‘In rock you kinda have these stereotypes; you need to be cool, you need to know all the band names, all the fucking guitar names, you need to mosh, and when you do, you need to do it hard and hurt yourself… that’s not our scene,’ says Amy Love, singer and guitarist in Nova Twins. ‘If you come to see us and it’s your first rock concert, there’s no judgement. If you do know all the bands, great! But also if you don’t, let us introduce you to it. It’s the point scoring that’s the problem. If you wanna mosh hard, great. Also, if you’re not here for rock, you just like the vibes, then great. If you wanna twerk at the moshpit, great!’

‘Female nerds are welcome too! If you wanna nerd out, you can,’ adds bassist Georgia South.

Nova Twins are talking over Zoom from their homes in East Sussex, charging up their batteries during a bit of calm before the storm. It’s the week before they release their third album Parasites And Butterflies and head off on tour, starting with a live show in New York, then their biggest headline European tour to date, ending up where it all began in London. The duo of Love and South (not twins, in fact, but best friends) have been making music together for over a decade. Love grew up in Essex, and South lived an hour away in Lewisham, south-east London. The girls met as teenagers when Love dated South’s brother. They clicked over their obsession with music. ‘I went to a School Of Rock summer school when I was like eight,’ South remembers with a sheepish grin.

In 2014 they started performing together, briefly calling themselves BRAATS before settling on Nova Twins. They gigged around grassroots venues and grabbed new fans by the throat with their punky first single ‘Bassline Bitch’ and its snarled chorus, ‘we’ll slap that look right off your face’. Three EPs followed and, around that time, Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine called them ‘the best band you’ve never heard of’. They put out their first album Who Are The Girls? in 2020 but things shifted up a gear with their second album Supernova, which was nominated for the 2022 Mercury Prize, and for BRIT Awards in the Best Group and Best Rock/Alternative Act categories. When their alt-rock style didn’t fit the criteria for the MOBOs, honouring achievements in ‘music of black origin’, the girls wrote an open letter to the awards, asking why rock and alternative POC artists weren’t represented. It worked: in 2022 a Best Alternative Music Category was introduced, with Nova Twins announced as nominees. 

Their genre-blending sound draws a broad audience; they are known for their DIY aesthetic and punk rage but serve their headbanging nu-metal with hooky pop fixings and a riotous party vibe.  ‘We grew up listening to all sorts,’ says Love. ‘I started with Whitney Houston, a lot of Toni Braxton, then I got into rockier stuff like New York Dolls and MC5. I loved vocalists that sounded a bit different, like Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush. Plus I was growing up in Essex so there was UK garage.’ South chimes in: ‘For me it was Stevie Wonder and Mariah Carey in the early days, then I fell in love with N.E.R.D. and Timbaland’s production of Missy Elliott. We both love Beyoncé, and growing up in London there was grime and people like Skepta. There was always this huge mash of different things.’

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the new album is a bombastic, sometimes queasy, uneasy blend of light and dark. After the shiny, silver, neo-Barbarella armour they wore on the cover of Supernova, the artwork for Parasites And Butterflies features the pair with naked shoulders, surrounded by butterflies, their faces peering into a black void, and their reflections staring right back. ‘I’m not afraid of monsters, but I’m afraid of myself,’ Love sings on the angsty ‘Monsters’, before adding ‘you promised me heaven but this feels like hell.’

In total contrast, ‘Hummingbird’ opens with an a cappella sample from Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat, in tribute to Love’s heritage (Love is from an Iranian and Nigerian background, and South is Jamaican Australian). It’s a slower BPM, tender celebration of the women and communities that inspire them, featuring violin and viola. Just don’t expect any synths; they are banned and all instrumentation is made by humans plus a bunch of distortion pedals, with muscular drumming from Nine Inch Nails’ Ilan Rubin across six tracks. ‘It’s a lot darker than our first two albums, because that’s where our headspace was at,’ says Love. ‘We enjoyed exploring more vulnerability and being a lot more open but it’s not all doom and gloom; we needed balance. You still have those fun moments: we are playing on the duality.’

A huge part of Nova Twins’ appeal is their commitment to bringing others up with them. They are devoted activists, and as part of the Black Lives Matter conversations in early lockdown, the duo began their Voices For The Unheard project, releasing a charity compilation album of under-represented POC artists, including black feminist punk three-piece Big Joanie, mixed race indie-pop songwriter Connie Constance and New York alt hip-hop band, Oxymorrons. All profits went to The Black Curriculum, a social enterprise aiming to improve the teaching of black history in the UK. They have also set up a scholarship with London’s Institute Of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP), which pays for a three-year BA (Hons) Creative Musicianship degree for one undergrad student.

‘As people, we like to be optimists,’ says South. ‘When the world does feel so heavy and dark, we often feel like, what can we do to spark change? There is so much to sift through, but music is the way we can help and give hope through our shows. Speaking out for the voiceless and using our platform for good.’

Love agrees: ‘It’s overwhelming, so many things are happening all at once, but you’ve gotta just chip at it, bit by bit. Maybe you take to the streets or just have conversations in your family with people who have judgemental views, or you donate somewhere. People beat themselves up and they need to be kind to themselves. “Hey Keir Starmer, how about you do something?”,’ Love eyerolls sarcastically, with a burst of laughter.  Their righteous approach to the industry has always been there. Decolonising punk and rock has been their MO since the start. They performed at the second ever Decolonise Festival in 2018, the London DIY punk festival by and for punks of colour, whose manifesto states: ‘We are uncompromising and strong and will dismantle the white supremacy and patriarchy that infests the punk scene.’

‘It feels like there are always barriers,’ shrugs Love. ‘Constantly. Other artists jump over hurdles and barriers, but it feels like we’ve learned, as women, black women, we always have to prove ourselves. People have short memories! We’ve grown such resilience. Other artists have had to do the same. When we were working on Voices For The Unheard in lockdown, it was really helpful and beneficial to hear from other artists and know we are not on this island alone. It confirmed we are not going crazy; these infrastructures are there that are not designed for women in rock music, especially not women of colour in rock music. It’s been great being able to kick down some walls, and it’s been quite fun as well.’ Now, when they look out at their live audiences, Love loves what she sees. ‘It’s what we always dreamt of seeing out there. We call our fans the Discord Crew. They call themselves Supernovas or Nova Family.’

Both women have spoken in the past about the racism they experienced in their childhood and have been vocal in their opposition to the surge in far-right violence across the UK. ‘Growing up, we always felt like the girls on the outside, looking in,’ says Love. ‘We always really wanted to grow an audience, a community. When we first started gigging, our audience wasn’t that diverse. We were pleased that they bought tickets, of course, but it was mainly older men, not many girls. We’re thankful for the audiences we have now. We’ll see people in their 70s and eight-year-old kids on their mum or dad’s shoulders. It’s been nice to look out and just see a true reflection of society. There’s something about music when you see everyone together, enjoying a simple moment. And it doesn’t really matter where you’re from or what you look like. Nowadays, these moments of togetherness are few and far between. People can feel that energy at our shows, we hope.’

Nova Twins are touring the UK until Monday 22 September; Parasites And Butterflies is out now on Marshall Records.