Honey Revenge: “Bands who don’t provide safe spaces are f*cking up big time”

“When I first met her, she terrified me!”

Donny Lloyd remembers the moment they met bandmate Devin Papadol well. An 18-year-old kid fresh out of high-school, they’d travelled across the United States from Georgia to Los Angeles following an Instagram conversation about joining a band. When they walked in the room with Devin for the first time, they couldn’t help but be overcome by shyness when faced with someone who in many ways was their complete opposite. Devin, a naturally extroverted frontperson, had plenty of experience in the music industry and had been burned by past projects before, but once they and Donny sat down and started bouncing ideas off one another, the latter slowly began to come out of their shell. It was start of a special relationship, and the birth of a new band: Honey Revenge.

The pop-rock duo released their much anticipated debut album Retrovision last Friday. A spiky run of 12 tracks that are grounded in pop-punk but lean on R&B, alt-pop and metalcore throughout, it’s a vibrant record packed with the personality of its creators, and its entry into the world is a proud moment for Devin in particular. Having met Donny at a time when she was feeling defeated by the cut-throat environment that comes with trying to make it in music, Retrovision represents a spiritual and artistic rebirth for a musician determined to make her mark.

“I started off the process of making this album not in a good headspace,” Devin says. “I was feeling defeated by the dynamic of being in a band, self-funding everything and just wondering if it was ever going to work out. That feeling bleeds through into several tracks like our singles Airhead and Rerun. But as we started to get some acknowledgment from the scene and people became stoked on the first songs we dropped, things started to feel a little more hopeful, light-hearted and sarcastic. It all ties together as an album that’s ultimately about enjoying life.”

Crediting the influence of Donny just as much as the success of Honey Revenge’s early singles for helping drag her out of the mire, Devin is full of admiration for her bandmate’s “endless positivity” – indeed, a beaming smile never leaves their face throughout this chat with Kerrang! – but so too their musical input, an outlook that Donny describes as “paint with all colours”.

“My main thing when writing songs is writing music that I really want to listen to,” Donny explains. “I consume so much music and want to use all the colours on my palette, like on Airhead where the metalcore part of my brain comes alive in the verses. I’ll write in any way, as long as I like what I’m hearing – it doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.”

“I don’t want us to get pegged as one thing and be put in a corner where we can’t grow,” Devin adds. “This isn’t just a pop-punk band. It’s influenced by my first introductions to music like the ‘Disney rock’ of Hannah Montana and Demi Lovato – I don’t care what anyone says, those are some punk-rock chicks – and the edgier pop of P!nk and Katy Perry. Then, there’s the influence of Paramore and the metalcore scene too. Ever since this exploded in a way we weren’t expecting, our outlook has just been, ‘Fuck it, we’re going to put out whatever we feel like and hopefully people like it.’ That’s what’s worked for us.”

The creditable musical approach of Honey Revenge is one undoubted reason for their early success, with Devin seeking to emulate the likes of You Me At Six and Pierce The Veil in becoming a shapeshifting “chameleon” band who can exist in both heavier and more melodic realms, but it’s the outlook Devin and Donny have when it comes to their fans and the alternative music scene more broadly that’s ensuring more and more people are joining their ranks. The pair are determined to foster a safe space around Honey Revenge, and it starts by setting the right example.

“Concerts were my safe space growing up – it was the only place where I felt like I could properly breathe,” Donny says. “It helps that when you walk into our show, one of us is non-binary and the other looks like Devin, I play my sparkly pink guitar… it’s very apparent you’re not seeing a bunch of straight white guys up there. But more than anything, it’s just being good people. We try to set the standard. To be honest, I think you have to try pretty hard not to…”

“Our fans are just hot!” Devin adds. “You see people at our shows, and you can just tell they’re Honey Revenge fans by looking at them. Expression has always been so important to me. I was a dork in high-school, I was a choir kid who wanted coloured hair and piercings in an environment where it was all about uniform and looking like a group. That taught me to go the other way and full express myself. We’re young people, we’re changing and growing – Donny has grown so much in their confidence and self-expression since being in this band – and we want to give people a space at our shows where they can do that safely and comfortably. Music is unity, and I think bands who don’t take advantage of that chance to give fans that safe space are fucking up big time.”

Part of a wave of bands including K! faves Scene Queen and Pinkshift, Honey Revenge are determined that their art plays a part in continuing to push the conversation around representation and openness in the music scene. And whatever their next play is in that regard, you can bet on one thing: Devin and Donny will do it together, smiles on their faces, being true to who they are.

“The biggest goal of Honey Revenge is to make people feel good about themselves,” Devin concludes. “If people are listening to our music and coming to our shows and it helps them feel comfortable in who they are, that’s good enough for us.”

Retrovision is out now via Thriller. Honey Revenge will play their debut UK show, at London’s Camden Assembly, on December 7.

Read this next:

• Scene Queen: “If there’s not a door that’s open for me, I have the full ability to kick it open”
• 10 reasons why you need Pinkshift in your life
• Pierce The Veil: “We’ve built this whole world where we can do anything creatively, and it’s so satisfying and comforting”