is my partner writer and also dabbles in the synths and programming. Brian Weems is our guitarist who also co-writes with us and sings back up. Maddie Fritz is our bass player and second vocalist who also shares the creative writing process with us. We all play multiple instruments, but these are our core instruments on stage for the band. We started SEVIT in 2022 and have managed to build a core audience from our live shows fairly quickly, so everything is really new territory for us with the new album. We were so lucky to have our first show with the legendary Mark Burgess and The Chameleons. Talk about a bucket list right off the bat!
What was the inspiration behind the latest release?
MADDIE: The inspiration was to finally put out recorded music ha ha! But the music itself was inspired by a lot of different scenarios. Mario, our singer, wrote most of the lyrics, and he tends to make all the songs have a different story. For example, “Drain To White” is about a guilty vampire and “Shipwrecked” is more metaphorical, about being stranded in your own mind.
CAMERON: For me, the vision and really the true inspiration of the album has been an inner conflict of emotions of pain, sadness and all the jacked-up stuff in my head that I needed to get out of my head. I seriously enjoy entertaining people, creating, and extending my emotional journey to our listeners in the hopes they feel the emotions we felt making the album.
Are your songs created mostly the same way or does the process differ for different tracks?
BRIAN: It’s different most of the time from track to track. Usually, Mario or Cameron will bring in something and the rest of us write our parts. It’s very collaborative.
MADDIE: We all do some writing of the tracks, but for this album, it was mostly either Cameron or Mario writing the music and then Mario writing most of the lyrics. What I always found comical was Cameron would have an instrumental track with a random name he gave it, like “Shipwrecked” or “No Haunts,” and then Mario would write lyrics based on the title alone.
CAMERON: My process is pretty much always the same. I get an idea and have to get it out of my head. It may not get fleshed out in the first day or two – it just depends on how focused I am without being distracted by my terrible ADD. I can be quite scatterbrained – beautiful chaos is what I call it.
There’s some intriguing artwork on the new album. What’s the inspiration behind that?
MARIO: All of the artwork is created and conceived by Cameron. Crows and/or Ravens tend to feature in our artwork a lot. Sort of our avian logo. I suppose we should let Cameron answer this question.
CAMERON: I designed the artwork and a lot of our branding. I have been a designer for 20 years or more and the inspiration came from the songs and the occult. The raven that you see on a lot of our images means something close to me and I feel with the rest of the band because we all agreed that was going to be the front cover. The Raven is a symbol of prophecy or could be the harbinger of doom, a messenger of the gods, transformation into the afterlife or the keeper of secrets. The album is supposed to have an old book feel to it kind of like the book of the dead. The insert is something I created from the song “Ghost Like This” which is featured on the album and the other side is also the end of passage with the raven on a human. Maybe I am reading into it too deep but I am all about symbolism and the beyond and things that make one think. That goes back to when I was a kid staring at all my rock vinyl which made my imagination run wild.
Let’s dive into a couple of tracks on the new album. The last one, “Z-340 (The Last Memoir Of A Killer) has an obviously intriguing title. Can you go into more detail about it?
BRIAN: Cameron did that. We all liked it and put it on the record
MARIO: That’s a reference to the 340 cipher by the Zodiac Killer. I asked for that instrumental to close the LP. It’s repetitive, yet haunting, and reminds me a bit of Brian Eno’s ambient music. Our songs are anchored by pulsating synths, guitar, bass, and electronic drums, all of which can be a bit bombastic? Perhaps this track gives the listener a moment to just reflect.
CAMERON: The song before “Z-340” is “Creeper”, which is a song that Mario and I collaborated on but his lyrics really moved me and being fascinated with famous serial killer, one of my interests is the Zodiac Killer. He was never caught as far as we know, so “Creeper” is to me about him being mixed with a little Ed Gein – “I’ll Be Everywhere and Everything and Everyone You Know!” – and “Z-340” is his famous memoir that was deciphered: “I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH”. So I wrote the piece while watching the old Zodiac Killer documentaries. It’s haunting as all hell. I also took a little inspiration from The Cure’s “Subway Song” where it drifts off and then you hear the jump scare at the end.
A Couple of the tracks, “Shipwrecked” and “No Haunts” have a “I” and “II”. How are they thematically related?
BRIAN: They are intended to be a part 1 and part 2 of the same theme. Mario can go into detail.
MARIO: Honestly, they just have similar patterns. When we were first working out those songs we would sometimes get confused as to which one we were starting! Fortunately, the songs developed enough that it’s hard to see how they were ever related. Really it was an inside joke for us.
CAMERON: I think I will def have to own up to this. I was speaking with Mario about the I & II which is part one and two. When the songs were constructed they were almost identical but they are clearly not. “Shipwrecked” started out as being lost at sea and a metaphor for being strung out on drugs and loss. Thanks to Mario’s genius lyrics, this really set the tone for the song and gave it a dark meaning. That being said, “No Haunts” seemed like the sequel. It’s the moment of being past the point of no return – lost at sea. You’re dead to the world. “Don’t wanna come back again, there’s nothing left to experience, can’t save faith can’t call on God, let me be dead and gone” which is sung beautifully by Maddie and Mario. I am a big fan of old proggy type music like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Klaus Schulze, Scott Walker and some of those songs that wander off. It pulls you out of your seat then jerks you back in, rocking your f*cking head off with a bombastic solo, which was awesomely done by Brian’s hot licks. Trust me, I still hold my Goth, Post-Punk, Darkwave close to the heart.
What’s next for SEVIT? Any special Halloween plans? Videos? Tours?
MADDIE: We have a music video for Witch’s Broom dropping very soon. That was fun to film. We just filmed it in our practice studio, but it was a lot of fun. As for tours, there’s nothing solid yet, but we do have several shows across Texas in Dallas, Houston, and a festival in San Antionio quickly approaching.
CAMERON: Our manager, Krystal Garcia, has done a fantastic job of getting us out there we owe a lot to her being, I would say, one of the best booking promoters around. The question about Halloween, we are playing with the March Violets on October 30, 2024, Devil’s Night, and doing a small tour to San Antonio for the De La Noche Festival on November 9th.
How do you feel about the use of AI for videos in our community? Has it already taken over and gone too far?
MADDIE: Honestly, I just think it’s going to age so poorly. Not even commenting on the ethics of it, but just the look of it. I can already tell when something has been made with AI, and it just cheapens the look of whatever it’s trying to promote immediately. AI will only get better, and AI art made today will have that same dated look as CGI in the 80’s and 90’s, but at least that CGI is kitschy and nostalgic now. Only time will tell how early AI will age in people’s minds 10 or 20 years from now. Do I think AI can be helpful? Sure. And I don’t think it will be as much of a catastrophe on art as many people tend to think. I use it at my day job to save my mental energy, but I always try to keep it out of my music and art. Humans will always evolve and I don’t think AI could ever replace the soul we put into creating art.
CAMERON: My stance on AI is quite simple – it’s a tool and if you abuse it, yes, it can go too far. I honestly use AI for a lot of things in my work, but that hasn’t always been the case. For someone who gets occasional writer’s block, AI can help take a different approach on how something may have been presented, designed or constructed. I think AI can do some really kick ass and quite disturbing things and even with my F-ed up mind, AI can out do me on the “let’s see how F*king weird we can get!”. Overall, I say AI is technology and technology is good as long as you don’t rely on it to take over the entire creative process….
These last words are yours. Thanks for your time.
MADDIE: Thank you for the interview! We hope our answers inspire people to go listen to the new “SEVIT” album. It’s available on all major music platforms and can be purchased digitally or on clear vinyl via Bandcamp.
