In Conversation With: Fever 333
“Take care of everybody. It doesn’t matter what you label yourself as – there shouldn’t be a group that you decide is less worthwhile than the others.” Fever 333 are a movement, as much as they are a band. From their meticulous inception on Labour Day in 2017, to the present day, it has always been apparent that their prerogative is providing a safe space for people to feel empowered within themselves, and ultimately; freedom.
As I approach the 02 Forum Kentish Town, in the early afternoon, I can already see that a queue has formed. This puts into perspective just how important tonight is, for many people, and why music can be so consequential to the marginalised. As I enter the venue and make my way across the stage in order to head to the dressing room of the band, I look out at where 2,300 people will join for mass, in just a few short hours. It is almost incomprehensible to imagine that a band have reached this point of their career, in only two years. But given the innovation of their sound and their relentlessness in spreading the word, it all seems to makes sense for Fever 333.
It is important to remember that behind any musical project, is someone who is just like you and me. When a person goes out on stage every night and talks about such poignant, triggering, and complex subjects it is easy to craft up the idea of idolism, which de-humanises them. When I sit down with Fever 333 it is instantly apparent that they are just a regular bunch of guys who fervently believe in something and are using their voices to try and make the best of the dire circumstances that we all face, worldwide. We’re just hours away from their biggest headline show to date – on a tour where most dates have been sold out – and vocalist Jason Aalon Butler wants to accentuate the fact that none of this would be possible without the people who have invested in them.
“It’s not like ‘yes we sold that shit out!’ That’s what I want people to know. It’s not the bands. The bands are not selling that shit out. The bands are not buying the tickets. The bands aren’t fucking rocking and rolling in the pit. That’s not the bands, that’s the people.” In the last year, Fever 333 won awards for Best International Breakthrough Band at the Heavy Music Awards and Best Song at the Kerrang! Awards, as well as being nominated for a Grammy. This is something that was especially exciting for drummer Aric Improta as he enjoyed that the company were “forward thinking to find bands on the way up, rather than bands already established.”
Aric believes that this may have something to do with Fever 333 having combined experiences from being in other bands: “it was definitely a surprise to see that the Grammy’s had reached out when we are definitely still in beginning phases, and it’s kind of cool to think that, you know, hopefully they do that in the future because a lot of the bands – in my experience – that are saying the most are the ones that are not comfortable, are the ones that are trying to find their place in the world and are still in that phase where they have a lot to sing about because they’re not free from it.”
In reflecting back on the awards, guitarist Stephen Harrison remembers that it was only this year that their debut album ‘STRENGTH IN NUMB333RS’ was released and that their intense touring schedule makes the year seem a lot shorter than it actually is, which as why it seems like it was so long ago. Aric adds: “sometimes it’s like unbelievable how much has happened in the last year. When we went to Brazil, they were joking about how they used to make fun of America for their government, and they were like ‘now we’ve voted someone in that is very similar to Trump’ and that seems to be happening in a lot of different places [that] we go to.”
By observing the constantly evolving state of affairs around them whilst on tour, it is imperative for the band to do whatever they can to evoke positive changes in each community. They often work with local charities and use their increasingly expanding platform as a promotional tool to help empower and support the communities. Will there ever be a point in time where they’re too big to keep up with the mindset that they started out with? Jason wholeheartedly thinks not. “If we ever end up at god-damn Wembley Stadium, we’re gonna bring a charity with us. It’s not gonna change, none of this shit is gonna change. Or, we’re gonna make sure that a part of the ticket goes to charity. That has to be or it’s not this project anymore.”
Community, Change, and Charity are the three pillars of Fever 333. It is a movement that is bigger than the three people who make up the band. It is bigger than all of us. What fascinates them is the level of investment that they are shown, as Jason explains “[the fact that people are] going deeper beyond the songs, beyond the demonstrations themselves and just really being part of a community and feeling like they’re actually facilitating their own outside of the band. People are creating communities of their own under that banner and that’s just incredible.”
There’s an element of using each other to rise up and build something better for the future that exists within their songs. Echoes of this are littered within their latest release ‘Kingdom’. “We really wanted to remind people of the momentum that we had when we first started this project […] also ‘we’re building castles while the world falls down’ – shit seems kinda crazy at the moment, you know what I mean, so especially us being here right now whilst Brexit has been pushed back again, you can just feel the tension. I mean, every night you hear someone yelling about it. So, remember you can build your own safe space if shit seems like it’s falling apart around you.
I wonder if it ever gets tedious for the trio to expel all of their energies on stage night after night, when on tour, and then also in their day to day lives? “No, because we just want freedom at the end of the day, right? Especially because where we’re from and culturally. I’m sure it does get tiring whether we know it or not but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s what we want” Jason offers, adding that these are things they would talk about regardless of being in the band or not. “We’re talking about Dave Chapelle’s new fucking special and why that affected so many people in a certain way; what it means to the culture. We’re talking about Boyz n the Hood, we’re talking about Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. We’re constantly trying to figure out what these mean in the bigger picture.”
Stephen adds a more personal perspective in that: “it’s more draining on my own time, when alone. When we’re on tour, I can talk to a room of people and that’s not draining, and it’s not even because it’s mostly like-minds, it’s like there’s a sense of pouring into each other when that happens. […] that kinda reassures what we’re doing, and I feel like a part of it has to do with the fact that we do play alone. It’s our show and we try to make it a safe space to talk about whatever in the venue, and outside of that, it is very hard. Whether that be at work, at a friend’s party or online – it’s impossible. That’s draining, this isn’t draining.”
By creating safe spaces for people to exist in, and as a band being very vocal about giving women more of a platform, Aric has noticed that their demonstrations are changing. “We feel like we’re seeing more women at shows which is awesome. If you get a whole room to cheer at the idea of taking care of women, it’s probably less likely that the people that aren’t thinking that way are going to go out and do some stupid shit because they know that the whole room has this whole perspective. Normally we don’t try to enforce our opinions, specifically our specific opinions on people, but that one we’ll force on whoever.”
Whether speaking about gun violence, police brutality, sexism or economic crises, Fever 333 have an opinion worth listening to. Jason doesn’t pretend to have all of the answers, but suggests ways to make existing a little bit easier: “I think that [we can start by] educating people on the ownership of their own means of protection as well as the ownership over their own community. I mean, you look at everything happening in the world. You’re so inundated and it’s like what am I meant to do? How do I do this.” In a way, everything is interlinked. By starting with the smaller problems, you can actually find ways to tackle the bigger things.
“Let’s talk about climate change and thinking the whole world is fucking tipped upside down. You can change that by, quite literally, changing your diet and by choosing to use certain utensils when you eat. I mean these are very local changes that can be made. So, moving from that – something quite global that seems unsurmountable – to something like gun and knife violence, to find the root of the problem and then sort of get hold of it; I think just educating people on how to cooperate in a society – how to cooperate in a community and locally.”
As artists whose album is littered with songs that cover a wealth of important topics, if they were to choose any song as their mission statement, Jason believes that despite the song being quite specific about certain issues, he would choose the three words ‘One Of Us’. Aric on the other hand would say ‘Made In America’ because “that concept applies pretty much everywhere we go in that a lot of people get so caught up in the moment that they’ve been there, that they forget what came before them and what helped build the opportunities that they have to be the person they are.”
Living in a world that is rapidly evolving, and existing in a musical space that defies genres and is progressively becoming more open to those who challenge the norm, what are Fever 333 doing to remain untouched by people who feel the need to compartmentalise and define everything? Aric thinks that “leading by example is the easiest way to get past it. If you see things have been stagnant per genre and you wanna move forward and find ways to combine them, the best way is to just do it yourself. All our favourite artists are the ones that found the gaps between the music they liked and then forged their own path, later doing something that defined or turned the genre into something new.”
Whilst 2019 has already been a monstrous year for Fever 333, the turn of the decade is going to see things growing bigger and better. As our time draws to a close, Jason’s eyes light up and he has a mischievous grin on his face as he holds his cards to his chest whilst explaining what the future holds for the band. “Everything that we wanna see whether that be ideologically, politically, socio-politically, emotionally, aesthetically, artistically, musically, we’re just gonna push it to another level. We’re already talking about it, you know what I’m saying. When you see us next, people are gonna go: Oh! They really did do that.”
Feature by Tyler Damara Kelly