6. BackxwashGod Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of This

Back in 2022 I was on tour and we played this show in Milan. We were going to this afterparty. There, one of my friends told me to check out Backxwash – she’s from Zambia, and she does some really cool trap metal stuff. And then he put ‘Black Magic’ on – eh! I kept listening to Backxwash because I was so impressed, seeing somebody from the continent who is really pushing it like that. The way she fused the instrumentation and the production is so lush, her lyrics are very introspective and very graphic stream-of-consciousness, it really drew me in. I like how she would also use Swahili in her song titles and everything. You still have that rawness, it’s rooted and it’s grounded.

I met her at Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands last year. We hung out for the first time, we talked a lot. I saw her play, she saw me play. We knew we would have to work together at some point because we are doing a similar sound. It just makes sense because we are from the same place.