The London-based thrash metal band Lokust, was formed in 2017 by guitarists Alexy Khoury and Jeremy Pringsheim. Euler Morais is on drums and Patryk Kopo on bass, and their vocalist is Alex da Costa.
A band that has worked with names like Sky van Hoff (who also collaborates with Rammstein and Sleep Token), Mark Lewis (whose name may sound familiar in connection with Whitechapel) or Justin Hill (SikTh) and has created its own brand from the instrumental basics to the eleven-song Infidel album definitely attracts attention. But how did they experience the success of the change and what plans do they have?
Interviewee:
Alexy Khoury
LOKUST
Alexy Khoury – guitar
Jeremy Pringsheim – guitar
Patryk Kopo – bass
Euler Morais - drums
Alex da Costa – vocals
ViQ: How are you guys doing? You reached a big milestone with the band, as your album, INFIDEL was released this summer and you performed at Bloodstock Festival in August. What did this opportunity give you?
Alexy: We’re doing well thanks, planning our next moves as a band and working on some things behind the scenes! It was definitely a long and intense build up for us to finally get to the point of releasing our debut album and playing our first shows as a band: our album was released in London and Bloodstock Festival a week later. Both were hugely important shows for us and were extremely rewarding after so much preparation. It felt great to be able to celebrate the release of INFIDEL first with our closest friends and fans and have our own show alongside bands we’re good friends with (Krysthla and Reprisal), and then to have to prove ourselves in front of a much bigger crowd of mostly (but not entirely) new faces at Bloodstock. It set the bar high for us and felt like a great payoff for so many years of hard work putting the pieces together.
Talking about the album – which song is your favourite to play live?
Alexy: The song “Jinn” was extremely satisfying to play live at our album launch actually. It’s the longest, slowest song on the album and a slightly different dynamic to the rest, so it might not be the song you expected, but having such a tense, vibey song like that in the middle of such an aggressive set was a really intense and memorable experience for us. Another one that felt great was “Guiltless”, especially after people had been so familiar with the instrumental version that we originally released, it was great to finally play the completed version live – which is why we chose that song to make a new video clip with the live footage, to really represent how the gig felt in person!
You don’t avoid difficult topics with the lyrics either. Which one of you writes the songs and which song is your personal favorite so far?
Alexy: The lyrics on INFIDEL are very introspective and honest – the main purpose for the lyrics was to flesh out the sentiments of the songs themselves and the album as a whole. When you write a song instrumentally first, there’s still a lot of emotional data embedded in the music itself, but the lyrics allow you to really inspect what the music means to you and to bring out those unconscious elements onto an explicit level, which can be quite a daunting process, but can also really tie things together. The first and last songs on the album (“The Sin of Doubt” and “Sacrosanct”) are the ones that really define the core themes in INFIDEL so those hold a lot of weight, although the lyrics that mean the most to me personally are probably on “Anima”.
Is there a venue or festival you would like to perform at someday or an artist you would like to collaborate or even tour with?
Alexy: We all have favourite venues, usually as a result of shows that we’ve seen there, or specific memories attached. In London, the Roundhouse is definitely one of the favourites, it’s kinda the perfect size and a very cool building and we’d be honoured to play there eventually, after having seen some of our favourite bands level that place. As for other artists, we haven’t really thought of any collaborations actually, we still have so much to learn about each other as musicians and creators within the band, which we can’t wait to explore thoroughly with the second album, which we’ve been writing. And there are so many bands we’d love to tour with!
As you mentioned in an interview, when creating songs, you like to reach out to the old-school, but you are also open to the contemporary. Who are the performers who inspired you at the beginning, and who among the new ones represent a direction you like?
Alexy: Everyone in the band has a different set of influences but some of the core bands that had an impact on all of us are Slipknot, Lamb of God, Meshuggah, Gojira. The ‘old-school’ influence can almost feel like more of an attitude or approach, rather than something purely sonic, and the more contemporary elements are maybe a bit more related to the technical aspects of the playing and production, so it’s been an interesting challenge trying to find a balance between the two. It’s not always been easy to communicate our vision for that, but we’ve been fortunate to work with people who have helped us achieve our vision, on INFIDEL specifically.
If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself to your music career, that you’ve learned in the meantime?
Alexy: There’s been a few lessons we’ve learnt the hard way throughout the process of putting a band together and creating, recording and releasing a full-length album at such an early point, not only in our career, but in our relationships with each other within the band. It’s a bit unorthodox to start the whole process with a virtually complete album, with no gigging history or lineup and then recruit people based on how they fit into that vision – it relies on a lot of trust and patience from both parties. So, a lot of what we’ve learnt over the last couple of years is about each other as people and fine-tuning that communication between the 5 of us, that leads to the best outcomes, which is an ongoing process as it is with all bands.
How do you see the situation of musicians nowadays? How positive do you perceive the strong expansion of social media?
Alexy: It’s a tricky question to try and address objectively. There are a lot of elements of how the music industry works now that are quite uninspiring – the digitisation of everything, the focus on digestibility and self-promotion with constant social media presence etc. without even mentioning the financial situation most bands at our level find ourselves in. But at the same time, it’s impossible to overlook the fact that a band like ours has been the beneficiary of this modern system – being able to play at Bloodstock for our second ever show, due primarily to the extent of an online response to a few videos we funded and promoted ourselves with very limited resources is a testament to that.
I think the artistic endeavour has a level of resilience to it, partly because people don’t generally create / pursue art for rational reasons – it’s more of a compulsion than a conscious strategy for most of us – which is why artists will always find ways to adapt to the state of the industry. But I think that’s also potentially an aspect of the problem, the fact that there’s no real threshold of unsustainability that will stop artists from being artists means that they’re probably more susceptible to being taken advantage of… Some thoughts that may or may not answer your question!
What plans do you have for 2024? Maybe a bigger tour with the new album?
Alexy: Most of our plans for 2024 include playing live. We’ve spent a long time working on INFIDEL and now we just want to get out there and play it for as many people as we can. We’ve already announced some more UK shows – all info available at www.6lokust.com/tour – and have some more things in the works for a bit further out too! Aside from the shows, we’ve had quite a decent chunk of the second album already written for quite some time now but put that on pause to finish INFIDEL when we completed our lineup, but we’re looking forward to getting our teeth back into that material and refining the next album!
Thanks for the questions and see you at a show soon!
Thank you for the interview. It was a pleasure to get an insight into the band’s life and plans.
If you want to be updated about their latest news, follow the guys on the social media.
LOKUST
- Facebook: L O K U S T | Facebook
- Instagram: LOKUST (@6lokust) • Instagram photos and videos
- Spotify: Lokust | Spotify
- Apple Music: Lokust – Apple Music
concert photos: Herczeg Balázs
by: ViQ
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