VUKOVI: “This band is so personal. It’s literally everything to us”

“We’ve not really had a moment to talk out what the fuck’s happened in the past two years!”

For VUKOVI singer Janine Shilstone, even just being able to sit down and chat about it all is quite a relief. Guitarist Hamish Reilly is feeling it, too.

“We’re a bit too in our own heads, aren’t we?” he asks his bandmate.

The past 24 months have ushered in a drastic change in their fortunes. Released in October 2022, the Ayrshire duo’s third album NULA felt giant in every way, from the ambition of its fiercely feminist sci-fi concept, to its almighty upgrade in sound, and saw them finally germinate into the band they’d always shown the potential to be.

Everything began accelerating to a speed they’d never before experienced. They played their biggest show to date at London’s O2 Academy Islington at the beginning of all this, only to smash it by the end at the Electric Ballroom in March, where they performed NULA in full. At last, VUKOVI were getting their flowers.

In the midst of all this, VUKOVI signed with SharpTone and decamped to Texas – their first ever trip to the U.S. – to make album number four with Gene ‘Machine’ Freeman (whose eclectic discography spans everyone from Lamb Of God and Every Time I Die to As It Is).

“He sets everyone up in a room and stands with a mixing desk and a microphone and just shouts at bits he likes!” recalls Hamish. “In terms of giving you confidence and enthusiasm, he’s the best. It was an amazing time.”

Now, with barely a second to take in this whirlwind, VUKOVI are ready to release the product of it all, MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN, a notably darker but equally expulsive (and explosive) counterpart to NULA. Like its predecessor, it’s also a concept album, but far more thinly veiled, seizing the idea of releasing dark feelings as an exorcism and taking it to a literal extreme.

Tape recordings are scattered throughout the record as a witness account of an actual exorcism, but it’s actually more subtle than what they’ve done before.

“It’s an exorcism of all this shit that I’m trying to get out,” explains Janine. “[I’m trying to] be a better person and live a happy life. My values in life have changed a lot. I think being happy is probably the most important thing, and I knew my only way of getting to that place is to face your shit and try to process it.”

Maybe it’s surprising that she had been plunged into such darkness in the wake of all this adulation. On the other hand, there have been enough troubling stories emerging from the music industry to know that success isn’t all that sweet.

Then again, neither was their slow-burning beginning. VUKOVI have been grinding far longer than most people realise. “Did you gasp when you saw when we started?” asks Hamish when this comes up. Though VUKOVI began in 2010, they didn’t put out their debut album till seven years later.

“We had no money,” says Janine. “No-one wanted to give us a chance.”

“I feel like we had a lot of false starts as well,” adds Hamish. “From 2013 to 2015, we did nothing.”

“We didn’t really have a good start. It wasn’t manufactured. This was completely organic,” Janine continues. “Our whole career has just been us winging it, learning as we go. Both of us come from working class backgrounds and single parent families. We honestly surprise ourselves half the time and we’re like, ‘How the fuck did this happen?’”

In their embryonic form, VUKOVI existed as an island. Their scene at home didn’t even feel that homely when, sonically speaking, they were total outsiders. In fact, the first cities where they did connect with people were London and Manchester, and Glasgow caught up later (fun fact: a significant chunk of the Electric Ballroom crowd were Scottish fans who’d made the pilgrimage to Camden).

“The Glasgow scene was all indie bands and we were playing metal and rock, and I was a girl,” says Janine, “but I think that’s where a lot of strength can come from as an artist, because you have to be like, ‘Well, fuck. We don’t fit in.’

“The only way that we found any success was from doing what we wanted to do. It was never us doing what anyone else wanted us to do or falling for any tropes that were trendy in the scene at the time. It was hard for us and it took us years to catch on. But it’s kind of paid off, not following those trends back then. None of those bands from that time really exist anymore. It’s kind of crazy.”

And so, MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN arrives after 15 years of graft. After all that fighting – without knowing if it would be worthwhile or wasted – being at the point they’re at now must feel vindicating. Right?

“Honestly, it’s been really bad on my mental health,” Janine answers. “Your reality shifts and you have this added pressure and maybe you’re starting to make money so more people are interested in getting involved. That’s hard, because you start to second-guess where you’re going and it’s always unpredictable. Popularity expires; you can be flavour of the month and next thing, nobody gives a fuck. I just got a bit of a shock, to be honest. It felt quite drastic, and I was scared having that much attention and eyes on [us].”

Even before they reached this juncture, VUKOVI has always been a means of healing for the pair. It might be tangled up in the music business machine – multiple times, Janine uses the phrase, “We are a business,” almost as a reluctant reminder to herself – but there’s still something pure about the way that creating helps them to process trauma.

It’s a strange dance musicians endure sometimes. The power of catharsis can hugely benefit an artist’s mental health, but everything else – from touring burnout to existing online to being straitjacketed into someone else’s more marketable box for your identity – can be poisonous.

“This band is so personal,” explains Hamish. “It’s literally everything to us. But it’s hard as well – me and Janine talk about this a lot, but we’ve had a lot of traumas come from this band because it’s so difficult sometimes. It’s like you’re healing yourself with something that’s hurting you.”

At the time of creating MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN, Janine was going through some particularly intense therapy and turned to writing lyrics as a means of processing what came up in her sessions.

“[I was] facing some pretty dark things I didn’t want to talk about and that, for me, was an outlet. It’s quite a dangerous game – again, we are a business and this is our livelihood – but MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN has stopped me from going crazy.”

As she says this, there’s a palpable anxiety behind the release. Less so about essentially leaving her diary open for all to read, but instead this: when everyone’s experiences are so individual, will it resonate with others?

“I think I underestimate the listeners sometimes. Not their intelligence, but whether they’ll get it. It’s absolute bullshit, though. NULA was a perfect example, with the amount of people who resonated with that album.”

While in therapy, Janine also began expressing herself and what she was processing in her sessions not only with a pen, but with a paintbrush. After showing Hamish her paintings, he suggested they use them as the album artwork. It almost sounds like she feels more vulnerable putting the art on display than her emotions, particularly since it wasn’t intended to be the cover.

“It is ambiguous and it’s terrifying,” Janine says. “But when you talk to people about it, people see different things. I have in my head what it is, but when you talk to someone who doesn’t see that, and they see something totally different, that fascinates me.”

Then there’s the title. MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN could be interpreted in various ways. It could refer to someone’s personal struggles or their depression, and though it wasn’t thought of with any political intentions in mind, Janine believes it could be construed as such. Its boldness, or any resulting controversy, isn’t lost on her.

“It might hinder us because of the name – I know China and Asia banned the artwork because it had a nipple in it so we had to change it.”

It could be coincidental that VUKOVI gave such a name to an album that was created in the Deep South – indeed, one that references both religion and guns ‒ but it’s striking nonetheless.

“We met a lot of people over there, and I did learn a lot more about the political system in America, and about religion, and how they fucking love the church over there,” she says. “I think everyone’s really struggling just now with the state of the world.”

That statement weighs even heavier given that this interview takes place in the aftermath of the grim, frightening re-election of Donald Trump. It made the singer think a little more when giving a quote for the release of the album’s second single, Misty Ecstasy.

“That song isn’t meant to be serious,” she says, “but I did want to make a point of it being about sexual freedom and confidence, feeling desired and desiring people. The whole ‘my body, my choice’ thing, it plays with that.”

With new clouds darkening an already bleak political climate, escapism would be very welcome right now. Even with all their heavy subject matter, VUKOVI are here to provide it.

“I think there needs to be more theatre in rock and metal, and we’re going to give it to them,” Janine asserts. “People want an illusion, they want to escape. For our shows, we want people to step in and escape for an hour or two, and feel like they’re part of something.”

This article originally appeared in the winter 2024 issue of the magazine.

MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN is released on January 24, 2025 via SharpTone. VUKOVI tour the UK from March 6, 2025.

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