Evolution is the change in characteristics of populations over successive generations; the expressions of genes passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Music, like biology, must constantly look forward to grow.
Heavy metal is a genre stuck between a rock and a hard place in the evolutionary process. Legacy acts remain as poster boys years on from their golden days as fans stare at change with a face of fear while newer, experimental bands languish in potential purgatory. As heavy metal reaches its breaking point, Woking's Employed To Serve look to lead the charge in metal's next evolution.
It's more than just holding on to the past glories of a genre that fuels the fire in Employed To Serve's bellies; the maintenance of the authenticity that metal has built itself on for decades plays a part.
"I feel like if artists continue to do it past their sell-by date, in terms of if they're not enjoying it or fulfilling themselves anymore, people see through that," she explains. "They know when it's not your 100% album; they know you're not feeling it because they're not stupid. They have a lot of context and other artists that they listen to.
2017's 'Warmth Of A Dying Sun' was a critically-acclaimed album-of-the-year second effort that catapulted Justine, guitarists Sammy Urwin and James Jackson, bassist Jamie Venning and drummer Robbie Back to the front of the new breed of British metal's pack. 'Eternal Forward Motion' takes their nasty hardcore formula, upscales the technical wizardry we've come to expect from them and opened the floodgates with songs that are at once their heaviest yet their most accessible.
"At the end of the day, if you spend a lot of time doing things, the end goal is to have more people listening to you, and it wasn't in a contrived way where we set out to write a song everyone can listen to, it was just an entirely natural thing.
"As a band, we're quite good at being insular and concentrating on what we can do better in ourselves rather than attempt to meet everyone else's expectations – we're very self-aware of when we're cutting things short.
'Eternal Forward Motion' is a record born not only out of passion, but out of pain. Rising from the ashes of a year of personal hell, Employed To Serve reincarnate the negatives of their personal lives into messages of positivity, channelling their out-of-the-studio anger into on-record aggression. The resulting force is as a band at their most visceral. That aggression, as Justine explains, comes from a place of reflection rather than resentment.
"I've not had a very good year. Sure, professionally, I've had the best year of my life but at the same time a lot of personal stuff happened, and I just haven't been in a good place, especially when we were recording 'Eternal Forward Motion', and it's been the same for a couple of other band members.
Encapsulating the struggles we face as humans every single day, a struggle we often choose to run away from, hiding behind a fake veil of positivity, is a thought process Justine echoes. "'There's a harsh truth in plain view' – it's this elephant in the room that nobody is talking about that everyone is struggling, but they're shrouding it behind big nights out, positive PMA social media posts.
'Eternal Forward Motion' is Employed To Serve's call-to-arms, a blistering attack of positivity on the negativity of our society, brought about, but not dictated, by the everchanging perils of social media.
"This album isn't about social media as such, but I feel like it touches upon the fact that anything like it disconnects people from each other and it makes us feel like we don't need basic human needs like human interaction.
The concept our society has developed of it not being okay to admit you're not okay is becoming a detriment to what is otherwise a forward-thinking generation, and inadvertently it's become something Employed To Serve simply can't sit silently about any longer.
"It's one of those things everyone is thinking where everyone is hiding behind this veil of bravado. It's this social media bravado that everything is great and if you're negative, it's your fault, and everyone has to be happy all of the time.
"As much as I love social media - it's an amazing tool, and I've discovered a lot of brilliant bands and all these places you can get free food because of it - at the end of the day, it's harming people's actual feelings. Social media, for a lot of people, is quite new, and people are still adapting how to use it, and they're so intent on appearing as the person they want to be rather than being realistic about their lives, they're cherry-picking the best parts in to tricking people into thinking they've got the full picture."
As much as 'Eternal Forward Motion' acts as Employed To Serve's secret weapon, a statement of intent armed with incendiary social and political bullets, Justine hopes it'll be received with a more personal touch than that.
"In a very selfish way, I do everything for me. If you're doing it for anyone else, it's a very dangerous territory to get in. At the end of the day, you need to look out for your own health. If things aren't going the way you want them to be or you're not ‘vibing it' anymore, then I think you should start winding it down.
While being a role model has never been part of the plan, being a comfort for others has. Much like Deftones and Hatebreed have for them, Employed To Serve are beginning to come accustomed to their fans finding solace in their music.
"As much as I say I do things for myself, inadvertently it does a lot of things for other people. So many artists that I've listened to have always done it for themselves, but it's ended up helping me, too.
"Holy Roar has been doing really well, and I'm really proud of it and so have the band. It's got to the point where I wanted separate time to channel my energy into both. I'd put unnecessary pressure on myself; I started to disregard ETS things for Holy Roar bands because I love our bands and I want them to do well, so I wouldn't post about ETS on Holy Roar social media so that we didn't seem bias. Splitting the two has allowed me to put my full energy into both aspects at different times. Spinefarm has a bigger general reach than Holy Roar currently. It makes sense logically, but I was very nervous at first as it felt like I was leaving home for the first time."
It wasn't as simple for Justine as it was for her bandmates to take Employed To Serve to the next logical step, even though she knew it was the only move to make in their evolutionary game of chess.
The decision took a lot of soul-searching, but ultimately comes at a time when Employed To Serve are poised to break from underground heroes to the face of British metal's next generation. With festival slots at this year's Glastonbury and Bring Me The Horizon's crossover All Points East bill, they're part of a wider invasion of alternative music on the mainstream, they're the ones breaking the barriers and boundaries of musical influence.
"I listen to a lot of hip-hop and a lot of pop music, but metal will always number one for me, and combining all three of those into this massive festival where a lot of people are potentially going to watch metal for the first time, I'm a massive advocate for that.
'Eternal Forward Motion' is a metaphorical collection of monologues on evolution set across a backdrop of social media, human interaction, and mental health. Employed To Serve, as creators, are ready to progress through their next phase of evolution with an album that's the heaviest and most honest they've ever been.
Taken from the June issue of Upset. Employed To Serve's album 'Eternal Forward Motion' is out now.
