Interview and Text: Hector Rivas
‘Electron’ are not a band that arrived overnight. ‘Jason Payne’ and ‘Joanna Hyde’, the London-based duo originally from Portugal, have been quietly building something genuine, learning their craft, growing their community, and refusing to cut corners. With their second album “Is This Worth Living For?”, released October 2 and produced by ‘Romesh Dodangoda’, they have taken what feels like a significant leap forward. The record is heavy, immersive, and uncomfortably honest, channeling the experience of feeling detached in a world that seems increasingly distant. It features guest vocals from ‘Skindred’s’ ‘Benji Webbe’ on the punishing nu metal track “Taken,” a collaboration that came together in one of those rare, unforced ways that tend to produce the best results.
‘Jason Payne’ spoke to All Metal about how the band came to be, what drives them creatively, and why authenticity matters more to them than virality.
The story of ‘Electron’ begins not in a rehearsal room but in a university lecture hall. Payne and ‘Hyde’ both moved to London from Portugal at different points, not knowing each other, and met while studying music. By the time the band took shape, they had already spent years trying to find themselves musically, jamming with different people and working through solo and collaborative projects. The timing felt right. “This band formed around the time that we were both doing our master’s degree. We had projects to work on, developing pieces, doing release strategies as well as studying songwriting, performance, and the music business. It just felt natural.”
The decision to build their career in London rather than Portugal was a deliberate one. Breaking through as a young metalcore band with no industry connections in Portugal felt close to impossible, and London offered something different: venues, opportunities, people to meet, and room to grow. “London is a great place for opportunities, to meet people, to play a lot. There’s lots of venues. So you have time and you can forge a path of growth, which was very important for us.” That growth is audible across their releases. From their debut album to their EP and now to “Is This Worth Living For?”, each step represents a conscious leap forward, not just technically but in terms of how clearly they can express what they actually want to say. For Payne, technique is secondary to connection. “What makes it good is how you connect and how you deliver, and if you have a message or something to say, you have to be able to say it.”
That philosophy shapes the album from top to bottom. The influences feeding into “Is This Worth Living For?” are broader than music alone. Payne has been reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” drawn to its existentialist themes. He and ‘Hyde’ visit art galleries, standing in front of paintings that reveal something new on each return visit. And then there is life itself, with all its friction. The album is rooted in what Payne describes as a culture of enforced perfection, the relentless pressure of social media to present a version of yourself that doesn’t exist. “We can’t get away with social media. It’s everywhere. Everybody has it, and it influences us positively and negatively.” The album pushes back against that. Every song is a confrontation with the pressure to conform, the weight of solitude, and the gap between the life being sold and the one actually being lived.
Producing the record with ‘Romesh Dodangoda’, known for his work with ‘Nova Twins’ and ‘Bring Me The Horizon’, was a relationship that began with their previous EP. What Payne values most about working with him is what he doesn’t try to do. “What I like about working with him is he doesn’t try to change us, the way we want to sound. The most important thing is we don’t want to be perfect. We want to play well, of course, and deliver well, but we wanted it to feel natural when people listen to the record and listen to us live. I don’t want there to be a massive gap. It needs to reflect who we are.” The album includes live tracking of certain songs precisely to illustrate how close the studio and live versions actually are. The gap, Payne insists, is smaller than people might expect. And that is entirely the point.
One of the album’s most striking moments is “Taken,” which features guest vocals from ‘Benji Webbe’ of ‘Skindred’. The collaboration was not planned from the start. The song almost didn’t make the record at all. When they went into the studio, it wasn’t finished, and Payne wasn’t sure it was ready. He made the call to record it anyway, trusting a groove in the drums and guitars that felt too strong to leave behind. The instrumental was recorded without a clear sense of what the song would become. Then something unexpected happened. “I don’t know why, but I started hearing his voice. It was funny, and my bandmates started hearing him as well. Everybody was like, it would be cool to have Benji here. It feels like it has a bit of his vibe.” They reached out, and ‘Webbe’ invested in the song as if it were his own, sending multiple vocal ideas, rewriting lines, and pushing the track further than it had been. “He kept sending me ideas over the phone. What if I do this? He gave me five different choices. He really put in the effort, and I think that’s why it worked.”
‘Electron’s’ approach to social media is just as deliberate as their approach to recording. Payne is vocal about his frustration with the performative culture that dominates band content online, the rehearsal clips with staged reactions, the fake sounds, the manufactured spontaneity. “We try to oppose that culture of things that do not exist but are being sold to us as if they were real. Rehearsals aren’t like that.” If they film a rehearsal, they keep the rehearsal sound, even if it’s imperfect. The same principle extends to their entire public presence. “We can’t build a career pretending to be something we’re not, because in the medium or long term, we will quit. You can’t be something you’re not and expect to feel happy.”
Despite being fully independent, without label funding or industry backing, the reception to “Is This Worth Living For?” exceeded anything the band had experienced before. The album charted at number 23, a result that genuinely surprised them. Vinyl and CD orders came in faster than expected. Ticket demand for upcoming shows grew. “It never crossed our minds that releasing a record as an independent artist, still building a fan base, we could appear in the charts. So I think compared to any other work, yes, this has been more successful, but we need to keep building. We’re treating this as the start. This is the foundation for what comes next.”
That foundation includes an expanding live presence. The band is working through UK headline dates, covering ground from Scotland to Wales, before heading to Europe. In Germany, they are set to play their first show at the Mosh festival in April. Portugal remains on the radar, with a fanbase there that they feel a responsibility to return to. Japan and the Sunset Strip are on the dream list. But the near-term focus is clear and deliberate: build presence, play everywhere possible, and forge real connections rather than chasing shortcuts.
For Payne, the advice he would give to any band starting out is rooted in his own experience of arriving in a city where he knew no one. “My biggest advice is meet as many people as you can, musicians, agents, but do not expect to work with anyone straight away. You can’t forge connections if you are only thinking about what you want to get out of it. It needs to be more genuine.” He speaks about fans in the same terms: not as ticket buyers to be converted, but as a community to be built, listened to, and looked after. “Your fans are the reason you will have a job you want. You need to build a community. Pay attention to your fans, talk with them.”
As for what comes next musically, Payne is already writing. The next record is being treated as a second debut, a deliberate reset from the starting point that “Is This Worth Living For?” has established. There will likely be more keys, more experimentation with electronics, and possibly a step in a more stripped-back direction at some point. The only rule is that there are no rules. “We never know how the next work will sound. We don’t want to be a band that keeps replicating what we have done in the past. I just want the music to reflect us and the moment that we are writing it.”
“Is This Worth Living For?” is out now.
Find more on ‘Electron’.
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