Q&A: VENUS GRRRLS Ignite a Fierce Queer Love Story in “Eve”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA☆
Misha Warren
VENUS GRRRLS LET DESIRE SPEAK LOUDEST — Alt-rock coven VENUS GRRRLS channel the volatility and clarity of a bisexual awakening into their new single “Eve,” a track that is as confrontational as it is cathartic. Direct and deliberate, it captures the moment desire shifts from admiration into something real and refuses to soften that realization.
“Eve” is driven by tension. Industrial textures grind beneath lush guitars and synths, building toward a sharp release of angular grunge riffage. The arrangement mirrors the emotional core of the song: a push-and-pull between confusion and certainty, restraint and expression. It’s a controlled escalation that lands with impact rather than excess.
Vocalist GK explains that the track was born from a “bi panic crash out” over Gillian Anderson, but the concept extends far beyond its origin point.
“‘Eve’ was written after our guitarist had a bi panic crash out over Gillian Anderson,” vocalist GK says. “With the use of industrial textures juxtaposed with lush guitars and synths, we wanted to really communicate the duality of a bisexual awakening, and how it is as much a beautiful thing as it is turbulent. It was deeply important for us to write a song that conveyed true romantic attraction towards women rather than a platonic appreciation. They are entirely different, which is a pivotal message to the song. ‘Eve’ is the love child of Nine Inch Nails and Fleetwood Mac, who grew up to be deeply passionate about women.”
Based across Leeds, Newcastle, and Liverpool, VENUS GRRRLS have built their presence with their signature goth-grunge soundscapes and confessional and evocative storytelling.
VENUS GRRRLS sit down with Luna Collective for an exclusive interview that pulls back the curtain on “Eve,” tracing its origins from chaotic flashes of inspiration to its fully realized sonic and visual form. The band dives into the symbolism behind the music video, touches on their coven, and reflects on the femme-fronted artists who shaped their path, citing influences like Fleetwood Mac and Hole.
Misha Warren
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
ELIZA: There's lots of things that go into it. We go for a goth and grunge-inspired sound, very into the 90s, which I think reflects in the music at the moment. As a group of people, we're all from really different musical backgrounds, which is really nice. It means that we've got influences from goth, metal, indie-pop, like a bit of everything.
LUNA: What inspires you to push boundaries within your sound? Are there any specific experiences, artists, or moments that have encouraged you to explore new musical territories?
HANNAH: At the minute, I wouldn't say it's a general thing, but we have been noticing just how many pop artists are pushing the boundaries with more rock influenced music. At the minute, it's not so much an inspiration musically, but inspiration in the way that pop is having its moment with rock music again.
LUNA: Your newest single “Eve” captures the beauty of yearning. Can you walk us through the emotional starting point of the song? What inspired its themes and emotions?
ELIZA: I'm an X Files fanatic, and I just fancy Gillian Anderson so much that I had a bit of a mental breakdown. Happens to the best. We've been listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails as well. Industrial is another one of those things that we share across us, so I just had a seedling idea for it. It was 4 a.m. and I was on my notes app when I couldn't sleep.
HANNAH: We just took it to the studio and developed the riff and the arrangement of it a bit more. For most people, if I start writing something at 4 a.m. I wake up the next day and it’s terrible, but with Eliza, if you really tire her out, work her to near exhaustion, then she'll stay up. She'll write something at 4 a.m. and it's always a great song for whatever reason.
ELIZA: Every time I have some time, I want to do some writing and it will turn out great. It never happens. When I'm so tired, I stop thinking too much. At 4 a.m. it all just comes together and flows naturally. I think we really enjoyed the process and just got to let loose a little bit. It was a nice step for us, just exploring, a sign that we wanted to come.
HANNAH: It feels more authentic as well. It's less produced in a way, because I feel like sometimes, especially like as a rock band, also just as a bunch of women in a studio, sometimes I feel like it can be quite a fine line, trying to stay authentic to the style of music you actually want to write, and avoiding that becoming too polished by external influences, good and bad. Sometimes, it can end up being like that, and it can feel a bit further away from what you originally had in mind for the song to sound like. With “Eve,” I feel like we really managed to just hit the nail on the head with exactly the type of sound that we wanted. Like, Eliza said, Nine Inch Nail’s drum machines and Type O Negative draw in this line, that's more where we want to be in our sonic sphere.
LUNA: “Eve” is accompanied by a music video. What did you set out to capture and how was your experience filming it?
ELIZA: We had a budget of about five quid and a dream. Especially now, I feel like this is something I find myself saying in every single interview, but we're really living in unprecedented times, so we actually set out to make more visualizers for short form content, because that's really what we are asked to focus on more often. We wanted to get lots of old curtains and we shot it in this old Victorian factory in Manchester that's been turned into a bunch of studios, so we just set up in there and did some semi-erotic fruit eating that's loaded with subtext. I got some grapefruit and just made it happen.
HANNAH: We accidentally got more content than we thought we would, because like Eliza said, we were just going to make a visualizer for the purposes of reels and TikTok. Then we actually just managed to get a lip sync throughout. It was all very, very sapphic. We just managed to cobble together a real, proper music video, just by pure accident. A lot of thought went into the set design and the clothing, but coming out with a full length music video was a happy accident.
LUNA: “Eve” arrives at a time of rising right-wing discourse. What does it mean to you to be making unapologetically queer, femme-fronted rock music right now?
ELIZA: It's so easy for me to forget that the world isn't all the people you surround yourself with, because for so long, my community has been alternative people and queer people. It feels like the most easy, natural thing in the world, in my personal space, to express those sentiments. Then you do have a moment of putting it out into the world realizing there's actually some people that aren't like us out there, but I think you just have to throw these things into the wind. The people that need to hear a sentiment like that expressed. It's for them. They'll find it. We'll talk to them. I think, especially with a song like that, it's supposed to be very celebratory. It’s utopian and hedonistic. It's supposed to be something that's nice and indulgent.
HANNAH: It’s supposed to be a safe space away from all of that. Like Eliza said, our circles are very much musicians, left wing, queer people, feminists, all of the people kind of like us. It's only really when you have a video that accidentally goes viral on TikTok and it attracts the rising forces of the right wing, where it's like, oh yes, there's a lot of people who find this offensive and don't agree with it. You forget that people like that are out there. That's us flying the little torch, I suppose, the little light in this darkness that seems to be happening in the wider world at the moment.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
ELIZA: There's so many things that I think about being in a band as women, certainly for myself, I think for the other guys as well, so much of it is about putting myself on this pedestal. I think it's important to just visibly do what you want to do. The more people that see that, it becomes normal, and it becomes something they can do as well.
HANNAH: There have always been women in the music industry, just not platformed in the way that we would have hoped them to be. Another few examples of female-led / solo artists that we love are Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac and Siouxsie and the Banshees. All of these women have had such a profound effect on me and the rest of the girls as well, but only really in adulthood. When I was younger, I didn't really have the knowledge to look deeper into the internet and find all these female creatives that have existed all that time. I think the dawn of the internet, for all of its bad things that there are, sometimes the good thing is, is that there are people just like us, loads of female bands coming up at the minute, and female fronted bands who are really doing well. The next generation of female musicians having access to that at their fingertips is really exciting, because that's something we didn't have growing up.
ELIZA: Because of that, I can't wait to get really old, because I feel like, where are the granny bands? There's some, not as many, though. I feel like, where women are still very underrepresented in that, there's octogenarians that are still selling out arenas — more older women, more grannies on stage.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
HANNAH: We've had a really exciting time of the year so far. We supported a band called Nova Twins. They're just phenomenal musicians and such lovely people. We were lucky enough to go on a UK tour with them, so we came off that and went straight into recording. We were away in Spain for a week recording. Obviously, we'll be keeping people posted about that as soon as we can talk about it properly. But we've been very busy writing and recording things, and we've got a whole summer's worth of festivals coming up, both in the UK and across the continent in Europe. I'm feeling pretty sweet about things right now.
ELIZA: I think the new music we just finished making is the next progression from “Eve.” I think it feels like the most us thing we've ever done. We had an amazing experience, some 16 hour a day, sleep deprived madness, but it was great. We’re really excited to be able to actually share that and have it out in the world eventually.
HANNAH: We've definitely got a few European shows announced, and lots more to announce as well. It's just exciting to see the world again. It's a good time to be in Venus Grrrls. We've got little groups on Instagram and TikTok where our coven can jump in and find out info earlier about what we're getting up to and to get on the mailing list as well.
Misha Warren
