“This record feels like the accumulation of everything that I wanted to do with hardcore music, because it also incorporates pop music.” Evil Island guitarist Cody Votolato is reflecting on the musical path he’s taken since he was a teen in the ’90s.
Over the years, that progressed from making surrealist, scream-imbued punk with Washington state quintet the Blood Brothers, to slinging brutalist riffs alongside Yeah Yeahs Yeahs’ Nick Zinner in Head Wound City, to co-writes with Against Me! and more. He now calls Terraform the Afterlife – the debut release from Evil Island, which reunites him with two other Blood Brothers – his “guitar dream.”
As in his youth, the jaggedly intense phrasings of post-hardcore icons Drive Like Jehu are embedded within Votolato’s current riff vocabulary, though he also cites the acoustic flourishes of the Violent Femmes and the pop-contorting feel of Gorillaz as inspiration.
Evil Island’s name is a sly nod to the Brothers’ 2003 cult-favorited …Burn, Piano Island, Burn album, and the new group continue the artistic cacophony of Votolato, vocalist Johnny Whitney and drummer Mark Gajadhar’s old band. Terraform also brings back a trusted collaborator in producer Ross Robinson, who’d recorded Piano Island.
The peppy, ‘verbed-out twang on Melted Heart and Animal – plus a lyric about being a bunch of “summertime vampires” – reflects a more monstrous reference point.
“There’s this theme throughout a lot of the record, a horror-surf kind of thing,” Votolato explains while confessing his love for Boris Pickett’s Monster Mash and the macabre, surf-strumental sounds of the Ghouls, an obscure studio venture from early Beach Boys collaborator Gary Usher. Evil Island listened to the latter on-repeat between takes, so a “surfy, ghouly rock thing” seeped into their own songs.
Evil Island buoyed up following a Blood Brothers comeback tour in the fall of 2024. It had been a decade since that group had last played together, and 18 since they’d released their final album, 2006’s Young Machetes.
The now L.A.-based Votolato had stayed in touch with his bandmates, but firmly locked back in with Gajadhar while rebooting songs on a series of weekend trips to Seattle. “It was really cool to be able to reconnect with Mark on that level of intimacy,” he now recalls.
The act’s sold-out U.S. trip was a success, but after the dates wrapped it became apparent that their reunion would be brief – at least in that guise.
When Whitney reached out to Votolato about starting a new band, the guitarist admitted he’d already been working on a bunch of angular hardcore songs. Gajadhar was brought aboard soon after, and they recruited bassist Autry Fulbright (And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, OFF!) before hitting the studio with Robinson as Evil Island.
Whether laying down pure-rage power chords, sand-kicking surf licks or vibrantly dissonant note splits, Votolato is an instinctual guitar player. Accordingly, he and Robinson kept things fresh for the rhythm beds, often splitting a single performance between two different amp signals.
“There's not tons of doubling,” Votolato confirms. “A lot of times it's one take-through with some fixes, and then we moved onto the next thing.”
While testing out the great gear haul at Robinson’s Malibu studio, Votolato pushed a ‘65 SG reissue through a vintage Ampeg V-2 he was told had once belonged to late Sublime founder Bradley Nowell.
He also cranked a mid-’60s Fender Bassman that had been modded by X guitarist Billy Zoom.
Though there’s no shortage of dirt on Terraform the Afterlife, Votolato was intrigued by each amp’s spartan clean tone.
“I tend to play more high gain, so it was this neat approach to making punk songs – to have this less-forgiving guitar tone. You really had to perform well, because it wasn't saturated with gain.”
Despite harnessing a biting clarity, Votolato also freaks the scene with polyphonic octave weirdness across T-Hexx, where the verses have him conjuring crazed pull-off licks with the help of a classic pedal he’d been introduced to while working in hardcore supergroup Head Wound City.
“There's nothing Wizard of Oz about it, it’s the POG,” he says. “When we were writing the first Head Wound City record [in 2005], Nick Zinner was really close with the Electro-Harmonix people. He was like, ‘They gave me this pedal that’s not out yet,’ and it was the original POG. That was the first time I ever heard something like that, and we used it a bunch on that record.
“It obviously became a very popular sound, so we try not to use it too much [in Evil Island]. But for [T-Hexx] in particular, it’s the sound of the song. The pitch that it adds makes those licks pop. If I ever try to play it without it, it sounds kind of dumb.”
T-Hexx notably also features guest vocals from Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, a guitar hero of Votolato’s and the co-producer of the Blood Brothers’ Young Machetes.
Elsewhere, Whitney trades hardcore screams with Michael Gatto, the teenaged frontman for XCOMM, an L.A. band that features Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian’s son Revel on drums. Keeping it in the family, the Blood Brothers’ Jordan Blilie also brought vocals to the beach-blasted I Bought a Spell.
While Votolato is the sole guitarist on Terraform, their current lineup also includes former Glassjaw six-stringer Todd Weinstock. Votolato likewise credits Gajadhar for production notes like bringing a stabbing staccato guitar to Evil Island Death Cult National Anthem.
The deep talent pool speaks to the creative partnerships and enduring friendships that keep Evil Island afloat.
“I went to elementary school with Mark, so to still be doing stuff with him at this point in our lives feels like a real blessing.”
- Terraform the Afterlife is out now via Blowed Out
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
