Ingested vocalist Jason Evans is friendly, insightful, and down to earth but a switch flips once he gets on stage and he becomes this utterly terrifying monstrous figure with the ability to make nightmarish sounds replicated only by creatures that reside in the depths of hell. In this interview in the band’s hometown, we talk about Manchester, starting out as a band, new music and …. Take That!
Watch the video interview here, or read below:
RAMzine: This is Lamestream Lydia we’re here with Jason Evans from Ingested. How’s it going?
Jason: Really good man, really good. We’re coming up on the final week of the Pain Remains UK and Europe tour, we’ve been smashing venues across the continent and now we’re back in the greatest city on Earth.
RAMzine: We love a hometown show. It’s been crazy seeing all the huge bands that you’ve been playing with: Cannibal Corpse, Devourment, Archspire.
[A smile appears on Jason’s face]
RAMzine: See the smile there, “yeah, this is kind of awesome”. How does it feel being back for a hometown show at the end of the year?
Jason: Just amazing. Manchester is our home and so getting to play shows like this in your hometown, there’s no better feeling. You’re in front of all your family, your friends and Manchester. You know what I mean?
RAMzine: You can always tell the people you know because they shout out their little inside jokes and that’s always fun.
Jason: I get a few “Queechy” shouts from my streaming days and people just shouting weird shit at me on stage. That’s always good.
RAMzine: I know people have a bit of a stigma about local scene bands and people look at it like you have to start as a local band and once you get past that then you’re a real band…
Jason: Yeah. Everyone was a local band at some point, that’s how you start but it doesn’t mean that you’re not a band. We’ve all gotta start somewhere man. I always think back to when we were a local band and we played in Satan’s Hollow or Music Box or Star and Garter and you could play shows opening for bands. They could either treat you like shit because you were a local opener or they could treat you really well. I always remember the bands that treated us well and that’s shaped the way I treat bands that are with us or if they’re opening a tour or opening a show. Just treat people with respect because we were all in that spot. It’s a good spot to be because that’s where you learn who you are as a band and as a performer when you’re playing some shit hole to 30 people. That’s how you develop all your shit, your stage personality, what you want to do as a frontman. It’s an important step in your career that you should never forget.
RAMzine: The touring has been going on pretty incessantly and I guess that juxtaposes with how much music you’ve been putting out because you guys have been workhorses since before the pandemic. It’s probably unfair to even ask if there’s new music but I kinda have to.
[Everybody laughs]
Jason: Well, we pride ourselves on always trying to be the hardest workers in whatever room we’re in whether it’s touring schedule, writing, recording and releasing stuff. Whatever it is, we want to be the gold standard of working your bollocks off in the metal scene and I think that comes from us all being working class lads. I’m from a council estate in Stockport, I’ve never had money and everything I’ve ever had I’ve had to work for. I think that’s such an integral part of who Ingested is as a band and as for new stuff… We’re opening the set with a brand new song tonight so that’s about all I can say…
[Jason Laughs]
RAMzine: Get hype! It’s the Manchester worker bee innit?
Jason: Yeah totally, that’s us. We’re working class, come from fuck all and everything we’ve got we’ve scratched tooth and claw for. Every single thing we’ve got, we’ve earned it. We’ve never been given anything and we’ve had to fight for everything we’ve got and now it feels like we’re starting to reap the benefits and rewards of all that hard work.
RAMzine: Death metal is an uphill battle from the start. Everything came from tiny little places and you hope to get somewhere even remotely close to this so you guys are doing incredible.
Jason: Thank you, I appreciate that.
RAMzine: We’re interested in how your music has developed. When you guys started out you were… Let’s do the annoying thing where we have to be granular about genres – you were a brutal death metal band. Which is “normal person” for just being brutal.
Jason: Savage, fast, just brutally heavy death metal. I guess you could call some of our early stuff slam death metal as well. In the early stuff it was always in and around brutal death metal, slam death metal sort of wheelhouse and then as we’ve grown up as people, you start to listen to different types of music. You’re not as singularly focused on one thing as you were when you were a bit younger, I find anyway. Then there was the Deathcore explosion in like 2007? 2009?
RAMzine: Yeah, that’s around the Job for a Cowboy/MySpace era.
Jason: Yeah and when that came out we started that sort of stuff because you’re influenced by what you listen to so those elements started coming in as well and we mixed that with the brutal death metal and then we ended somewhere down the line figuring out who we were. It took us a good few albums to know who we were as a band, musically and everything else. I think we’re still evolving now but we’re more comfortable with who we are.
RAMzine: That’s the ongoing problem for basically every band. There are bands that are nowhere close to figuring what you’ve figured out, even though you’re eight albums in…
Jason: Yeah, I think so not including the EPs.
[Jason laughs]
RAMzine: It’s just interesting to see how everything is moving along but there’s still the distinct Ingested DNA.
Jason: I think now that we know who we are, we’ve been doing this for 18 years but we’re still adding pieces to the puzzle. On our last album (Ashes Lie Still), we started adding more melody and atmospheric stuff. Whenever we add stuff, we always carry it into the next album and then we’ll start adding other stuff as well. Whatever it is we’re listening to or whatever it is we’re influenced by at the time and then it’s just becoming this horrible death metal flesh monster.
RAMzine: We’re here for the atrocities! We’re gonna finish up, we’re gonna wish you luck. Personally, I look at you as perhaps the second-biggest band to come out of Manchester.
Jason: Thank you, I take that because obviously, the biggest band is Oasis; my biggest influence. I know that makes no sense when you think about what we do but like I said before: they came from nothing, working class, council estate, never had a pot to piss in and now look what they’ve achieved because they worked hard so that’s my biggest influence.
RAMzine: This next thing is gonna be awkward then.
Jason: Yeah, you’re gonna tell me it’s not Oasis, aren’t you?
[everybody laughs[
RAMzine: I am, can you sign this please?
Jason: TAKE THAT! Amazing! I do love Take That as well so I will sign that. Oh my god, ‘Greatest Day’ is the best Take That song.
RAMzine: Definitely!
Jason: I’m gonna sign it on Mark Owen’s willy.
RAMzine: Just wasn’t the same when Robbie left.
Jason: Yeah but he had to go chase aliens in the desert though, didn’t he?
RAMzine: Yeah, natural things.
Jason: he was a busy man
[Jason laughs]
RAMzine: Thank you so much!
Jason: You’re very welcome mate, thank you. I appreciate you man.
RAMzine: Lamestream Lydia for RAMzine with Jason Evans.
