Florida’s Nevertel blends the genres of metalcore, EDM, and hip hop to create a nu-metal rager with their latest album Start Again . It’s an album you’ll find yourself spinning at the gym, in the car, or in the background while you’re playing Dragon Ball Sparking Zero . To celebrate the release of this new album, I chatted with the band about the recording process, their love of shonen, and what’s next for the band. All questions have been answered collectively by the group. Tell me a bit about the new album, Start Again ! Nevertel : Start Again is our very first, true 13 track record. We wrote this record over the better part of four years together as a group, at first independently in our studio in Florida and then all over the place after signing our deal with Epitaph in 2024. It’s about breaking cycles, second chances, personal growth, and learning to start over when the world feels like it’s burning down around you. Produced by our very own Raul Lopez, with a few tracks co-produced by the very talented David Cowell, it’s the record we’ve always wanted to write as a band but could never fully realize until now. In many aspects in our life, including music, this is a new chance for us to reintroduce ourselves and redefine who we are, especially as a band. It took us the better part of almost 10 years to test ourselves and push ourselves creatively to find out who we really wanted to be and what we really wanted to say. This record isn’t us saying “forget what you knew about Nevertel,” but more so, “this is the future of Nevertel.” Was anime on or around while you were recording? Nevertel : Funny you ask that, it has become a ritual for us to always have anime on while writing. We grew up watching anime and having it playing in the background inspires how we write music. We had Dragon Ball Z on for some of the writing and recording sessions for this record. How did the collaboration with fellow anime fan band Sleep Theory come about? Did you talk about anime at all while you were working on the song? Nevertel : The collaboration with Sleep Theory was a long time coming, we’ve been good friends for a while and always knew we wanted to do something together. As we were writing the record we were showing them some music and we found the perfect song to collaborate on. As we were writing the topline for this song we were watching Dragon Ball Z the whole time, specifically the Buu Saga and we would stop writing occasionally and comment on what was happening in the show. It’s awesome we share the same love for anime and both grew up watching the same things. Can you tell me a little about your anime journey? How it started and where you are now? Are there genres you gravitate toward? Nevertel : We all started our anime journey like most people our age did in 2003 watching Dragon Ball Z when it aired on Toonami. I (Jeremy) would watch it every weekend and I was fascinated by the animations and the music. That led me into watching other anime on Toonami like Pokémon , Inuyasha , Hamtaro , and Yu Yu Hakusho . Alec would also watch Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood around this time. We gravitated to a lot of martial arts focused action based anime, mainly because Dragon Ball Z was our gateway to it all. I haven’t gotten super deep into some of the more obscure anime, but some of the more recent ones I've gotten into in the past few years are My Hero Academia , Death Note , Attack on Titan , Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba , One Punch Man , and of course the new Dragon Ball Super . Did you get into anime and music around the same time? Did one inform the other at all? Nevertel : Most of us definitely got into anime before we got into doing music. I always listened to music religiously as a kid at this time, but I didn’t get into music until 2006 when I was 13 and got my first guitar. But as the years went on, anime definitely influenced my music taste. Dragon Ball Z movies that included bands like Disturbed, Drowning Pool, Breaking Point. Eventually with the rise of AMV’s on YouTube, I discovered even more music and some of my favorite bands. Rock music and anime always felt like it went hand in hand at the time and it has been my dream since I was a kid to write a song that would be used as an anime intro or be featured in an episode. Dragon Ball Z being in the studio while writing and recording music definitely influenced our song “Criminal,” which in my opinion, sounds like the perfect anime intro song. Have you learned anything about music or art from watching anime? Nevertel : We definitely learned how much more impactful music and anime can be when they were closely together to make you feel something that either one couldn’t do alone. From intense fighting scenes with aggressive rock tracks that make you want to get up and break something, to more somber emotional moments with emotional tracks that have you on the verge of tears, they all hit so much harder when paired together. For this record, we actually wrote our song “Good Intentions” after being inspired by the show Arcane . The worldbuilding and character development was so good in the show and the music had such a distinct style that we wanted to try something in that realm with a story from a character that spoke to us. The mad scientist “Singed” aka Corin Reveck, is portrayed as this villain that does unspeakable things for the purpose of “knowledge” and scientific research. You then find out the real motivation for his actions in Season 2, and I felt like that reveal was done so well and something that explained his behavior a lot more. He did all of the wrong things but for the right reasons, and in the end I feel like we’ve all done that at some point to varying degrees. So that’s what we wrote “Good Intentions” about. Did you grow up watching AMVs? Did that help you get further into heavy music? Nevertel : Absolutely! As I mentioned in one of our previous answers, AMV’s were another key part in our influences as musicians. Watching my favorite bands' songs edited to some of my favorite animes with moments and scenes that fit the tone of the song helped me visually connect more to the message of the songs and have a deeper appreciation for the lyrics. Especially those songs that didn’t have music videos, which often was the case for bands as music video budgets were insanely high. AMV’s were also a key part in our band finding our audience while we were just starting out as an independent band. Fans of our music made them for our songs and it was just an insanely cool full circle moment for us to see as musicians who grew up connecting with and discovering new bands in this same way. Why do you think anime fans are drawn to heavy music and vice versa? Nevertel : I think because, especially for action and martial arts focused anime, it helps heighten the experience of those intense moments on screen. It’s art that compels art. I truly think anime inspired a generation of kids to discover rock music because of how popular it became airing nationally on Cartoon Network. I firmly believe my music journey would have been very different if I wasn’t watching anime as a kid in the 2000s and discovering bands like Linkin Park, Breaking Benjamin, Disturbed, and Drowning Pool. Image by Bryan Kirks If you could have any character from any anime join the band, who would it be and what would they do? Nevertel : Seeing as how we have a lot of production and synth parts that are in the backtracks live for us, I think it’d be cool to have Trunks from Dragon Ball Z as our synthesizer/keyboard player. He’s a genius like his mother, Bulma, but also has a bit of his father’s drive and pride. I think he’d get really nerdy about it and make his own custom synth patches and overall be a good hang. What is up next for the band? Nevertel : Well our new album Start Again just dropped so for the next year or two we'll be touring hard on these new songs. We're planning to do our first US headline tour next year at some point so we're super excited to see where this album takes us. Is there anything you’d like to plug or say to the Crunchyroll audience out there who may not be familiar with your music? Nevertel : Our debut 13 track full length record with Epitaph, Start Again is out now on all platforms. We just put out our collaboration track with Sleep Theory called “Break The Silence” with a music video on YouTube featuring both full bands! After that, the Start Again headline tour officially kicks off in the EU/UK on October 20th until the 30th. We’ll be playing almost every song off the record so you won’t want to miss that. And finally wrapping up the year, we hit the road with Memphis May Fire in November from the 17th until December the 16th. That pretty much wraps up our year so far! We hope to see some new and familiar faces this year on all of our tours.
