The Kate Effect have lasted 15 years because the basic reason never changed: they like being in a room together and making noise. Vocalist Lukas Villiger says the band are first and foremost a live band, and that comes through in the way he talks about Worth Living For. The new EP is not trying to make The Kate Effect sound more serious than they are. It keeps the breakdowns, the fast parts, the choruses and the 2000s metalcore backbone, while leaving space for the anger and exhaustion in the lyrics.
That mix is the band. Lukas can talk about depression, fascism, climate collapse and social inequality, then turn around and mention bad puns, stupid videos and Hawaiian shirts on stage. None of that feels like a contradiction to him. The people in the band are allowed to be ridiculous. The music is not.
Worth Living For lands somewhere in that gap. It is heavy music made by people who still find joy in playing it, even while writing about a world that gives them very few reasons to be cheerful. For AFRICA.ROCKS, Lukas spoke about the new EP, the band’s live identity, working with producer Sascha Maksymov, and why The Kate Effect still exist after all these years.
“we feel that a vital part of dealing with the ever-worsening shitshow around the globe, from genocides, climate change, social and economic inequalities and the resurgence of fascism, to name only the tip of the iceberg, is to not give in to hopelessness.”
“Worth Living For” is a huge title emotionally. What made it feel like the right banner for this chapter of The Kate Effect?
The short answer is that we feel “Worth Living For”, as a song, serves as a great introduction to and overview of The Kate Effect. The long answer is that there are three reasons for choosing this particular song as our title track.
First, there is the music. While we are extremely happy with and proud of how every song on our new EP turned out, “Worth Living For” feels like it really represents The Kate Effect in 2026. There are fast parts, melodic parts, breakdowns and a catchy chorus that we hope people will enjoy singing with us as much as we enjoy playing it live.
Secondly, the lyrics bridge the gap between the somewhat fatalistic frustration and anger about the state of the world, which is a mainstay in our lyrics and in metalcore as a whole, and the few glimpses of hope and optimism that I managed to pull out of the depression swamp I have instead of a brain.
Those brighter parts are something I have found myself writing more and more about the longer the band exists. It is not because the world is getting better, because it REALLY is not, or because I have a more optimistic view of what is happening around me, because I REALLY do not. It is because we feel that a vital part of dealing with the ever-worsening shitshow around the globe, from genocides, climate change, social and economic inequalities and the resurgence of fascism, to name only the tip of the iceberg, is to not give in to hopelessness.
While it may feel like there is very little immediate meaningful change we can make as single people, social and political movements still start at the individual level. I realise it is a bit of a platitude, but whatever it is you want to change, it really does start with you.
Finally, this movement from the macro to the micro is the third reason why “Worth Living For” felt like an apt title for our new EP. Leaving aside all the grandiosity that I am trying to evoke in the lyrics, and going back to the very beginning of my ramblings, music in general, and playing in this band in particular, is an incredibly important part of our lives. Having the privilege and opportunity to express ourselves creatively really is something worth living for.
You have been described as mixing melodic death metal, thrash, hardcore and metalcore. On this EP, where did you feel yourselves pushing that blend the furthest?
Generally, we do not really plan what our releases are going to sound like. For us, finding out where we want to go musically is a vital aspect of our creative journey as a band. This also means that pushing boundaries is not really a factor for us, since we do not impose creative boundaries on ourselves in the first place. I know that is what every band in the history of ever has been saying forever, but one of the coolest things about not being a professional band in the strictest sense of the term, meaning we do not have to make our living from music, is that we get to do whatever the fuck we want. If we wanted to release a fusion jazz album or a twelve-hour compilation of farts, there would be no one there to stop us.
That said, we obviously all have a similar taste in music, or rather, a similar taste in what we like to play, so the resulting output has so far always veered towards the 2000s metalcore side of things. Writing this, I realise that I did not really answer the question, so I will just throw in “Impulse”, the fourth song on the EP, since that is probably the most diverse song. Question answered? Yes? Great. Moving on.
The band has been active since 2011, which gives this release a lot of history behind it. What does Worth Living For say about who The Kate Effect are now compared with the band that first started out in Zürich?
Honestly: not that much. Not that we have not grown as a band. We did, literally: we are five people now. And not that we have not worked on our skills, performance or sound. We have. It has been fifteen years, after all. At its core, The Kate Effect has always been, and always will be, a band that exists purely because we love playing music together. That is the one thing that has not changed. If anything, Worth Living For encapsulates this idea and cranks it up to eleven. We have never had more fun than we are having right now.
Metalinside’s preview said the new EP takes your sound “to a new level”. Was there a specific song, riff, chorus or studio moment where you felt that leap happening?
Yes and no. There definitely were a few moments where we felt we had gone to a different level, but that happened way after we hit the studio. During the demo and pre-production stages, we thought we would be playing one or maybe two of the new songs live, since we felt like most of the new material would not translate to a live setting. After Sascha Maksymov, our producer, sent back the first initial mixes, that changed on the spot, and we immediately adapted our live set and added half the EP to it. So I guess we realised the leap was happening when we heard it ourselves. I am sure this says something about our opinion of ourselves, but we will save that for our therapists.
“Metal, and to a lesser degree hardcore, is, at least according to us, about expressing yourself without any regard for compromise or mass appeal.”
The Kate Effect have always seemed to balance heaviness with a sense of fun and live-party chaos. How do you translate the more personal weight of a title like “Worth Living For” into something that still works on stage?
There is no translation necessary. What you aptly call “personal weight” is as much an integral part of The Kate Effect as our deliberately stupid videos, my dumb jokes and the Hawaiian shirts we wear on stage. Or to put it differently: we do not take ourselves seriously at all, and we love to embrace the inherent silliness of being in a metal band when it comes to us as people. At the same time, there is no room for irony in metal music, so we take that part incredibly seriously.
While it may seem like this would create some sort of tension, it really does not. Metal, and to a lesser degree hardcore, is, at least according to us, about expressing yourself without any regard for compromise or mass appeal. And, to repeat myself again, because that is what I do best, The Kate Effect is, more than anything, a way for us five people to give sonic life to the joy and love that we experience every time we get to play music together.
Stream Worth Living For on Bandcamp.
