After wrapping up the holiday season, Erika Switchblade and Gianni Blacula of The Devils are gearing up for an intense new tour — 33 dates across Europe starting on January 28. The year has only just begun, but the duo already has big plans in motion: writing new songs and finishing their next album by the end of the year. Still, before hitting the road again, Erika took some time to reflect on their latest record, Devil’s Got It (released via Go Down Records), a collection of blues and soul reinterpretations that celebrated the band’s tenth anniversary in 2025. I thank you HadrianuS for helping me out!
Welcome to The Devils
So, first, Erika, I want to thank you. I wanted to ask you how you are and how things are going at the moment.
But first, I want to thank you. It’s really a pleasure, that’s all. I’m really happy to have this chat. At this time of year, Christmas is over, the holidays are over, we’re starting the tour again, etc. In short, things are going pretty well.
The year got off to a great start, and now on the 28th, that is, next week, we’re going back on tour for 33 dates across Europe. In the meantime, we’re writing new songs for the next album, which we hope to finish by the end of the year, so we’re not complaining [laughs].
The latest The Devils album, Devil’s Got It
Okay, so I know that your latest album, released last year, is called Devil’s Got It via Go Down Records, and it’s a bit of an unusual album for you, in a way, because it’s an album of songs, blues and soul, which are basically covers. The first thing I wanted to ask you is, how did you approach this album?
So, where can I start? Well, we’d had the idea in the pipeline for several years, but we’d never found the time to, well, to write the songs down. And then last year, in 2025, we celebrated our tenth anniversary, so we wanted to celebrate our tenth birthday by giving ourselves this album.
And obviously, ten years of music, ten years of touring, ten years together, it makes you look in the mirror for a moment, doesn’t it? Well, about blues. All those influences have always been part of The Devils‘ history.
“It wasn’t meant to be a tribute to blues and soul music”
It wasn’t meant to be a tribute to blues and soul music, but more a fact that these genres aren’t dead and dusty, they’re very current for us, they’re alive and breathing. So it wasn’t meant to be an influence to mention, but more to show that it has always been the heart that has pumped the groove of our songs from the beginning.
I mean, we’ve always had this passion for black music since we formed, and so everything else that has come over the years, the records we’ve released, basically come from there. So after ten years, we didn’t want to celebrate ourselves. It was more about stripping away the superfluous and going back to our roots.
“So we wanted to be daring, but still be ourselves”
We had no intention of making these songs current, because we never felt current. We’ve always gone in the opposite direction. The opposite direction of the crowd of various rock scenes. So we wanted to be daring, but still be ourselves. And so we created the main idea for Devil’s Got It. It was quite difficult, I won’t deny it because we went digging old material.
Choosing the songs on Devil’s Got It
My next question about this, Erika, is how is it that we know very well that Blues and Soul has a vast, immense repertoire. My question is how did you manage to choose only those? I don’t remember, but you took about ten songs for the album, right?
There are nine.
That’s right, there are nine. How did you choose them?
Look, how did we choose the songs? I’ll explain. Actually, we are collectors, first and foremost. Before being musicians, we are collectors, we are fans. And so, we collect records, 45s, etc. This is our passion, we’ve always done it.
Choosing the songs on Devil’s Got It [part 2]
So, basically, each of us went through our old 45s, the compilations we had, all the minor artists we liked, the B-sides, all that stuff, right? Each of us made our own list of the songs we wanted, and then we put the two lists together, right? And then we started rehearsing and rehearsing all the songs we had chosen. We recorded demo after demo, different versions, etc. Then in the end, we chose these nine songs that survived the selection process. It was fun.
The difficulty for The Devils
I wanted to ask you what was the difficulty with this album in the end? Because you said yes, but it wasn’t easy in the end to complete the album.
Yes, because, as I said before, we didn’t want them to sound like covers, we wanted them to sound like The Devils, right? Make them our own, and in fact that was the difficulty, trying to put our stamp on them, or at least what these songs inspired in us, because, being fans of this music, we each perceive it differently. Therefore, we express it in a particular way, and so that was the main difficulty, let’s say, and in fact, for example, the track where you can hear this most. Or rather what we think is most successful or that expressed the ten years of our career and expressed the general feeling.
William Bell’s Everybody Loves a Winner
For example, it was Everybody Loves a Winner, which is the last track on the album, a song by William Bell. It’s a solo piece, and in the original version there was everything, there were horns, and in the end we made our mark by stripping it down completely, leaving it completely bare. We made a recording of just vocals and guitar live. We removed practically all the instruments.
The reason for this choice is simply because the melody is beautiful and wonderful, and the lyrics have always touched us deeply. It’s a song that talks about victories that aren’t worth a damn, right? I mean, at least for me, it expresses what success means, right? That one is a mere illusion. A very sincere song, that’s what it is. It raises the question of winners and losers, doesn’t it? It makes you think that maybe we love winners just because we want to forget that in the end we’re all a bunch of losers [laughs].
The single Lonely for You Baby
Well, it’s true anyway. I’m not going to argue with you because it’s all true. I also wanted to mention the single, the only one, I mean the single you chose for Devil’s Got It, which is Lonely for You Baby. Why did you choose that particular song?
It’s a song about despair, missed opportunities in love, lost loves, loneliness. We are a bit melancholic, both Gianni and me. And maybe that’s why we really liked giving that piece a garage rock ‘n’ roll feel, with slightly more extreme sounds.
The Devils collaboration with Alain Johannes
I know, among other things, that the album was remembered live at Auditorium Novecento in Naples. It was mastered and mixed by Alain Johannes. It’s an adventure, I think, to record everything live, because if you make a mistake, it becomes a problem later, right?
Yes, indeed. Unfortunately, that’s how it is for us, isn’t it? There are only two of us. We’re totally exposed. Then Gianni and I live in symbiosis, you see, after ten years, we’ve been playing together for ten years. How can I explain it? We’ve reworked our chemistry a bit over the years. We know each other practically by heart, don’t we? I know everything about him, he knows everything about me. We spend 24 hours a day together on tour, etc., etc. So you can hear that in the music too, right? So, what were we saying [laughs]?
Recording live with Alain Johannes
We were talking about the live recording.
Yes, Alain, exactly. So, Alain is a sure thing for us, this is the third album we’ve done together, or rather, since Beast Must Regret Nothing, which he produced, then we did Let the World Burn Down, which he mixed and mastered, and then Devil’s Got It, where he also did the mixing and mastering, so we have total confidence in him. But mainly because Alain understands us, he understands us deeply. He knows that we are two savages, that we are two primitive people, and so his work with us is specific because he gives a lot of depth to our primitive nature.
About working with Alain: “He understands all this and polishes this mud”.
So imagine, right? We’re two rough guys covered in mud with dirty sounds, right? And he, let’s say, his talent really shows in this. He understands all this and polishes this mud. Without washing, it away, right?
And so he is, well, Alain is a musical genius, apart from being a great musician, he plays every instrument to perfection, and I mean every instrument, any instrument. I can tell you, on the first album we made together, he even plays tubular bells, which is amazing, and he plays them perfectly, it’s not just strumming. So, we’re talking about a musical genius. Indeed, his career speaks for itself. Then, we obviously went back to him for David Scott‘s mix and master.
The upcoming tour of The Devils
Okay, now I wanted to ask, you just mentioned that you’ll have 33 dates in Europe.
Like the years of Christ [laughs].
Exactly [laughs]. I wanted to ask you what your expectations are, what do you expect from these 33 dates?
So, what do I expect? I expect a lot of sweat, a desire to be… to rock ‘n’ roll, that’s it. I expect… for us, it’s a bit like… well, live shows, live concerts, it’s a bit like therapy, you know? It’s a bit like going to a psychologist. You let everything out, you analyze yourself.
So that’s what I expect, on a personal level. Obviously this is to connect with people, right? Seeing people at our concerts singing our songs, dancing, having fun. Sweating, screaming… I mean, that’s probably the reason why we keep playing. So that’s what I expect mainly. That’s not entirely wrong. Or is it?
No, absolutely not. Erika, I wanted to thank you for your time, for agreeing to this interview.
Thank you, Miriam