MALLAVORA - On courage, catharsis, and What If Better Never Comes
- Mia Gailey
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
There’s a particular kind of courage in building momentum slowly. No viral overnight explosion. No manufactured rebrand. Just years of graft, evolution and quiet defiance. For Bristol-based alt-metal band MALLAVORA, the recent surge of festivals, radio sessions, fashion week appearances and mounting press attention doesn’t feel like a breakthrough. It feels like the groundwork is finally beginning to breathe.
“We still feel really small,” vocalist Jessica Douek says with disarming honesty. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve arrived anywhere. It feels like it’s just starting.” That perspective makes sense when you trace the band’s origins back to 2015, when guitarist Larry Sobieraj first conceived the project. Years of writing, refining and reshaping followed before Jessica joined in 2019. Since then, the sound has grown heavier, more intentional and deeply personal. What began as a hard-rock leaning project has become something far more expansive — and far more vulnerable. It’s a band built quietly, patiently, and now beginning to reach outward without compromise.
At the centre of Mallavora’s current chapter is their debut album, What If Better Never Comes? — a title that doesn’t posture or dramatise. It confronts.
The record grew from Larry’s experience of developing long COVID in 2022, an illness that forced a sudden recalibration of daily life and future plans. Writing wasn’t intended to become an album. It was survival. Instrumentals formed first — raw, instinctive, written without roadmap or expectation.“We didn’t know we were making a record,” Jessica explains. “It was just a way of dealing with something overwhelming.”
Ironically, the title track came first. Only later did its question reveal itself as the thematic spine. When Jessica began writing vocals, the phrase surfaced almost involuntarily: What If Better Never Comes? “It’s the thing you’re scared to say,” she says. “When your health changes. When your life shifts in a way you can’t undo. That fear underneath everything — what if this is it?”
The first time they listened back, both of them cried. Not because it was dramatic. Because it was true. That honesty runs through the entire record. Jessica brought her own lived experiences — chronic illness, disability, neurodivergence — into the writing. The album doesn’t feel like a confession; it feels like a conversation. Instrumentals and vocals operate as equal emotional forces. Strip one away, and the tension would still hum.
Sonically, alongside bassist Ellis James and drummer Sam Brownlow, MALLAVORA move through progressive builds, melodic restraint and sudden, tectonic heaviness. The weight never feels performative. The intricacy never drifts into indulgence. Every shift serves something internal.
Their influences mirror that duality. Larry’s foundation is firmly metal — the scale of OPETH, the force of GOJIRA, the aggression of LAMB OF GOD. Jessica’s musical upbringing was different: 60s rock and soul filled her childhood home — ELVIS PRESLEY, CHUCK BERRY, SAM COOKE. Metal didn’t enter her life until 2019. She didn’t begin screaming until 2022.
“I kept thinking the songs needed it,” she laughs. “So I figured I’d learn.”
That instinct — to step toward what feels necessary rather than comfortable — defines MALLAVORA’s identity. Comparisons to SPIRITBOX or LOATHE make sense, and listeners often note flashes of SYSTEM OF A DOWN in their tonal pivots. Jessica cites MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE as a touchstone for emotional intensity. But MALLAVORA aren’t chasing genre alignment. They’re chasing emotional accuracy.
They no longer write riffs because they sound good. They write because something needs to leave the body. That urgency was unmistakable on their 2023 single Disorder, a blistering reflection on how disabled people are treated and perceived. Jessica worried it might be too unfiltered. Instead, it connected globally. Messages poured in from listeners who felt understood for the first time. Vulnerability, they realised, wasn’t weakness. It was infrastructure.
With that connection came responsibility. MALLAVORA made a clear decision: they would not headline venues that weren’t wheelchair accessible. It’s a stance that complicates booking routes, particularly for an emerging band, but it isn’t negotiable. “If our audience can’t physically enter the space,” Jessica says, “then what’s the point?” For a time, she herself used a wheelchair. The barriers weren’t abstract. Advocacy, for the band, isn’t branding. It’s a lived experience translated into policy.
The album carries that same refusal to soften uncomfortable truths. Yes, it circles fear. But it also pulses with defiance — a quiet insistence on continuing regardless of outcome. When asked to describe the record in one word, Jessica pauses. “Transformative.”
It’s ambitious, but not inflated. MALLAVORA aren’t building toward a spike. They’re building something durable — rooted in lived reality, sharpened by persistence, sustained by intention. On the 8th of May, they’ll headline The Exchange in Bristol — the largest show of their career so far, performing the album in full. It’s a venue they once supported at. A familiar room, now reframed.
Progress, for MALLAVORA, isn’t spectacle. It’s an accumulation.
The question remains: what if better never comes?
Their response is quiet, but unshakable.
Create anyway.
Words: Mia Gailey
Cover Photo: Derek Bremner
Photos: Simon Arinze
Cover Design: Robert Halls
With Thanks To: Church Road Records, Since Always Press and Sammy Urwin
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