Twin Temple

September 1, 2026

Interview by Ally Arens

Satanic doo-wop act Twin Temple, comprised of married couple Alexandra and Zachary James, are gearing up for a goth-tacular fall season as they prepare for the release of their next album, Doomed Lovers, on October 9, and they are getting ready to hit the road following a small dose of controversy, something the band is no stranger to. On the heels of their powerful late-night debut on The Daily Show, The Encore Nights sat down with the duo to talk about the album and their upcoming tour plans.

The Encore Nights (TEN): Of course, y’all are getting ready to release a new album, go on the road, all that fun stuff. For a band who’s made a name for themselves by essentially inventing satanic doo-wop, the song titles on your new album, “Doomed Lovers”, I at least noticed they’re a little bit less Luciferian, other than maybe “Possessed” or “I Want Blood. What inspired this shift? And of course, will there still be a healthy serving of devilishness? 

Zach James (ZJ): Yeah, always, always.

Alex James (AJ): Yeah, I think, lyrically, I would say it’s still satanic in the sense that we are pursuing knowledge of ourselves and the idea of individualism, and for us celebrating the human experience, which includes the shadow and the darker side of things. 

TEN: Just maybe not quite as ‘in-your-face’ as, say, “Satan’s a Woman”?

AJ: Yeah, yeah. I think in our own way, we’re still circling around the ideas that inspire us. We had a really, really tough kind of period that we went through, and so I kept writing more and more songs that were directly dealing with things that we were kind of grappling with, and I joked to Zach like, “Here’s another sad girl song for you!” and that’s just kind of the way the record shook out. I was on the fence whether to expose more of the things that I’d personally been through on this record, and whether I wanted to, like, “how much of our underbelly am I going to expose here?” So in that sense, I feel kind of vulnerable about this record. But it felt the most authentic to who we are and what we went through at this period in time, and so I think that’s why we made the decision to include some of these songs, and that’s sort of what the record shaked out to be. 

TEN: Well, absolutely, and I mean vulnerability is always a wonderful thing. I mean, why make art if you can’t allow yourself to be vulnerable?

ZJ: Yeah, for sure. It can be hard, but it definitely can be rewarding as well. 

TEN: What songs from the upcoming album are you most looking forward to playing live?

ZJ: Ooh, that’s a good question. I think “Possessed” will be fun live. You really never know until we get into rehearsals and start kind of working on the live arrangements how everything’s going to feel. Other than “Haunt Me” which we we performed live on the Daily Show, we haven’t performed any of these songs live yet or even got in the room and played them with the live band, so I think we’re excited just to kind of see how that all sounds, but I think “Possessed” is going to be fun one. It’s got a cool groove. I think “Doomed Lovers” will be really fun to play too. I love playing the kind of more melodramatic ballads, and I think people kind of like sway into those as well. I’m kind of curious myself to get in with everybody and kind of see how we get these live arrangements together. 

AJ: Yeah, I mean, I’ll say that. So we got to debut Haunt Me on the Daily Show a few weeks back, which was just insane to get to do to fly Satanic upside-down crosses on national late night TV. But it was thrilling. We got in the room for the rehearsal and and played it through with the band the first time and that’s the first time we’d heard it played live all together with our touring band and I got chills. It’s just so exciting. I can’t wait to get back out there and play some of the new material – so thrilled too because part of the setbacks that we mentioned and that were absolutely crushing to us was the fact that our last record, God Is Dead, we actually completed in 2020. We started working on it in 2019, and we weren’t able to put it out. We were basically benched and caught in music industry record label jail, so we weren’t able to put that record out until like three or four years later after it was complete, which [is] really depressing as an artist because the first thing you do when you complete a song you’re excited about is put it out and play it live, you. And we were legally not even able to do that, so it was devastating to us. So I think one of the things that’s most exciting about playing the new songs live is we spent the last couple years making the record, and then we got to put it out. We uploaded that shit up to TuneCore. We get to play these songs live. We don’t have any major label overlords or in our last case independent label overlords restricting us from being able to do what we want to do, so I think it feels like a really triumphant moment for us as artists to have made this record, to be able to put it out and to be able to play it. That’s honestly such a huge triumph for us, and something that we worked really hard over the last four or five years to fight against to be able to do what we want to do.

TEN: Yeah, that’s incredible, and I can only imagine how exciting that is. And by the way, that performance was absolutely epic. I didn’t watch it live, but I found it on YouTube not too long after, and in fact, I had heard of you all before your team reached out to do this interview, but I hadn’t, like, fully dipped my toes in. And then after that performance, I was just like, “Okay, this is cool!”. 

ZJ: Thanks.

AJ: Thank you. You know, it’s crazy, but I think the takeaway from that moment is so surreal, but one of the things me and Zach talked about is we felt actually really proud to be Americans in that moment. Like, hey, some of these things that are so great about our country, like freedom of speech and religion and freedom of the press, like they’re not gone yet. You know what I mean? We still have them, and it’s so cool when we had the pre-production meeting with all the folks at the Daily Show. When we’re like, “Can we make like seven-foot upside-down crosses? Because we’re satanic, and they’re like, “Hell yeah!” They’re like, “Let’s do it!” Like the Daily Show built those crosses on site in New York for us, And I fully threw it out, and we were just expecting them [to say no], you know, because a lot of time we get a lot of pushback on imagery, and they’re just like “hell yeah.” And we’re sitting backstage, and we’re getting to watch the show as they’re filming it, basically alongside the studio audience, and we’re watching them like do a bit on Trump, like they had a presidential neck vag that they made just, like, trolling his drooping neck and honestly I just felt really excited to be a part of American culture in that moment, and like proud of what they’re doing and what Americans [are] doing. Not everyone is just succumbing to these neo-fascist ideologies. Some people are still out there presenting differing viewpoints and pushing back and calling people out. And I think humor, subversion, transgression-you know, poking at the bear and rattling the cages-that’s still very much going on in America, and it was an exciting thing to be a part of. So I’m really proud, and I still can’t really believe we got to do that. 

TEN: That’s incredible. And speaking of performing, so, your upcoming tour is a mixture of headlining shows as well as performances opening for icons such as Danzig and Jack White. Are there any differences in how you prepare for support shows where there might be some people hearing about you for the very first time versus your headliners where there’s more likely to be more devoted fans? 

ZJ: Yeah, for sure. Obviously the set length and the logistics, that changes the show quite drastically. When it’s a support show, we have less time, so we definitely factor that in, and the set list changes a little bit, but on the whole, we’re trying to present the same show to all the audiences. Sometimes it’s just like, how can we do that in a shorter time, or maybe with less stage space, but honestly it’s more logistical. I think on the creative side, we want to do the same thing. We want to have a fun time. We want to bring a fun show to everybody, and play the songs that we want to play. I don’t think the shows will drastically differ. It’s really just a little shorter. 

AJ: I think every tour we do, we try to improve or up the ante on something from the tour previous, whatever that may be. And I think for this tour, we’re really excited because we brought on two of our oldest friends who we’ve known since we’re kids and we’ve played with since we were all teenagers, and so we’ve added a second guitarist on stage, which I think really rounds out the sound and just makes it that much more rock and roll. We brought on a new lighting director, so we’ve got a little bit better of a lighting package. So we’re gonna do a little bit more in that regard. 

ZJ: Yeah, always try to just develop and step it up. 

AJ: Yeah, we’re always trying to just give a better concert. Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything more magical and transcendent than a great show. And I feel like I’ve been healed by going to great shows. If you can just have that moment of inspiration and connection and transcendence, it’s really truly magical. So, we’re always trying to do that and give that to the audience, and they do that for us, and it becomes this beautiful magical serpent eating its tail. I’m so excited for the tour, especially since we weren’t able to for the last two years due to various issues. This tour just seemed to come out of nowhere like magic. Six months ago, we were like, “Hey, where’s the tour around the album? Where’s the tour around our album?” And due to various issues with our team, they’re just like, “Yeah, we’re not, we’re not going to get you guys out on tour.” And we were devastated. So now we’re self-managing. We have a new agent. We have all this new stuff in place, and it was like promoters just started flooding in our new agent’s inbox. Like, “Hey, we want the show. We want the show.” And so, in the space of a couple weeks, all of a sudden, this whole tour conjured itself, and it’s kind of mind-blowing. It just feels really magical, and I just feel so grateful to be able to make music and put it out, and then go play it in a timely fashion. It’s just really, really exciting, and it’s even more exciting that it began with Danzig throwing us a bone. Like, w were nothing. We had no label. We had no management. We had no agent. We had literally nobody on our side at all, fully DIY with the record uploaded to Tunecore, and he reached out, I would say [from] the heavens, but it’s more like from the hells, and was just like, “here, take these shows,” and it was an ultimate lifeline. I don’t know if he knows how much his support means to us. He probably knows, but it definitely got us back up in the morning. We’re like, “okay, we got six shows with fucking Glenn Danzig. Let’s go. Life is worth living again.” So yeah, the whole thing just feels so magical, and I can’t wait to get back out there. We’re just so excited. 

TEN: Yeah, and speaking of the headliners, you mentioned taking some close friends out with you all. So, your support acts are kind of a mixture that are just as eclectic as yourselves, like the Midnight Cowgirls being more Southern, and then Meldamour with their super synth-driven [sound] and everything like that. So, how do y’all decide who you want to take on the road and/or which acts are best for which shows? 

AJ: Well, like, one goal we had was to have at least every band have not just a bunch of dudes.

TEN: Of course!

AJ: For this tour, every single support act that we’re bringing out has at least one woman in it, which was exciting to us. But honestly, it comes down to the music. I think we’re fans of every band that we’re touring with, and we’re also lucky to call most of them friends. And it just felt like a nice mix, of everything from rock to country to synthwave to drag. 

ZJ: Peaches Christ is also performing with us in San Francisco, iconic drag performer. 

AJ: Oh my God! Yeah, when we were thinking about, so it’s the Castro Theater, which you know is in the Castro [area], and it felt like we wanted to kind of pay tribute to the history of the area, and also our deep love of all things drag. Because without drag, you would not have rock and roll, and we’re heavily inspired by drag ourselves. We’ve been fans of Peaches. We got to do the Fangoria Awards with her a while back, and met her then, and so she just felt like the utter perfect collab. We’ve been meaning to do something with her for a long time, and that just felt like, that’s the perfect scenario. She’s in San Francisco, and she’s like an icon of drag in general. So it was like, okay, great, we got that. And she’s putting on a whole satanic cabaret for us with a bunch of different drag performers, so really excited about that show. And Frankie and the Witch Fingers have been our friends for over a decade now. Zach actually has produced and recorded one of their records in a seven inch, and the bass player is like my really great friend, and they’re just a fucking great rock and roll band. And DVG, we’ve played shows locally in LA like over the last decade. They’re great. Their new record has a saxophone on it. I don’t know. And Meldamor is awesome, theatrical, dark, lots of leather.So I think it just kind of covers the gamut of everything that we love. Obviously, there’s a lot more bands we love ,too, that we can’t always fit everything on the bill, but we try our best. 

TEN: Kind of along those lines, if you could collaborate and/or tour with anybody, who would you pick and why? 

ZJ: Well, I think a few weeks ago I would have said Jack White.

TEN: And now that’s happening!

AJ: I’m guessing living, right?

ZJ: I was gonna say, can they be dead?

TEN: I mean, if you want them to be!

AJ: Willie Nelson is one of my favorite songwriters of all time, I can’t believe the sheer amount of brilliant songs he’s released, and is one of the greatest American songwriters of our time. I’m obsessed with him. I think as far as living people, he would be great. I’m a big Orville Peck fan. I love what he’s doing. I’m trying to think [of] who else. A lot of the music we listen to, I have to be real, is from the golden period of American music from the ’50s and ’60s and stuff. And so, there’s not a lot of people remaining. Although…

ZJ: Darlene Love.

AJ: I was gonna say, Zach slid into not only Darlene Love’s but also Nancy Sinatra’s DMs. A sticking point which I give him no respite over. But we’re actually both really big fans of them. I think Darlene is such a great singer.

ZJ: I think Darlene would be too disturbed by us to collaborate. But I really like her, and if she ever wants to do something, I would like to do that. 

AJ: Gosh, and R.I.P. Dolly. 

AJ: I know this will never happen, but I will just put it out there because I am the hugest Beatles fan. That is what got me into rock and roll in the first place when I was a kid. Like, the Beatles were my whole gender, so Paul McCartney and Ringo, the living legends of the Beatles, that would be incredible.

TEN: Absolutely.

AJ: And the Rolling Stones, I mean, as long as we’re just creating some fantasy laundry list of artists.

TEN: So, I did want to ask. Amongst your upcoming tour dates, you are headlining in Oklahoma City for what I think might be the first time. I know y’all have done a couple of support shows, but I think it might be the first headliner. So, what’s your favorite thing about bringing your “Satanic doo-wop” to new markets and expanding on growth from past tours?

ZJ: Well, the unknown is exciting. I don’t know what it’ll be like, so I find that exciting personally.

AJ: Yeah, and I mean it’s always cool. Especially too, say, you tour through the Bible Belt and stuff like that, to walk out on the stage and be like, “Wow, there’s people here who are like-minded freaks like us, or not, you know what I mean? Just bringing different types of people together, it’s really cool. The first time we ever went out on a national tour, and were going through the South and through the Bible Belt, we fully thought no one would come or we’d get booed off stage. While that has happened once in a while when we’re opening for bigger, more mainstream acts, it’s always really, really cool to be reminded, like, “Hey, we’re not alone, and neither is everyone else there” – to be able to connect and have this really fierce sense of community that’s based around inclusivity, it’s really healing to me, and it’s part of the reason why I keep going is to see the types of people that come together around not only our concerts but just music in general. I think that’s what music does best is bring people together. And that’s why I love to do it, and why I love music. 

ZJ: Yeah, and it’s even more cathartic in the repressive states, for sure.

TEN: Absolutely. As someone who’s lived in Oklahoma my entire life, absolutely. 

TEN: Do you all have anything else you want to add, or plug, or promote, or anything?

ZJ: I think we covered most of it.

AJ: Yeah, just really excited to get this record out in October, and to get on the road!

TEN: I’m hoping to be able to see you all, and super looking forward to the album coming out, so thank you all so much for chatting!

Twin Temple’s upcoming Doomed Lovers tour kicks off on September 9 in Albuquerque, New Mexico with a headlining show, and concludes on the eve of Doomed Lovers‘ release on October 8 in Sacramento, CA. The band will be making a stop in Oklahoma City, as well, on September 16 at Beer City Music Hall, with The Midnight Cowgirls as support. All upcoming tour dates can be found on the band’s website, and you can stream “Doomed Lovers” and “Haunt Me” now ahead of the album release wherever you get your music.