Eleven years ago, Everything Everything's Jonathan Higgs was engrossed in the depths of internet terror. Terrorist attacks, populism, and the first murmurings of alt-right musings were making their way onto internet forums and chat rooms. Out of this deluge of information, of hellish images of warzones and a fierce social media addiction, Everything Everything's seminal album 'Get To Heaven' came to life.

"I was very sucked into the internet, all the rolling news; now we'd call it doomscrolling," he remembers. "I had this sense that there was a new type of person emerging – this alt-right guy who seemed to be getting traction on 4Chan and Twitter and wherever else. I had this sense that something was about to change, that we were on the cusp of something, but I didn't quite know what."

Out of this mire came the songs that would make up 'Get To Heaven', the album that changed everything for the band, taking them from critically acclaimed cult heroes to indie-rock giants.

"It was definitely a turning point for us; I always think about our career as before and after 'Get To Heaven'. I know we'd been Mercury nominated before, but this was the first album that got us any commercial success – we were on the radio all the time, our songs were on FIFA – I think it's our masterpiece."

And a masterpiece it is. Splicing together politically charged prophecies with unique interpretations of genre-bending alt-pop-slash-art-rock, it brought together the levity of jangling guitar and refreshingly complex drum rhythms, whilst also spilling out enough apocalyptic post-societal trauma to strike fear into even the most committed Puritan preacher.

"I wasn't a nice person to be around," Jon admits. "I was writing these doomy, angry, terrorised, traumatised lyrics that the band were really shaky about putting on an album – ideas about bodies in the street is quite a hard sell!"

"At the same time, Alex [Robertshaw, guitarist] was writing really upbeat music – maybe to balance me out, maybe not – so he was sending me texts saying, 'I really want to do something like 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', whilst I was coming up with the most heinous shit about death and destruction."

This writing process created the formula that sparked 'Get To Heaven' into life and took the band from relative obscurity to mainstream success, with single 'Distant Past' becoming one of the biggest songs of not only 2015, but the last ten years. Featuring lyrics about yearning for simpler times pre-humanity, it's also chock full of electro-pop synth, techy distortion, and a huge arena rock chorus – proof, if it was needed, that nobody does doom-pop quite like Everything Everything.

"When we're in that space, smuggling in hard-hitting lyrics over a pop basis, we're at our best. We knew that the album was a risk we had to take because it made us feel scared; we wanted people to have extreme reactions to it because there's no point making something comfortable that you've heard 1,000 times. We got to the point where, if we were looking at each other asking 'What the hell kind of music even is this?', we knew we'd found something worth pursuing."

'Get To Heaven' saw Everything Everything turn up the madness that they'd always had the potential to unleash, a potential that led them to work with "producer extraordinaire" Stuart Price, someone who leaned full throttle into Jon's swirling descent into insanity.

"We'd work on a song, then Stuart would work on it in LA and send it back. I remember a version of 'Habsburg Lippp', where he'd made it into this ridiculous reggae tune," Jon laughs, "it was great, don't get me wrong, but it was just insane."

"Saying that, I don't know if we'd reject it now. How many times in life do you get to make ridiculous stuff that's also really good?"

In many ways, 'Get To Heaven' is the unsung pioneer of today's indie-rock scene, one so heavily imbued with social commentary and disregard for boxed-off genre constraints. Amongst their peers, they were one of the few mid-2010s bands to take on The Man and succeed, with 'Get To Heaven' standing the test of time due to its unapologetically subversive message.

"It's amazing just how close we were to reality," he posits. "We nearly called the album 'Give Me The Gun', but our label talked us out of that. Then, in the week we released it, there was a mass shooting out in America, and then we played our album tour at the same time as the Bataclan attack in Paris. It's terrifying just how near the mark we were, and how close we still are."

Apart from the undying passion of the band's fans, many of whom first came to adore Everything Everything because of 'Get To Heaven', there was a much more pertinent reason for this tenth-anniversary celebration: the ongoing pandemonium that is modern life.

Jon and the band were writing the album before Brexit, the first Trump presidency, the wars in Ukraine, Syria, and Palestine, Covid-19, and countless other humanitarian and political issues that came to define the last ten years.

All of the topics on 'Get To Heaven' – an incapability to cope with information overload in 'Distant Past', a feeling of hopelessness at a burning global picture in 'No Reptiles', the rise of far-right appeal in 'The Wheel (Is Turning Now)' – went from bubbling under the surface to flooding the headlines, a prophecy that Jon foretold yet was desperate to avoid.

"It feels more prescient as time goes on; year on year, the stuff we talked about has come true. I'm glad we got it right, but I wish we'd got it wrong. The need for power, corruption, the rise of populism, it's all gone into overdrive, while life gets worse for people at the bottom who have no say in how the world works."

"In a way, we were lucky with the timing of the cultural revolution that's happened in the last ten years; we could have played these songs at any point since 2015, and it would be different context but the same ideas and actors. We couldn't make this album now because nobody would be surprised; the world wasn't insane in 2015, but everyone would agree it is now."

Jon himself acknowledges that the reaction to 'Get To Heaven' when it was first released was instrumental in dragging him out of the darkness, helping him to feel as though he wasn't alone in the torment that his mind found itself playing out on a daily basis. This sense of community, one which ebbs away with each passing year, is something that he hopes to re-ignite in these 10th-anniversary celebrations.

"I think if people hadn't understood it when it came out, I would have carried on down the path and gone insane. We had our fans loving the music but also getting what we were saying; it's amazing how many people related to feeling 'Like a fat child in a pushchair'!"

"The emphasis on self is rampant, companies sell you a product to appeal to your uniqueness that makes you the same as the other thousands of people who've bought it. Society now is all that Thatcherite idea of self-betterment – everyone's asking, 'How can I be the best?' instead of 'I'm ok, how can I help those that aren't?' It's get rich or die trying."

"I hope that we get young people coming to our shows so we can prove that not everyone wanted it to go like this, some of us were trying to stand against all the bullshit. It's stuff that people need to hear, hopefully it's transcended its time and stayed relevant."

There's no doubting that Everything Everything as an entity has stood the test of time, influencing a plethora of the new wave of alt-pop talent, including their All Points East line-up mate and Dork favourite CMAT. A festival line-up that combines the brightest new talent and those that shaped them ten years ago, it's a day that Jon can't wait to come around.

"It's definitely going to be nostalgic because we did a tiny tour with [headliners] The Maccabees back in the day, but it also feels like a totally different time because they've been away so long. I also think CMAT is great, she's a proper artist – it's always a worry when someone says they like you in case they suck, but luckily, she's amazing!"

All Points East is just one of the dates that supports this 'Get To Heaven' birthday bash, coming alongside a tour that sees the band play the album in full, including B-sides that have never graced the stage.

"I'm going to relish the chance to inhabit who I was then. I felt like a street preacher foretelling the end of the world, and now I'm like this wise prophet who got it all right. It feels more powerful now; I'm in command of that persona."

"There are some songs like 'President Heartbeat' that we've never played live, so we should probably get in a room and actually rehearse them… but it keeps us on our toes."

Before that, though, the band have a much more pressing and vitally important gig: Jon's wedding.

"We're learning a load of wedding songs – I think the guests will be glad to know that we're not playing our own songs," he chuckles, "we're not quite that cringy! They're also easier than trying to hit the 'Blast Doors' falsetto, which I'm quite worried about, but I'm sure it'll be fine…"

Ten years and what feels like 8,000 global crises later, how does Jon feel about 'Get To Heaven' now?

"I wouldn't change anything," he proudly states, "there were a million decisions that we took to get to this point. If we'd compromised, if we hadn't worked with Stuart, if we'd decided to taper some of the message or tried to match it with really dark, brooding music, we would have had something really different."

He pauses, "Actually, I might have spent some more time polishing the vocal on 'President Heartbeat'. I'm not thrilled with the vocal across the record, actually, but I guess it's raw and all that shit!"

The irony of an album about the demise of the capitalist status quo being the one that catapulted Everything Everything to stardom isn't lost on Jon – "It's my job to sell out, I guess" – but neither is the cultural significance of 'Get To Heaven', being one of the first indie albums to tear down genre boundaries and make whatever felt right.

"When you say it out loud, it sounds insane that because I listened to this one band when I was fifteen, I can't listen to anything else for the rest of my life! I feel like genre was breaking down from the moment the iPod came out, which was obviously perfect for us, timing-wise."

"Who cares about genre now? It's great because it makes it a level playing field. It doesn't matter if it fits exactly into a box; it only matters now if it's good, and I think that's the mindset we had on 'Get To Heaven' and are going to have for the rest of our time as a band."

Whilst Jon teases that there is new music being written, we're all very comfortable in the nostalgia that comes with this, harking back to the anti-glory days that birthed this landmark album.

Here's to the next ten years. Let's hope it's just a smidge less bonkers, eh?