Heavy Music Magazine Issue #16

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NIGHTWISH NE OBLIVISCARIS RETURN TO THE HOMELAND DEVIL YOU KNOW /// AT R E Y U B A R O N E S S / / / H A L e S T O R M TERAMAZE /// KILLING JOKE C O H E E D A N D C A M B R I A IRON MAIDEN /// GODS OF EDEN

oz underground

ac/dc

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK... OR BUST

BABY JANE ♦ VESSEL BORN LILLYE ♦ DO I SC ARE YA?

p l u s

M O R T A L

S I N

R E V I S I T E D

ISSUE 16 $9.95 inc.gst ISSN 1839-5546

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LIVE NATION PRESENTS

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

AUSTRALIAN 2015 TOUR

NEW ALBUM INTO THE WILD LIFE AVAILABLE NOW SW_001_HM_QP.qxp_SW_001_HM_QP 18/10/2015 5:03 pm Page 1

TUE 8 DEC 170 RUSSELL MELBOURNE WED 9 DEC THE GOV ADEL AIDE FRI 11 DEC CAMBRIDGE HOTEL NEWCASTLE S AT 1 2 D E C A N U B A R C A N B E R R A SUN 13 DEC MANNING BAR SYDNEY TUE 15 DEC THE TIVOLI BRISBANE

The Tour Majestic 2016

Wed Feb 10 Rosemount Hotel Perth Fri Feb 12 The Gov Adelaide Sat Feb 13 The Triffid Brisbane Mon Feb 15 Max Watts Sydney Tue Feb 16 170 Russell Melbourne GO TO

livenation.com.au New Album The Ride Majestic in stores Now

soilwork.org

2 FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFORMATION GO TO LIVENATION.COM.AU

A V A I L A B L E

1 6 O CTOBE R 2 0 1 5 f r o m

n e r v e g a s . c o m . a u

“AN UNPRECEDENTED LEAP FORWARD FOR THE GENRE OF PROGRESSIVE METAL,..EXTREMELY MEMORABLE, UNIQUE AND TECHNICAL” — HEAVY BLOG IS HEAVY

W W W. G O D S O F E D E N B A N D . C O M

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contentsissue16

14 NIGHTWISH

29 HALESTORM

18 NE OBLIVISCARIS

47 HEAVY CINEMA

22 COHEED AND CAMBRIA

50 INDUSTRY INSIGHT

The band talks about their evolution ahead of their Australian tour.

After successful shows overseas, the band returns home for Citadel.

Claudio speaks about their first non-conceptual album.

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According to Lzzy Hale, we can expect debauchery for their first Aussie tour.

We speak to film director Benjamin Statler about the Kurt Cobain docco, Soaked in Bleach.

Michelle O’Rance shares her insight into community radio and being a record label rep.

Photo: Courtesy of Ne Obliviscaris

6 Shrapnel 8 Top HEAVY – Free Music Download c u l p r i t s 10 Hi-Rotation Executive editor & publisher 20 Atreyu Robyn Morrison 21 Rise Against ASSISTANT editor 24 Gods of Eden Shane Morrison 25 Devil You Know Art Director Peter Falkous 27 Sanzu 30 My Dying Bride Publishing Consultant Effie Dimitropoulos 32 Heavy Legends: AC/DC 186Red Pty Ltd 34 Dream On Dreamer COVER PHOTO 35 Le Butcherettes Ville Akseli Juurikkala 36 Novelists Printing Blue Star Group 38 Caligula’s Horse (Printed in Australia) 39 Wage War Contributors 40 Heavy Photos Alexander Sievers Bethany Mafrici 42 Baroness Britt Andrews Callum Doig 43 Teramaze Cameron Cooper 44 Killing Joke Carl Neumann Damo Musclecar 46 Escape The Fate David Griffiths Jake Gleeson 52 Past Blasters: Mortal Sin James O’Connor 55 Heavy Hitters: Iron Maiden Jana Angeles Jason Fuller 57 A Day To Remember Jeremy Edwards Jeremy Vane-Tempest 58 Whitechapel Joel Anderson 59 Oz Underground John Raptis Kevin Prested 63 Jackson Firebird Matt Allan Matthew Clewley 64 Saxon Nathan Eden 65 MYOFB! Neeka Valentine Peyton Bernhardt 66 Now Hear This Rod Whitfield Rodney Holder Salla Harjula Steve Jenkins Will Oakeshott Yok Rzeznic

Got a smartphone? By that I mean an iPhone or an Android? If so, this magazine you’re holding is about to come alive with HEAVY music!

But first you’ll need a QR code reader, and we recommend you download the FREE Digimarc Discover app from iTunes, or wherever else you can get your hands on it.

By simply holding your smartphone about 6-10cm above a QR code (ie. that Lego nightmare looking thing above) you can instantly access songs (and/or videos) on that same band you’ve just been reading about.

Pretty cool, eh!? It’s a whole new magazine reading experience.

Enjoy!

welcome

B

What We Learnt at BigSound

igSound is that annual music conference in the sunshine state (Brisbane). It’s a chance to learn from others in the music industry – no matter how long you’ve been involved, and it’s a chance for musicians to showcase what they’ve got to both local and international industry professionals.

This year was the first time I’d attended the one on one meetings on behalf of a band. The people at BigSound coordinated these meetings to tailor to the music genre for the band. It was a jam-packed day but one that was met with new knowledge and inspired ideas.

We learnt that you need to be prepared for these meetings, because it’s not often that bands are afforded the time of those who can steer your band in the right direction. If you can imagine the scene – it was akin to speed dating. You had a few minutes to tell the person you were meeting with a bit about you, what the plans were for the future and they in turn had several minutes to impart their wisdom in the areas of promotion, touring, record deals, digital distribution, publishing, licencing and more.

But it wasn’t just about the meetings, the conference or keynote speakers. It was the opportunity to invite these music industry professionals to witness the band’s best asset - performing live. It’s all very well to have a slick album package with some hot band photos but if you cannot win an A&R person over within the first few live songs, you’re never going to be able to win over an audience.

And this is critical in 2015 and beyond because touring is where most bands generate an income.

The heavy music scene was well represented at BigSound, and it’s been slowly gaining the recognition it deserves. I’d encourage all heavy bands to submit an application to attend BigSound in 2016. It’s an invaluable hub of information and networking.

And since this is the final issue for 2015, I’d like to thank all the readers, the bands, the industry people and especially the HEAVY Music Magazine writers, photographers and the editorial and design team.

Without every single person, this beast would not exist.

Here’s to more of the HEAVY stuff in 2016 and you can check out BigSound at bigsound.org.au Robyn Morrison Executive Editor

Advertising Enquiries sales@heavymag.com.au +61 (0)402 400 779

HEAVY Music Magazine is published by SF Media Pty. Ltd. ACN 603511502 PO Box 2206 Fitzroy, VIC 3065 The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of publisher SF Media or Editor. All statements made, although based on information believed to be reliable and accurate, cannot be guaranteed and no fault or liability can be accepted for any error or omission. All material published in this magazine are subject to copyright provisions and cannot be reproduced, in part or whole, without the written permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

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Email: subscribe@heavymag.com.au Photo: Nellitoday.

Scarlet 5

The Basement, Canberra

Back in the ‘90s, Canberra was a hive of activity for metal shows, with multiple venues to choose from on any given night. Fast forward twenty five years later and one of the last bastions of live shows for those into heavy music is still going strong in Belconnen.

The Basement in Canberra doesn’t actually feel like a basement or a dive bar. It’s actually a spacious room where you can see the band from every vantage point and easily forge a path to the bar. Going strong for ten years now, the venue changed ownership eighteen months ago and with the change of management came an upgrade to the PA, the room acoustics and the décor.

According to one of the owners, Lance Fox, they have a unique community. “We have the coolest, weirdest bunch of misfits and outcasts as customers. It’s like having a giant brutal and twisted family. It’s awesome.”

It certainly is a place to unwind and unleash after being that slave

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to the grind all week. “After a week of being ground down by the man what could be better than ice cold beer and brutal tunes shared with friends?” Says Lance. “The Basement is the hub of the heavy music scene in the region. We are constantly improving the venue, PA, lighting and always looking to book the next brutality. We love it.”

So get down to The Basement and support heavy live music. You can even grab a late night hot food snack there to soak up all the beverages and live music.

Where? 2 Cohen St Belconnen Canberra Why? Misfits, brutal tunes, decent PA. Web? thebasementcanberra.com.au

Venom Club, Sydney

Venom Club in Sydney has been providing that essential mix of live music and DJs for nearly five years now. The venue is best known for its wide range of music from all the best artists across the alternative genre.

It’s also a friendly place for the alternative family of Sydney to come together fortnightly over a drink and a dance.

single event. We may have our regulars, but there are new faces every time.”

The most striking feature of this Sydney institution is that it’s the only club left in Sydney that gives you live music and a dance floor full of heavy and party tunes. Venom doesn’t stray away from some Behemoth, then straight into a Guns N’ Roses sing along.

The venue showcases young local bands, along with well established bands. The bands are well catered for at each event and there’s nothing but respect for the music from those running the venue.

So what’s the reason people keep going back to Venom each fortnight?

It’s not just for the live music and atmosphere. They’ve created a family. A heavy music community that welcomes everyone who passes through their doors. “We want to make our Venom family feel like they have a place to come every fortnight, where they can chat to our DJs and their requests will be played and meet new people every

And according the venue: “Venom lives for heavy! Heavy music, heavy lifting, heavy drinking; we’ll take it all.”

Where? The Agincourt Hotel. 871 George St, Sydney, NSW Why? Live music, damn good dance floor, awesome atmosphere Web? facebook.com/Venomclub

SYDNEY - AUSTRALIA

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We’ve gone digital! Well, our CD Cover Mount has. Now you can download 14 hot tracks just by pointing your smart device to our QR Code.

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1.

Gods Of Eden – The Overseer Technical Progressive Metal, Sydney Australia

8.

Driven To the Verge – Absent Eyes Post Hardcore, Melbourne, Australia

2.

Vessel Born – Dressing A Dead Man Metalcore, Brisbane Australia

9.

Carbon Black – Fade Away Metal, Sydney Australia

3.

Do I Scare Ya? – Tobe Le Gnome Alternative/Punk/Metal, Sydney Australia

10.

Whiskey Smile – Army of Drunkness Hard Rock, Sydney Australia

I Am Duckeye – Hot Nuts 4.

Punk, Melbourne Australia

11.

Evolution of Self – Darker Waters Metalcore, Melbourne, Australia

5.

Ice On Mercury – Clowns Insane Hard Rock, Adelaide Australia

12.

Tempest Rising – Know My Name Metal, Perth Australia

6.

Chronolyth – Revenants Melodic Death Metal, Brisbane Australia

13.

MayFall – Faithless Metalcore, Sydney Australia

7.

Zeolite – Astringent Metal, Hobart, Tasmania

14.

Defences – Grow Alternative Metal, Hertfordshire U.K.

Words: Damo Musclecar Photo: Amanda Mason

Unveiling the Wicked LIZZY BORDEN The Murderess Metal Road Show (Metal Blade Records 1996) Live albums have always been hit or miss with me. Sure, there have been some great ones over the years, Motorhead’s No Sleep Til Hammersmith, The Ramones’ It’s Alive, Judas Priest’s aptly titled Priest…

Live! and then we have the contender for the best of all, Iron Maiden’s Live After Death. I agree that many live albums were “fixed” (aka re-recorded) in the studio, as any KISS book will confirm that, but there are a few that keep it raw! No, not W.A.S.P., I’m talking about the much overlooked heavy metal entity known as Lizzy Borden.

For many, a live album is a document of a place and time, something to remember for those that were there and something to experience for those that couldn’t make it. And let’s face it, just how many happy punters managed to squeeze into Chuck Landis’ Country Club for the Lizzy Borden experience that played on this double album? Well from the sounds of things, I’m guessing 100, maybe 200 but I’m sure it was one sweaty sausage party in Reseda that Friday night (the 13th, of course).

When it starts, we hear the anticipated crowd scream as a ghastly voice whispers loudly over the PA, “I want to play!” and finally we are told to welcome “the most outrageous band in the world… Lizzy Borden!” I’m locked and loaded and ready to let my hair down. Hell yeah, I’m ready!

Bursting on to the stage with Council For The Caldron, Lizzy Borden and his band deliver everything you would want from an ‘80s heavy metal live album: high pitched screams, a high energy performance, and shitloads of guitar solos drenched in chorus and delay pedals.

The Iron Maiden influence shines throughout the entire record and that’s never a bad thing. Tracks like Godiva and American Metal are filled with dual guitar harmonies and are totally bitchin’. There are songs bordering on ‘80s thrash and there’s also the token cover song: a cover of Live And Let Die and while it’s nothing special, it’s probably still better than the version Guns N’ Roses made famous. The playing is pretty solid throughout the show and I have to be honest, I find it’s hard to fault any band that have a song called Give Em The Axe. I wish more bands had songs about axes. Axes are metal.

As each song thrashes by, Lizzy and Co. are not as bad as their big hair looks. The album cover features an abundance of live photos showing off excessive amounts of spandex, leather and pointy guitars, some stage blood, and even a Santa Claus (it was recorded in December). The album’s 70 minute show has everything from cheesy stage dialogue to an excessive use of wanky fiddly diddly guitar solos, drum solos and bass solos in between the songs that we could do without but this is the ‘80s and, well, you just accepted it. Things were just different back then.

The album closes out with two studio cuts, Dead Serious and Wake Up (Time To Die). Now is it only me or are you sensing a pattern here? I’ll play along by saying that both tracks are killer! Think along the lines of King Diamond meets Judas Priest. Exactly! It’s bitchin’!

I know all of this must sound funny but believe me, Lizzy Borden’s The Murderess Metal Road Show really does tick all the boxes. How these cats didn’t garner themselves a bigger profile outside of the USA just baffles me. I remember back in the ‘80s seeing their albums on import everywhere but who was buying them? I sure as hell wasn’t able to on my allowance.

Let’s fast forward 25 years later and I find this very album somewhere in Pittsburgh for a whole three bucks. I couldn’t just leave it there and no doubt you’d be the same. Having not previously owned any other Borden slabs of wax, this was to be my first experience and I feel I struck gold.

Lizzy Borden’s once scary horror image that I saw glaring back at me on the shelves of Verandah Music in Adelaide back when I was a young teen now just seem hilarious in comparison but hey, this is heavy metal and it’s supposed to shock.

With an obvious influence by early Iron Maiden and the whole movement known as the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), The Murderess Metal Road Show really delivers the goods. It’s a great performance, it features all the heavy metal clichés, and it’s well worth the few dollars you’ll spend on it. Trust me, I have never steered you wrong and I’m not going to start now. I wish I had overlooked his scary album covers when I was younger. I could have joined their fan club. Fan clubs are metal.

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A Dream in Static

Miasmic Mutation

Her Halo

Independent

Independent

Mascot Label Group

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Earthside

Cinematic Rock New Haven, U.S. earthsideband.com

Battering Ram by

Saxon

UDR GmbHAustralia

Metal South Yorkshire, U.K. saxon747.com Review: Jake Gleeson

From the beginning of the title track of Saxon’s latest offering Battering Ram, listeners are met with the twin-guitar melodies of Paul Quinn and Doug Scarratt reminiscent of the band’s traditional heavy metal roots.

Staying true to his signature higher register vocals, Byford’s delivery is executed perfectly. Produced

by Andy Sneap (Megadeth, Testament, Exodus, Accept), the album’s production is noticeably more polished than their earlier works, though still retains the passion and energy felt on their classic Denim and Leather.

Following on from their last album Sacrifice, released in 2013, Saxon have further crafted their thundering assault of old school heavy metal, merging both new and old ideas, satisfying the traditional purists while also appealing to a newer audience with production values.

Uncompromising, pure heavy metal is what you get here, with the band living up to their reputation as the vanguards of metal.

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Abhorrent Decimation Death Metal London, UK abhorrentdecimation.bigcartel.com

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Teramaze Progressive Metal Melbourne, Australia teramaze.com.au

Review: Rod Whitfield

Review: Matthew Clewley

Review: Rod Whitfield

How does one summarise a work of such massive scope in less than two hundred words?

It’s a tough ask, but here goes…

Think of terms like ‘ambitious’, ‘cinematic’, ‘epic’, multiply them by ten, and you have the debut album by this Connecticut based experimental/progressive rock four piece. In fact, the term ‘four piece’ doesn’t really cover it. The four permanent members of the band (all of whom happen to be highly classical trained professionals) are just the core. They have surrounded themselves with the sweeping, majestic strains of the Moscow Studio Symphony Orchestra to add immensity to their compositions, plus some true luminaries of heavy music vocalising: Lajon Witherspoon of Sevendust, Daniel Tompkins of TesseracT, Bjorn ‘Speed’ Strid of Soilwork and more.

It’s an unbelievable ensemble of illustrious musical talent, and the finished product truly measures up to and exceeds the sum of its parts.

They have thrown restraint to the wind, and thrown everything at it including several kitchen sinks, and everything sticks.

A Dream in Static must be experienced to be believed. A monumental rock release of 2015.

Finding bands like this in the wonderful land of England can be a struggle, but Abhorrent Decimation impress massively with their independent release Miasmic Mutation.

This album has been hugely anticipated for a long time and with an explosive intro from Glaciate The Servants, I’m certain this has exceeded expectations. Souls Of Sedation is an epic that gives this album more of a variety of sound of distortion and symphony. The title track is simple compared to the rest of the album, but it’s a chant worthy song just like the catchy Echoes Of The Vortex and the melodic Terminal Reality. The album continues with its vicious aggression that is heavenly to open a bottle of wine, pour it into a glass and swirl the beverage as you enjoy the sheer perfection with a smokers pipe in your mouth.

Miasmic Mutation is a glorious mix of rapid drum playing and vein pumping riffs as the growling voice of Ashley Scott layers up into a tasty cake that you would happily wedge in your mouth for that heavy coated goodness.

Massively underrated band, this one. They’ve been around for what must be two decades, and they still haven’t received the mass attention that they richly deserve. Hopefully this is the album that does it for them.

It’s certainly more than good enough. This is world class progressive metal, with broad appeal, as it steps into melodic power metal territory regularly as well. Fans of Dream Theater, Symphony X and their ilk will appreciate the complexity of the music, instrumental dexterity and extreme musical length, and people who love acts such as Helloween and Blind Guardian will get off on the smooth, clean vocals and soaring choruses.

Her Halo features maybe one small mis-step, with the inclusion of the power-ballad Broken. Don’t get me wrong, I dig a good ballad, and enjoy the dynamics it brings to a heavy album. But heavy bands’ ballads must be dead on the money, and this one is just slightly on the wrong side of cheese.

That aside however, this album is quite stunning, the grandiose output of a band who know exactly what they’re doing but are still hungry for the success that has been inexplicably eluding them for quite some time.

Def Leppard

Behold.Total.Rejection Pylon

Sony Music Australia

Season Of Mist

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Def Leppard

Rock Sheffield, U.K. defleppard.com Review: Cameron Cooper

The band’s first release in seven years, Def Leppard’s self-titled kicks off with the old school Let’s Go, a Leppard-style single of the highest order, complete with mid-tempo, smooth rockin’ harmonies and ‘80s guitars. Unfortunately, the band doesn’t quite keep the pace throughout. While Rick Savage’s bass-thump on the sleazy Man Enough is certainly a welcome variation to the band’s formula, far too often do they fall back on the same uninspired ballads and soft rockers that have plagued the band since the ‘90s.

That said, Sea Of Love is a well crafted pop rocker likely to keep Leppard fans happy, while All Time High and Broke ‘N’ Brokenhearted sees the band flirt with their arena rockin’, NWOBHM roots. If anything, the band’s eleventh studio album shows that the lads can still rock out when they want to, but it’s unlikely they are going to win over any of the naysayers.

A good but ultimately safe record.

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Revenge

Death/Black Metal Edmonton, Alberta facebook.com/ RevengeofficialSoMpage Review: Steve Jenkins

Canadian black metal warriors Revenge have come forward with an extreme and chaotic album that leaves a gritty taste in your mouth, but satisfies the heavy senses.

With a full on assault of violence, the direction of the music takes a devastating approach with rough vocals, pummeling drums and face melting guitar work featuring many impressive solos. The album opens with the viciously heavy track Scum Defection (Outsider Neutralized) and it doesn’t let up from there. With the track’s anarchic brutality, it’s a good indicator of what the remaining nine tracks will bring to your ears.

Some highlights from the album include Wolf Slave Protocol (Choose Your Side) with its fast paced and old school black metal sound, as well as album closer Nihilist Militant (Total Rejection), which rounds out this raw and uniquely ruthless journey from these dark, accomplished musicians.

Signing to a new label has not changed their symbolic sound whatsoever, which will please old and new fans alike.

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Killing Joke

Spinefarm Records

Industrial Rock/Post Punk London, U.K.

killingjoke.com Review: Yok Rzeznic

Most bands whose members are in their mid 50s mellow out and let their past do the talking. Then there is Killing Joke.

Pylon provides another vicious insight into a band that shows no sign of simmering down. Here we have a dense album of ten serves of thick, seething industrial rock prepared in the way Killing Joke have mastered, with no real competitors.

The energy that brews from the impact of opening track Autonomous Zone begins a hellish ride through up and downer reflections of the past and present and warnings of the future. Pylon offers some of the heaviest sounding work from the band to date, seething with their unique sonic anger stark in tracks such as Dawn Of The Hive and I Am The Virus, while the other side of the spectrum offers lush synths and layers of echoing guitars.

Their emotive song crafting present in Big Buzz and spread liberally across the album in a never ending clash with the bombastic fury that the band are well known for. Within the almost tumultuous world that flourishes over the album there are familiar nods to dance culture, post punk and, in this case, the stomping dark waltz of New Jerusalem presenting itself as one of many standout tracks in an album of no apparent filler. Pylon shares it’s spirit with earlier albums such as Pandemonium, Democracy and Absolute Dissent and will no doubt be a fan favourite as well as attracting new fans in the process, with the band’s vital ability to keep it fresh and meaningful without alienating themselves.

Top stuff. The track list to the apocalypse never sounded so good.

Condition Human by

Queensryche

Century Media

Metal Washington/U.S. queensrycheofficial.com

Human is sure to please fans of Queensryche’s classic period whilst proving that there some genuinely great songs left in these aging rockers still.

Review: Kevin Prested

It’s been hard to keep track of who ‘is’ Queensryche of late with yet another saga of a band claiming split ownership, but here we have another Queensryche release with former Crimson Glory vocalist Todd La Torre returning for his second album.

As has been the case with former rock heroes trying to ride on the tails of former glories of a band name, this is certainly not the story with Condition Human. What we have here is a glorious record that could have been released between Operation: Mindcrime or Empire in feel, strong structure and melodies of which Queensryche have always had an abundance of. La Torre could fool almost anyone as to actually being former vocalist Geoff Tate with his soaring melodies that veer at times into Bruce Dickinson territory, while the accessible progressive and layered songwriting is well on display.

There are multiple tracks that could have been a Queensryche single from the late ‘80s or early ‘90s here such as Guardian or Bulletproof. Such as the band’s self titled release with La Torre in 2013 Condition

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Hate Me

Lillye

Souvenirs

Sony Music Australia

Independent

Arising Empire

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Escape The Fate

Rock Las Vegas, U.S. escapethefate.com

They Bleed Red by

Devil You Know

Nuclear Blast

Metal Los Angeles, U.S. facebook.com/Devilyouknowofficial Review: Jeremy Edwards

One thing I really love about ‘supergroups’ is they make everything look so easy.

While younger bands are putting their entire creative flow towards songwriting and building an image, bands like Devil You Know just get together and jam out gold.

Produced by Josh Wilbur (Killer Be Killed), They Bleed Red is the sophomore release from DYK, coming just 19 months after their debut record.

Howard Jones leaves nothing behind, exhibiting his illimitable vocal range on every song. Australia’s own John Sankey is absolutely brutal on the skins and the bass work by Ryan Wombacher and guitar of Francesco Artusato round out the amazing sound that Devil You Know throws down with balanced grace and aggression.

There are stylistic examples of most metal sub-genres: blast-beats aplenty; groovy, melodic guitars; perfect breakdowns and some fairly operatic gang vocals. You’d do well to pick a highlight track because it’s a whole album of

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highlights.

They Bleed Red is fast and heavy right from the get-go and you should check any preconceptions at the door because this is one kickass album.

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Lillye Hard Rock Sydney, Australia lillye.net

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Novelists

Metal Paris, France facebook.com/NovelistsMusic

Review: Alex Sievers

Review: Peyton Bernhardt

Review: Jeremy Edwards

“The heaviest songs are the heaviest we’ve ever written, and the poppy songs are the poppiest we’ve ever done“.

Well, I gotta say that you’re not wrong there, boys.

I’m going to start off the main body of this review by saying this: Hate Me is one of those albums that is only going to gel nicely with the fans. It’s nothing new or different to sway the hordes of critics and haters, but just familiar and solid enough to keep the bands hordes of fans in check.

Those huge, sharp guitar solos and the even bigger, catchy and overly poppy ballad’s, which are both basically a damn registered trademark of their sound, are all still present. Which is fine, it’s just that their horribly predictable, like Turnbull’s recent flip-flops.

The album is immensely polished in terms of its mix and its production, and the performances are all tight as you’d expect, yet there is an odd thing about Hate Me – the best songs aren’t the heavier songs.

No, seriously guys.

See, in a year that has gifted us with so, so many diverse and game-changing records, Hate Me just feels like a very safe night out. Maybe I’m just over-thinking it, or maybe this record is just under-whelming.

I’ll leave that one up to you, dear reader.

Lillye’s eponymously last-named frontwoman once auditioned for The Voice, but this gritty debut EP makes it crystal clear that the hard rock scene is where she belongs.

Top to bottom, the Sydney outfit’s self-titled is true to the genre to a T. It rests on the platform of sincerely heavy guitars, at some points metallically high electrics and at others, a headbanger’s fantasy. Though its instrumentals are faultless, the vocals of front woman Virginia Lillye are essential to the EP’s quality. Her delivery drives it to a hark-back to ‘90s female hard rock, recalling Hole at some points and at others, modernising with a sound reminiscent of Otep.

Early 2000s pop is a comparison justifiable on the fast-tempo verses and soaring choruses of cuts like Who I’m Meant To Be, but it works seamlessly in contributing to the accessible yet lead-heavy rock adventure that is the release. The EP’s opener is titled Sik of U. Considering this is one of Aussie hard rock’s freshest offerings, you probably won’t be saying that to Lillye just yet.

I don’t remember the last time a band has taken off so quickly. Parisian quintet Novelists, formed in early 2013 and apparently haven’t had a day off since. Their first 10 months together saw the release of five singles, an EP and a few videos. The first single from Souvenirs, Gravity, clocked up over 100k views in one month. These guys are certainly commanding attention wherever they go.

The production on Souvenirs is fantastic, focusing more on the unclean vocals and a generally heavier sound than previous releases. Novelists have found their footing in style and carry it incredibly well.

If you close your eyes you will hear what a jam with Parkway Drive and Joe Satriani might sound like. Someone with limited understanding of modern heavy music might lump Novelists with the metalcore pack, but they’re much more progressive in a genre becoming saturated with similarity. They are the breath of fresh air required to further define metalcore and increase its popularity.

Augmentation by

The Arbitrary Method

Independent

Metalcore/Electronic Sydney, Australia facebook.com/TheArbitraryMethod

EUROPEAN JOURNEY – LIVE Malevolence by

Threshold

Nuclear Blast

Progressive Hard Rock London, U.K. facebook.com/threshold

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New Year’s Day

Another Century

Rock California, U.S.

facebook.com/ntdrock

Review: Neeka Valentine

Review: Rod Whitfield

Review: Jeremy Vane-Tempest

Augmentation is the debut release for Sydney metal band, The Arbitrary Method that combines metal with electronic and industrial elements. Two years in the making, the release features seven tracks and guest vocals from Soilwork’s Bjorn Strid.

Augmentation begins with an industrial intro that that leads into Divide The Devil.

Musically, this track leaves a fair amount of breathing space for Dave Forster’s stand out vocals, which range from classic metal cleans, to modern high and low screams.

The Mirror is packed full of energy whilst Defy is dynamic, a quiet bridge being one of the highlights. The Arbitrary Method have experimented with different tones on this release often layering pretty guitar or synth lines over low chugging riffs. It’s an effect that works well for the most part.

No track does this better than Into Insanity, which features Soilwork’s Bjorn Strid. The last on the EP, it is definitely the stand out and bodes a confidence within the structure and song writing showing just what this band is capable of. The Arbitrary Method will only keep growing from here.

This British act have been plying their trade in a quiet, fuss-free manner since the late ‘80s, and their career thus far has culminated in this excellent double live album.

To the uninitiated, I would describe this band as ‘progressive hard rock’, that is, they slam out a ‘70s and ‘80s influenced hard rock sound with some tasty progressive elements thrown in to spice things up. And they do it with a buoyancy that’s quite infectious.

European Journey features fifteen big, bold, fist-pumping tracks culled from their lengthy recorded history. Productionwise, they have hit a real sweet spot. A spot that many live album seem to just miss. It’s not as polished as a studio album, it sounds quite raw and real, so obviously there’s been minimal studio trickery or overdubbing performed on it. And yet it’s still highly listenable. Fans of this band will absolutely lap it up like that hungry cat who got the cream.

Strong live albums are a rare breed these days, but this is definitely one of them.

We’d all like to believe music is the great equaliser, but you, me and the sausage fest that congregates at Stage Four at Soundwave every year know that, in heavy music, women make up a woefully small minority as both performers and as attendees. That’s why I love bands like New Year’s Day. It’s so refreshing to hear down tuned guitars slam out some hard rock with a female voice telling society exactly where they can shove it.

Anyway, Malevolence is the name of their new album and it’s freaking awesome.

The drums are tight and crisp and the guitars are jammin’ but front chick Ashley Costello is the band’s greatest asset.

She sounds like she could kill a man at ten paces with one blow of her tongue. The album highlight is the erotic sex anthem, Scream. Make sure your mum isn’t around when you jam that one.

From the End of Heaven by

Gods Of Eden

a little more time and focus on their songwriting and orchestrations.

Rocket Distribution

Technical/Progressive Metal Sydney, Australia facebook.com/godsofeden Review: Rod Whitfield

This Sydney based tech/ progressive metal five-piece have massive ambitions for their sound, and this is fantastic. It’s great when bands choose not to operate within the restricting confines of everyday, garden-variety metal formats.

These guys certainly have the left of centre thinking down pat. The album opens in grandiose style, with The Overseer (Lunar Ascendancy) combining tech and symphonic metal with great aplomb, and takes the listener on a sometimes intense, sometimes uplifting journey. They have set their sights on the outer limits of the universe with their sound, but I can’t help but think that they have only reached the end of earth’s atmosphere on this, their debut full-length album.

It’s very strong, but they need another album or two to fully realise their rather lofty aspirations.

This is a very promising debut. Not everything hits the mark absolutely dead on, but the mouth veritably waters as to what these guys might achieve, given

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cover story

Life, Evolution and…

Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Ville Akseli Juurikkala

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“Those singer changes have been the ultimate energy vampire, for me and the rest of the band.”

So says Tuomas Holopainen, keyboardist, main songwriter and founding member of legendary Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish.

cover story

F

or the first decade of the band’s almost two decade’s long existence, they had the one singer, Tarja Turunen. However, they have had two more vocalists since 2007, and he feels that the process of finding a new singer twice in the last eight years has sucked them a little dry.

Holopainen has complete confidence in their latest vocal addition though. Dutch singer Floor Jansen has been a permanent member of the band since 2013, and he feels that she will be the vocalist to see the band’s career out.

“I have said this before, and I’ll say it again, that Floor is the last singer of Nightwish,” he states with conviction. “If something was to happen, that would be it, I would say. I don’t really see it happening anytime soon. But like I said, (that process) is a real energy vampire, and I don’t wish for anyone else to go through that.

“Floor is the ultimate versatile singer,” he goes on, “and with the perfect attitude and motivation. And it really shows on the new album, but especially live. All of us think that she is just the

perfect package, because she has been in the business for almost twenty years. She’s seen it all. She’s toured everywhere and never really made it that big, so she’s seen the downside of the music business as well. Just touring and touring in small clubs and pizzerias!” He laughs.

He is especially happy that Nightwish fans are very loyal, and have stuck with the band through the upheaval that is created when such an important facet of the band is replaced twice in a relatively short period of time.

“I have to give lots of credit to the fans for that,” he says admiringly, “for sticking it out through all the storms and turmoils. I don’t think we really ‘dipped’ as a band through two major changes. We were still able to sell albums and tour.

“So hats off to the fans for that.”

Jansen filled in for previous singer Anette Olzon on some tours in 2012 and 2013 and was formerly announced as the band’s new vocalist in October of 2013. She has now stamped her authority on the position in no uncertain terms with the release of the band’s

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latest album Endless Forms Most Beautiful earlier this year, and the reaction to her singing and presence, as well as to the record overall, has been nothing short of stunning.

“It’s been really, really good,” Holopainen states. “I think people are especially impressed with Floor. It seems that the critics and the fans have taken a lot of liking to her on the album.

That’s a really rare thing and makes us really happy.”

Like virtually all of their previous albums, Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a truly epic slab of symphonic metal majesty and mastery, full of sweeping orchestral and choral flourishes, massive vocal and musical hooks and grandiose song structures.

Holopainen admits that, especially as the band’s major songwriter, constructing a new Nightwish album from scratch is a huge and time consuming undertaking.

“When I start to do the songs, I need to have the idea that I don’t need to do anything else for the next six months to a year,” he explains, “that’s what it usually takes just for me to write the songs for a new album. It’s really important for me, mentally, not to have any other tours or promotions or additional activities, I really need to concentrate on doing the songs.

“That usually takes about a year. Then I introduce the songs to the other members of the band. We rehearse them, we arrange

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them, and this process usually takes two, three to four months.

And then when we enter the studio, that process is usually six months. So from scratch, with the mastering process, it’s usually about two years.”

Australian audiences can see the results of he and the band’s intense labours in a live sense early next year when Nightwish comes to tour here again. Most touring musicians state that they love the country they’re about to tour, but Holopainen doesn’t just talk the talk, he proves his love of our nation as well.

“I know this might sound corny and cliché, but Australia really is one of my favourite places to travel,” he praises us, “both with the band and in my own free time. A few years ago I did a road trip there from Perth to Cairns. It took six and a half weeks, just with a few of my friends, and it was the best vacation I’ve ever had. I just absolutely adore Australia.

“Finland is my home country and I love it to the bone, but if I ever had to move out of the country I would come to Australia.

There’s something about your country that really, really intrigues me.”

Endless Forms Most Beautiful is out now via Roadrunner Records. H

cover story

“When I start to do the songs, I need to have the idea that I don’t need to do anything else for the next six months to a year.”

Nightwish Endless Forms Most Beautiful Australian Tour Dates 7 January The Tivoli, Brisbane (18+) 9 January The Enmore Theatre, Sydney (All Ages) 11 January The Forum Theatre, Melbourne (18+) 13 January HQ Complex, Adelaide (18+) 15 January Metropolis, Fremantle (18+) 1717

Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Courtesy of Ne Obliviscaris

Ne Obliviscaris, arguably currently Australia’s biggest heavy metal export, have reached a somewhat awkward stage of their career. That point where they are truly starting to live their dreams as a band on a global scale, and yet still having to hold down day jobs to fund their musical efforts. tour dates Presented by HEAVY Music Magazine 3 December The Zoo, Brisbane 18+ 4 December The Small Ballroom, Newcastle 18+ 5 December Oxford Art Factory, Sydney 18+ 6 December The Basement, Canberra 18+ 10 December Max Watt’s, Melbourne 18+ 11 December Fowlers Live, Adelaide LIC AA 12 December Amplifier Bar, Perth 18+

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n the last twelve months, the band have released their sophomore album to global acclaim and toured Europe multiple times as well playing in India, Israel and Hong Kong, playing to packed venues and on the bill of some of the most prestigious heavy music festivals on the planet. They are gaining true worldwide notoriety, and yet the band members still have to sidle up to their bosses to tentatively ask for yet more time off to pursue heavy metal superstardom on the other side of the planet. And some of those bosses are somewhat less than completely understanding…

Violinist, clean vocalist and co-founding member Tim Charles, speaking from his home in Melbourne, is happy to give his perspective on that trade-off between extreme ambition and the need to put food on the table.

“I had to ask for the leave for a European tour about one week after I got back from two and a half months off, which is not great timing to ask for more time off!” He laughs wryly, “hopefully I can make a go of making a career out of being in a metal band, of all things!

“In Ne-O at the moment, we’re not making any money at all, because we’re re-investing the money. So it’s not that the band is making no money, it’s just that in order to do these big international tours, we need to re-invest the money into doing more tours. So that means there’s not really any money to put in our pockets. So when we go away on tour, everyone loses money taking time off work, and it doesn’t get paid back, so that means everyone bleeds money while we’re on tour, at the moment.”

He is however, hopeful that they are not too far away from a point where all this might change, and they may start being able to actually draw a wage from the band. A point that most bands aspire to reach, but so very few attain.

“It’s that whole thing. You get bigger, and eventually you get to a tipping point where you start making a profit, and then once you start making a profit overseas, then you’re not bleeding money and you start building money and you can start putting it in your pockets.

“Most bands never get there, but if you do become one of the rare bands that do, then all of a sudden you can start paying your bills touring the world, which would be kind of a cool thing to do!” He says with heavy understatement.

However, it may be excruciatingly difficult and awkward to get to a point where you are making your living playing in an extreme metal band, but for the members of Ne Obliviscaris it’s a case of not wanting to die wandering what might have been.

“There are a few bands that do it, and that’s what we’re aiming for,” he states confidently. “Everyone’s putting their personal lives on the line to try. I guess we figured that we don’t want to ever look back and think that if only we’d tried this, or done that, maybe we could have made it. We want to look back and say that that was the absolute furthest we could have taken it.”

It may seem to the band’s legions of local fans that the band have been neglecting Australia a little while gallivanting across the globe, but this is about to change, with the band heading off on an extensive nationwide tour throughout early to mid December. The two week run has been dubbed the ‘Return to the Citadel’ tour, and Charles could not be happier.

“We’re incredibly excited,” he enthuses. “This year has been an amazing year for the band. We’ve been touring right across the world, but now we’re going to finish the year playing to our home country fans.

He also feels that the headline format may give the band a chance to stretch out a little with regard to their live set, and there may be a few surprises on the way for hardcore fans. “As great as it is playing all around the world, it’s always a really special thing to perform in Australia. We love performing here so much, and we’re excited to be able to get back here and play a full headline show, and maybe throw in a couple of older songs that we don’t get to play very often in Australia. Finish the year with a bang with all of our amazing Australian fans.”

Ne Obliviscaris will be heading out across the nation in December, with Sydney guitar prodigy Plini in tow as support. H

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Words: Alexander Sievers Photo: Courtesy of Atreyu

As one of metalcore’s front running bands, Atreyu’s return from a four year hiatus has been embraced by fans the world over. HEAVY’s Alexander Sievers recently spoke with lead guitarist Dan Jacobs about Atreyu re-entering the fray.

I

n July, Atreyu came out guns blazing with the title track of their sixth album, Long Live, and its coinciding music video. That song and its film clip state defiantly that only Atreyu and its five members can dictate what happens to the band. The group’s Mohawk-spouting lead guitarist Dan Jacobs echoes this sentiment to HEAVY. “We stopped because we chose to stop, and we came back because we chose to come back, and what that’s showing is that there is nobody that can influence us or tell us what to do because we’re in control; this is a fresh start. We’ve shed off the old us and we’re coming back ten-fold.”

The six-stringer and business practitioner (Craft Beer Merch, Rock World Merch, and Pluginzs Keychains) states that the band’s comeback record is their music coming full circle.

“There aren’t as many rock ‘n’ roll songs on it. It’s definitely more of our metal side. Overall, its like if we wrote The Curse now. I think we’re coming full circle and taking what we liked about our other albums, yet still being heavy and aggressive with the essence of everything we’ve learned along the way.”

For those unaware, Atreyu incorporate metal and hardcore elements with digestible, catchier rock moments. This mix is something that Jacobs has always appreciated about his band. He reveals that because the band loves so many different styles of music, Atreyu initially became the vessel in which to pool their musical influences.

“I like the variety. I think that’s what makes Atreyu. From day one, we sounded the way we do because we didn’t want to sound like just one thing. We screamed because we liked hardcore and metal, and we sang because we liked rock ‘n’ roll and ‘80s hair-metal, everything.

So we thought ‘How can we make a band that sounds like of all these influences?’ We didn’t just want to be another rock band, but we also didn’t want to just be another metal band.”

With six varyingly different albums to their name now, Jacobs believes that perhaps their most important and integral record came out a decade ago.

“All of our albums have all taken us down different roads, but I’d

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have to say it’d be The Curse. That was the first album that really got people’s attention and it changed the game immediately for us.”

Their set times aren’t getting any longer and they have an extensive back catalogue to choose from. With that in mind, Jacobs was happy to share with us his two favourite songs to play live.

“Blow is definitely one of my favourites to play live, just the energy and that sing-along aspect of it. Same with Right Side Of The Bed. I think really any of the ‘80s influenced songs that have my vibe on them, as they’ve got a bit of everything; breakdowns, guitar solos, big sing-alongs, heavier screamed parts.”

That ‘80s influence sound that Jacobs mentions comes across the strongest with their cover of Bon Jovi’s You Give Love A Bad Name.

“It’s a great song to play at a festival, as f*cking everybody knows that song. So to an audience who are just watching and trying to learn who we are, it can give them a real chance to participate, and that’s a big part of the Atreyu experience”.

Those who caught the band on their first ever Soundwave earlier this year will be hard pressed to disagree. Speaking of which, that tour was very special for the band. “That was the first big thing we did as a band since we came back”, reveals Jacobs.

Their slot on Soundwave also reinforced why the band will continue Atreyu for as long as it can go. “We didn’t find out when we were actually playing until the day before we flew out, and then we found out we were on one of the smaller stages, on stage 6. That stage was pretty dead for all four days and then when we came on, suddenly over a thousand people just piled in to see us. It was amazing, especially in Melbourne. That was one of the most intense shows we have ever played in our careers.”

So what are Jacobs’s final words for the die-hard fans here in Australia?

“It would be our absolute pleasure to come back again.” Someone, make it happen.

Long Live is out now via Spinefarm Records/Caroline. H

Words: Alexander Sievers Photo: Courtesy of Mushroom Group

At the time of writing, Rise Against were wrapping up their American tour with letlive. and Killswitch Engage. Considering that Rise Against fall into the commercial punk/rock area, that’s a very strong bill to headline. It’s also a testament to how strong their music is.

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We’ve always gotten away with being on eclectic lineups”, bassist Joe Principe tells HEAVY over the phone.

“When we started, we would tour with hardcore bands like Agnostic Front, and then with ska bands like Mad Caddies, it was great. I tend to really like line-ups like this, as you get a great mix of bands and fans alike.”

Rise Against’s first Australian headline tour since 2011 will commence this December. Melbourne’s Outright, the opening support band of the four-piece’s upcoming tour, is a band who put the too-often unspoken issues of domestic violence and the core ideals of feminism at the forefront of their music. Regarding those themes, the bassist gave us his two cents on the unbalanced ratio of men to women in the hardcore and punk scenes.

“In the States, there are now way more female fronted bands, and I love seeing that. The punk scene was there for people who felt that they didn’t fit in. But when I was growing up, there was a severe lack of women in bands. I never understood why that was; maybe that’s just how it was back then. I just can’t put my finger on it. But in the last two years there’s been a sharp increase, which is great. It’s not just for the male dominated groups, as the scene is for everyone.”

Speaking of equality, on their last album, 2011’s Endgame, the band dedicated Make It Stop (September’s Children) to those out there who are struggling with their sexuality and for those sadly don’t see their life getting any better. Now, unless you lived under a rock, gay marriage was finally legalised across America in June (Australian government please take note). Principe offered the bands unanimous thoughts on the equal rights win.

“It felt like a great victory, like a big sigh of relief, you know? It’s encouraging to see that that steps like that can be taken year after year. It’s a basic human right, after all, to be happy.”

He continues, “It was a bit strange; we went to play in Russia in June. That’s a place where it’s illegal to be gay and we played that song each night while we were in Russia. I would leave those shows thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that it’s illegal here’”.

As one can plainly see, Rise Against have always tackled a multitude of issues, one being climate change. As the Australian government is one that openly dismisses the facts of climate change, disregards clean energy all together, Principe and his band mates find this mixture of arrogance and ignorance very frustrating.

“I don’t ever want to force something down someone’s throat, but facts are facts. You can’t change them. There are statistics out there that are the facts; that prove that we are damaging the ozone layer. I have fights with some of my family members, they don’t believe in global warming. I think it’s very obvious what’s happening. I guess we try to walk that fine line of using facts but not force-feeding ideas.

He also makes mention of the long-lasting effects, and comments on the disastrous Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill of 2010.

“With that BP oil spill, we did a fly over of that area, over in Louisiana and people think that just because it’s not on the news that it’s not an issue. But it’s still bad there, and that will be a big problem for a very long time.”

A song that tackles the shady business practices and politics behind events like that is The Eco-Terrorist In Me, easily the “purest” Rise Against song on The Black Market. Principe says that that song wasn’t written just to have a “fast punk song”, as he sternly states, Rise Against won’t release an album of just that; their roots.

“We would never write a full album like that now. But I think that song was a great representation of our band and where we came from. Those songs will always be present, as that’s our roots right there.”

Principe elaborates on this further. “We don’t sit down and plan out how we’re going to sound on each album, just whatever happens; happens. I think it’s human nature to want to change.”

It’s safe to say that as long as the world continues to change, then Rise Against will continue to change and continue to make music. H

tour dates 2 December Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne 4 December Riverstage, Brisbane 5 December Hordern Pavilion, Sydney 8 December Auckland Town Hall, Auckland

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Words: Callum Doig Photo: Leann Mueller

Ever since their first album The Second Stage Turbine Blade, Coheed and Cambria have gone on with a massive sci-fi series called ‘The Amory Wars’, which is portrayed as the essence of the band’s music.

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his time however, was the first time the band have ever done a nonconceptual record. Though The Color Before The Sun is the very first album they’ve done that takes a step away from the concept, the storytelling frontman Claudio Sanchez felt great about how the record turned out and the band’s different approach.

“It’s a very personal record for me,” Claudio says. “It’s me before fatherhood and afterwards. It has a lot of significance and it’s very emotional for me and the record minuses the concept. It felt like it was the right time to do this with the band because of me becoming a father.

[It] feels like a new beginning for me. It was the first time we recorded an album live which was a big feat for us, because we’re used to putting everything under the microscope.”

With Claudio being the brains of the band’s conceptual approach, the song writing for The Color Before The Sun felt very different as opposed to every other Coheed and Cambria record. At the time of the song writing, Claudio felt that this was the first time he was out of his comfort zone, especially after moving from his country home with his wife.

“When I started writing this record, I didn’t even know I was writing a Coheed album. I was going through a series of ups and downs, and me and my wife moved from our country house into an apartment in Brooklyn. We just wanted to make sure we were in the right space to become parents. I then started to write more of these personal pieces that kind of made me feel exposed. When you live in an apartment situation, the walls are thin and your neighbours can hear you. Being so exposed in this apartment leaped into the consciousness of the song writing. At the time I started to write these honest songs, and when I compiled them together I felt that they were so foreign for Coheed. As I looked at them, I started to look at my motto for Coheed, and that there should never be walls with this band. I thought ‘Why can’t there be a

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Coheed record without a concept?’ which was a question I kept asking myself. And you know what? This deserves to be a Coheed record.”

As he and the prog quartet continued the life as a concept-based group, Claudio also mentioned that his fictitious stories that take place in Coheed and Cambria’s discography was his way of hiding himself in his lyrics. Now that he had recently become a family man, he felt that it was the right opportunity to bear all to the world.

“All of these records come from a very personal place. The idea of the concept stems from a scared, timid person. I had a hard time confessing myself in the lyrics. That was the birth of the concept – it allowed me to hide behind a mask, if you will. I was just an uncomfortable singer-songwriter, having a hard time letting the world judge me as an individual. So I created a concept and hid behind it, so when it got released, it’ll take the brunt of the bash and I won’t get judged for what I did. I’m a pretty confident person at this moment because of my family.

And now is the time for me to bare all and be proud of it, and not worry about what the world thinks about it. Just like the song from our album You Got Spirit, Kid, at the end of the day, nobody gives a f *ck.”

Despite The Color Before The Sun having no concept involved in ‘The Amory Wars’ saga, Claudio doesn’t dismiss the idea of the album having a story behind it. He believes that all of the loyal Coheed and Cambria fans are able to interpret the record in their own way with a story that may still be linked to the band’s sci-fi series.

“Our fans are very creative,” he says. “Even before the comics came out to detail the concepts of the previous records, they started creating the ideas of what these stories were. I love that. That’s one of the few things I love that Coheed gives to its audience. It sparks creativity and I hope it creates fan fiction, and fans have their own pieces to interpret the album.”

The Color Before The Sun is out now via 300 Entertainment. H

OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE DEAD OUT NOW! Grave‘s 11th studio album is raging beast of furious and evil Scandinavian death metal.

Kneel down before the masters. Hail the mighty Grave!

Available as: CD and DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

SYMPHONY FOR THE LOST OUT: 16.11.15. Featuring the ORCHESTRA OF STATE OPER PLOVDIV AND RODNA PESEN CHOIR. Recorded live at The Ancient Roman Theatre of Philippopolis in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Available as 2CD+DVD DELUXE EDITION with 48 page booklet and DIGITAL ALBUM

THE SHRINE RARE BREED OUT NOW! THE SHRINE from Venice, LA take you on a heavy trip to a world of smoke, sweat, paranoia, evil women, Marshall amps, skateboards, and all things rock and roll. Produced

by Dave Jerden (ALICE IN CHAINS, SOCIAL DISTORTION).

Available as CD and DIGITAL ALBUM.

DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT DEVIN TOWNSEND PRESENTS: ZILTOID LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL OUT: 13.11.15. DEVIN TOWNSEND’S SPECTACULAR ZILTOIDIAN EXTRAVAGANZA LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL! The set includes the entire ‘Dark Matters’ album from “Z²”, played front to back, as well as a full second set of songs spanning most of Devin’s career! INCL. EXTENSIVE BEHINDTHE SCENES FOOTAGE AND FULL DOCUMENTARY! Available as: SPECIAL EDITION 3CD+DVD DIGIPAK and DIGITAL ALBUM

www.INSIDEOUTMUSIC.com

www.CENTURYMEDIA.com

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Words: Salla Harjula Photo: Kierra Thorn

Prog metallers Gods of Eden are releasing a new album after a wildly successful selftitled EP in 2012 and a whole lot of waiting in between. Singer Ian Dixon explains how he feels about releasing From the End of Heaven, finally.

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t’s amazing. I can’t wait. I’ve had it on my phone for a year, you know.”

The big man laughs, sounding childishly excited, and no wonder.

Their EP made waves all the way over in Europe. Then they lost their drummer and have spent the best part of two years looking for a new one.

“There was a point where we all thought it wasn’t gonna happen, with the way everything went last year with the line-up change and not finding a drummer. That was a good long period of time where we thought everything was dead for us.”

“Now, it’s like we’ve got new life. We had a really lucky, amazing run with the EP. We had a lot of stuff happen, a lot of good shows, and ended up playing in Germany. And to come up that high, and then to have nothing, it took us down. A bit of depths of despair.”

The band has worked hard to get back in the saddle. An ambition and attention to detail is what they are all about though, starting from songwriter, guitarist and band founder Danni Perez.

“When Danni’s writing a song it’s a very involved process. He’ll lock himself away in his room for weeks and just work on it, all night and all day.”

“He’ll change all these different things, and come up with new things, and send it to Mike (Barillaro, bassist). Those guys will go back and forth and come up with something and then present it to me.”

Ian then writes the lyrics, which exist on the same plane as the music: brimming with conceptual and nonconformist ideas.

“My main thing is about personal freedom. It’s about humanity. I wanna give people inspiration to be free in their lives. Because everything we’re doing with this project, is trying to push the limits of ourselves.

And I think if we can inspire other people to push their own limits, then who knows what might happen.”

The Black Knight satellite inspired the single, The Overseer,; a mysterious object claimed to be in orbit around the Earth from the ‘50s

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onwards.

“There are all these exotic crazy stories hidden in the Internet about it. I took the concept of it being a relay station for say, an alien race, watching us develop; the idea of them watching us and we don’t know.”

Outlandish ideas about aliens also appear in the self-published video for From the End of Heaven. What with the video’s stunning visuals, I remark the band just seems to go all out on everything they do.

Ian bursts out laughing.

“We do. That’s the thing. We kinda take pride in what we do. We don’t wanna let us down by delivering half-baked products. We wanna expend the time and the effort and the money to put as much as we can into it, to make it as good as we possibly can.”

That paid off when the video was nominated for the Berlin Video Awards in 2014.

“We came runner-up in the category for Best Visual Effects. That was awesome. And you know what the funny thing is? Everyone thought we were a signed band with a label. We were up against bands like Korn in the same category.”

After all these ups and downs, the band is ready to take on the metal world again.

“This time we’ve got the right line up. Everybody is together and in the right frame of mind. We’re playing better now than we ever have.”

But say you’ve never heard of Gods of Eden before. Why should you?

“Everything we’ve done has been about challenging ourselves, and in doing so we also try to challenge music and challenge everybody else. We’re looking to break the boundaries. We wanna do something different.

“So try us out. We might just change your conceptions of what bands are.”

From the End of Heaven is out now via Rocket Distribution. H

Words: Jeremy Vane-Tempest Photo: Courtesy of Devil You Know

You could say Howard Jones has had a rough couple of years, if by ‘rough’ you mean ‘spent time in a mental institution for social anxiety and depression to the point of suicide’.

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e’s made it through the darkness with his sense of humour intact, and his band, Devil You Know, are heading down for Soundwave 2016 off the back of their new album, They Bleed Red. Howard Jones might be built like a brick shithouse, but that doesn’t mean he’s not up for a laugh. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much in an interview as I did with this one. Maybe it was Howard’s infectious laugh or the fact that it was 7-freaking-AM. I dunno.

Unfortunately, the majority of it cannot be reprinted lest either Howard or myself wind up on a government watch list.

Anyway, ol’ mate Howie’s band, Devil You Know, have a new album coming out in November called They Bleed Red. Their first album, The

Beauty of Destruction, was decent but was let down by the fact that it flowed like concrete. Howard acknowledges the lack of fluidity in The Beauty of Destruction, but gives a damn good reason for it. “You have to remember that we had never played a show together until after Beauty came out,” which Howard explained. “We wrote some music that we liked, called it an album and just toured our asses off. We always knew that our future endeavours would provide a far more accurate portrayal of our identity as a band. I’m still really happy with that first one, though, it was a lot of fun. With this one, however, that’s all magnified tenfold and that comes from the nature of touring together. You sit in a bus and talk and you start forming true relationships and not just maintaining

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acquaintances and from that connection flows a superior product.”

The first thing that hits you right around the face is the sheer speed of the record. “You can thank your fellow Australian, John (Sankey, drums),” laughs Howard. “If we didn’t reign him in, everything would be fast. It’s actually good for us, because me and Fran(cesco Artusato, guitar) don’t always think that way. John tends to think in terms of tempo as a means to get the crowd going. We all complement each other’s strengths and fill in each other’s weaknesses. We didn’t really expect that we’d have a dynamic this good, too. It’s all just fallen together really nicely.”

It hasn’t all been sunshine and roses, though. Howard’s been through a rough patch over the last couple of years. After struggling with social anxiety and depression, he’s thankfully made it out the other side in one piece. He’s philosophical about his experiences, though.

“Even if I hadn’t gone through anything, I would have copped hate,” he laughed. “It doesn’t matter how good your band is, it doesn’t matter how many massive hits you’ve written that come from the heart, somebody’s gonna hate you because that’s what the world is now, and that’s what the

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Internet is to the tenth power. It’s great for the sharing of information but it’s also a means for people to become a faceless enemy and that’s terrible. That’s why I enjoy not being on the Internet. My only enemy is the fish that won’t throw itself upon my hook so I can grab him, admire him, tell him he’s a beautiful specimen and then return him to the deep from whence he came.”

“Everybody is human. Everybody goes through their own trials and tribulations,” he continued. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in front of a band or in front of a computer screen at work, you’re gonna have good days and terrible days. Just because my job involves me standing in front of a bunch of people, that doesn’t mean I’m not still a person. Hell, I’m still the same person. I enjoy singing and screaming but I’ll go to a movie theatre and people are filing in and I walk in and try to find a seat that’s as isolated as possible so that I don’t feel like people are staring at me. You can’t be hindered by the negativity of others. I’ve got my own negativity to deal with and it is more than capable of cutting me down to a fibre.”

They Bleed Red is out now via Nuclear Blast. H

Words: Steven Jenkins Photo: Jayden Walker

tour dates HEAVY Music Magazine presents

SANZU; A river named after a Japanese belief that the dead must cross on the way to the afterlife. But here in Australia, they’re one of the heaviest breaths of fresh air blowing from the other side of Australia. Vocalist Zac Andrews spoke to HEAVY about the band, the new album and touring.

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ith just over six months between their debut EP Painless and the release of their forthcoming album Heavy Over The Home, was there a rush to bring out as much music as possible instead of waiting? When it’s from a band that makes quality music like SANZU, you want as much as possible.

“It was half and half, so we already had about half of Heavy Over The Home ready before Painless was even finished,” Zac explains. “We were just stock piling songs and had ideas floating around and then we kind of set up a goal and when we wanted to do the next one plus a road map of what we wanted to do for the next year. So then we just kept working on it full time and it’s come together really nicely.”

A lot of bands these days stand for something, incorporating their beliefs and views into the lyrics and music. We asked Zac if SANZU had a message they were trying to get across and it turns out, they just want to make heavy music.

“It’s a really broad concept. I wouldn’t say there’s a particular message or one single goal that we’re trying to do, but we’re just writing what we love. Just writing really heavy music and singing about things that mean a lot to us. We’re just trying to do our own thing really and as simple as that may sound, it’s what works well for us as a band.”

Living in Western Australia can be quite isolated at times, not every single band that tours can make it to the West Coast due to long travel times and expenses. Those who live on the East Coast on the other hand often get quite spoilt with shows and international tours popping up frequently. But there still seems to be quite a strong metal scene over there and SANZU are looking to show us what they’ve got.

“I don’t have much to compare it to because I’ve never actually left Western Australia, which is why I’m excited to do this run of shows on the East Coast in December. I’ve been to Asia but I haven’t even stepped foot outside of my own state,” he laughs. “I know Melbourne is considered by many as having one of the best scenes in the country for metal music, but we’ve got a pretty strong and loyal crowd here that always turn up to shows. There’s lots of support and heaps of venues, so we never have trouble booking a gig here. The only downfall really is if we do want to tour the travel is just immense and expensive, but we can’t wait.”

The artwork for the new album Heavy Over The Home is quite

3 December New Globe Theatre, Brisbane 4 December Valve Bar Underground, Sydney 5 December Reverence Hotel, Melbourne 11 December Amplifier Capitol, Perth

magical and beautiful, it definitely stands out and there’s an interesting story to explain how it happened. Not only is he a talented front man with a monstrous voice, but Zac looks to be quite the artist also.

“I did both of them,” he laughs. “The first time with Painless we had an idea and I spent about six months just itching away at it. Then we kind of wondered whether it was too risky or too colourful and contemplated if people wanted to see this given the type of music we play. But it really paid off and people loved it, it really represents the mood of the album. It’s really in your face and aggressive, the cover is really bright. When it came to the new album it’s a lot darker in the theme, and up until two weeks before we released the artwork it was just a black and white cover, which we were pretty set on. Our distribution company said this wasn’t going to work, so we collectively sighed and agreed. Then we pulled a piece that I previously made to use and then it made sense with the bright colours and mystical thematic. It’s been a learning process, we never had a clear goal of what we wanted to show people and we’ve naturally had one grow in front of us.”

Zac let us in to what sort of ideas and themes led to where they are now, whilst not all positive it has created something special that people will definitely appreciate once they hear the outcome of the highly anticipated new album.

“The EP was pretty much theme-less, we just had our guitarist write most of the songs and I wrote some. They just kind of crossed the board about vague ideas regarding views on the world and social relations.

But up until the EP and the recording of the album there were a lot of shifts within the band. Naturally there’s a lot of stress internally when you’re recording. We had changes within relationships, some of us lost people in their family, I’ve got a baby on the way plus there was just a huge amount going on. So with the lyrics on the new album, Century (guitarist) and myself have gone half and half. When we get a new song we grab lyrics that we stockpile and put it against the track that suits it.

Each song was a specific story, he writes more personal and metaphorical whereas I write really literal and just talk about things external but still relatable. It’s got a really bitter vibe to this album, which is a reflection of where we are at the moment. Hence the title Heavy Over The Home it’s a really grey area that we’re sitting in mentally as a collective but it’s coming through quite well.” H

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Words: Cameron Cooper Photo: Courtesy of Halestorm

Halestorm hit Aussie shores for the first time this December. Frontwoman Lzzy Hale told HEAVY she is expecting some wild antics from the local crowds.

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aining the attention of the rock/metal world in 2012 with The Strange Case Of... and breakout single Love Bites (So Do I), hard rock quartet Halestorm have spent the last three years touring so much it is a wonder they had time to record this year’s Into The Wild Life. Re-invigorated by the new album, the band set their sights on Australia for the first time, embarking on a trip that singer/guitarist Lzzy Hale has high hopes for.

“I’m expecting debauchery in the best way possible,” she says. “I’ve never been to Australia, so there is going to be a lot of beer drinking, eating food and hanging out with my guys playing rock music. It is just going to be far too much fun! What I’ve heard from all of my friends who have been over there is that there’s nothing like Australian rock fans, so I am looking forward to meeting everyone!”

Being on stage consumes a large part of Halestorm’s time as a band, which suits Hale just fine.

“It is where everything makes sense for me. For that hour, nothing else matters but doing the show and connecting with people. We had a lot of time off when making the record so we ended up booking weekend shows because we got so antsy! People talk about it being like a drug and it really is - you’ve gotta do it over and over again.”

As a decidedly live band, it was important for the group to capture the essence of what made the Halestorm machine so special on the latest album, which required a complete overhaul of studio operations.

“One of the goals on this record was to really bridge the gap between what people see live and what they hear on the radio. So we recorded the songs live, all four of us standing in a circle and playing them from beginning to end. It simplifies everything when you can’t hide behind a wall of guitars,” Hales explains. “So, you need these grooves and you really depend on the human element that happens live: those happy

accidents and just fucking everything up!”

Producer Jay Joyce, who Lzzy describes as a “crazy rock n’ roll dude stuck in Nashville making country music”, had a heavy hand in the process, encouraging experimentation and spontaneity over methodical hit-song writing.

“The great thing about this studio is, it is a remodelled church. We were in this big congregation room with pianos, guitars and drum kits with everything in record mode, so there were a lot of musical chairs on those intros and outros. It wasn’t necessarily planned for us to do the record this way but we just kind of fell into it. You rediscover the musical language you have with your three best friends and it was really a great experience,” Hale explains, recounting the insane month-or-so of studio time.

“I was in the other room writing this song and I didn’t know the producer was listening. We went through I Like It Heavy and then Jay told the engineer to turn all the mics on in the room and said sing me that song.

“So I was in the church singing this song and we ended up closing off the record that way. Something that no producer had ever really done before was trust me. He didn’t care if it was a hit-song or whatever, which is something I’ve gotten used to over the years. Being in the corporate game for so long, you get trapped by ‘Well, maybe this isn’t good enough for the record’. It was freeing to just trust yourself.”

It all sounds pretty full on, but after doing two albums essentially the same way, the band were due a shake-up.

“This whole record has kind of been about ownership,” Hale says.

“We just needed to throw out everything that made us comfortable.”

Off the leash and going wild, Halestorm roll into town this December. H

tour dates 8 December 170 Russell, Melbourne 9 December The Gov, Adelaide 11 December Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle 12 December ANU Bar, Canberra 13 December Manning Bar, Sydney 15 December The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley

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Words: Callum Doig Photo: Aaron Stainthorpe

For twenty five years, and still as dark and brooding as ever, gothic doom metal ensemble My Dying Bride have been one of the UK’s star attractions in their home country’s metal scene. Callum Doig chatted to the dying groom and founder Aaron Stainthorpe about the band’s thirteenth full-length record Feel the Misery, where they returned to the old Academy Studios to record the new album.

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e decided to return to Academy, which we haven’t used for many, many years, which was where some of the old classics were recorded. And the previous studio we used for the last few records was way too busy at the time. We couldn’t fit in the Academy studio at the same time, because it’s a tiny studio, so we recorded the album in segments as often as we could.

But, it went really smoothly. I really wish there were some crazy stories to tell about the recording, because when you’re in a huge residential studio where you sleep and have your own cook, you usually have wild parties and madness goes on. But, there were no problems, really, it all went really smoothly!”

While Feel the Misery was just about finished, My Dying Bride recruited old friend and ex-member of the group Calvin Robertshaw, in place of Hamish Glencross. Though he hadn’t done much work on the record, Aaron feels confident about him being back in the band again.

“When we had an inkling that Hamish was ready to leave, because he wanted to start a family, Andrew Craighan had a word with Calvin to see if he would be interested in re-joining the band, and he said “yes”. So, when Hamish went, Calvin got the call and he slotted straight in nicely. He was a bit nervous playing in front of Lena, Shaun and Dan, and although he has played guitar only at home, he never really performed live. So, he was quite nervous about playing in front of other people, but he settled in nicely, and

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gets on very well with everyone else.”

For a number of years, My Dying Bride have relied on Rob Magoolagan to produce their albums in the past, including Feel the Misery. So, what is it about Magoolagan that makes the band want to keep working with him on the production of each record?

“He’s like the seventh member of the band. He’s worked with the band longer than anyone else besides Andrew and myself. He knows where we’re coming from, he knows the very foundations of My Dying Bride, and he’s able to make contributions and comments that another producer wouldn’t have the balls to do, and we like his honesty.”

My Dying Bride don’t emphasise too much on what each album should sound like before they even start working on it. According to Aaron, the idea of making a good record is going with the flow and the gut feeling deep inside.

“When you have a master plan, you strategise too much, and you then when you have an idea that’s beyond the boundaries and you think, ‘Oh, I’d better not contribute it, because it won’t fit’, so we write and we see what happens. We don’t really think it through, it’s just better to go with the gut feeling and construct

your riffs. It’s the way that feels right. So, we never know what an album is gonna sound like, whether it be a miserable goth album or a crushing doom album. It’s too early for me to judge whether Feel the Misery is more doom, goth or death, it’s up to the fans to decide that.”

Twenty-five years on, My Dying Bride haven’t changed a whole lot, but Aaron feels that the band has still evolved in different ways while remaining in their signature sound. Feel the Misery has shown the band has been able to be in both a new and an old form at the same time.

“We knew when we first formed, My Dying Bride was gonna dark, miserable and heavy. We haven’t lost sight of that, but we still expanded and evolved here and there to keep it interesting. We don’t wanna write the same songs over and over again, we would’ve given up ten years ago if we did. When you take the first song And My Father Left Forever, there are a few riffs in there that we wouldn’t have allowed in the band fifteen years ago. It’s still heavy, dark, and it’s filled with emotions. So, we’re expanding, but at the same time, we haven’t lost sight of our roots.”

Feel the Misery is out now via Peaceville Records/ Rocket. H

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Photo: Josh Cheuse Words: Carl Neumann

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After forty-two years of producing albums and touring the world numerous times, AC/DC has etched a groove in virtually every rock fan’s mind.

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ffectionately preserved in memories of old schoolyard mates, late night parties, and general yahooing, men and women from Australia to Sweden and back again hold this legendary band as a long-time favourite. And it’s not only us ‘50s-‘70s babies that they have captured; today, young ones down to 10 years old - including my son and his mates instantly recognise AC/DC’s unique sound and cannot help but sing and bang along to their rhythms.

Personally, AC/DC represents several pivotal points in my life; my first-ever beer at my mate Barney’s house, a family road trip across Australia in a Commodore blasting the hits from High Voltage to Back In Black on my trusty Sony Walkman, and the first time I was left alone at my childhood home. Our conservative neighbours had never experienced a Saturday morning like that before, especially when Who Made Who (on vinyl) ripped through the lounge room curtains, causing Angus’ hard-edged guitar to echo down the street and across the creek, as I kicked and air guitared around the room. Ahhhh - those memories!

Mine are just one man’s stories amongst those of tens of millions of fans across this giant ball of dirt and sea. Record banks could be filled to the brim with testimonials likened to, “I saw ‘em in a pub in ‘81 in Western Sydney” to, “If it weren’t for AC/DC I wouldn’t be in a band,” as said by many famous musicians.

In the early ‘70s, AC/DC became one of the most popular acts in Australia, heavily influencing the local music scene across Sydney and Melbourne in contrast to the glamour of Skyhooks and Hush. Frequent appearances on the popular music TV show “Countdown” fuelled their local success even further. In 1975, one of their first appearances on TV featured It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll) - a clip which was filmed with the band on the back of a truck traveling down Swanston Street, Melbourne with fans and a bagpipe band in tow.

There’s no doubting AC/DC has helped form entire genres of rock and metal music - not just locally, but the world over.

The Young brothers took their blues influences and 4/4 time signatures of the likes of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters and added their unique rowdy attitude and complexion. Their signature chunky riffs and tough-guy lyrics about drinking booze, women, and damnation helped create the punk genre and the then-emerging British New Wave and Heavy Metal scene.

In 1976, AC/DC embarked on a successful European tour while landing a dream record deal with Atlantic Records, who went on to re-release High Voltage to the world. Already a gold album in Australia at the time, High Voltage has since gone gold and multi-platinum in seven different countries, including the UK and the US. The band’s success continued - albeit slowly - until 1979, when they released Highway to Hell, marking a significant

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turning point in their history. While record sales were soaring in 1980, Angus and Malcolm had only just commenced working on their next album when sudden tragedy struck camp. After a night of hard drinking, lead vocalist Bon Scott was found dead in the back seat of a car. Later, his good friend Ozzy Osbourne wrote and recorded a song about Scott’s death, the commonly misinterpreted Suicide Solution.

Shortly after, the band chose a surprisingly unknown new lead singer - the rough-throated Brian Johnson - and began writing and recording what essentially became their second best-selling album of all time. A perfect salute to their late frontman, Back In Black has claimed sales of nearly 26 million copies, second only to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

After this, success moseyed along for AC/DC for several years, but the next three albums didn’t get anywhere near the recognition of their predecessors. It was the 1990 release of The Razors Edge album that catapulted their tremendous comeback. Air guitars were dusted off, and tens of millions of fingers became possessed by that catchy guitar lick and “nanananannanaa... Thun-der!” beat in Thunderstruck. The world was Acca Dacca obsessed once again!

Their worldwide popularity continued as they released Ballbreaker and Stiff Upper Lip with moderate success through the grunge era - a feat that only Metallica and Guns N’ Roses could also attest to.

Back on local ground in 2005, the Melbourne City Council unanimously voted for Corporation Lane to officially be renamed as ACDC Lane. This landmark attracted substantial media coverage, and since that time has become a go-to nightspot for live bands and nightlife.

After eight years of touring and a long hiatus, the band unleashed Black Ice, smashing record books to become their first album to reach number one and mega-platinum status in every major country. Hard to believe, as it was, AC/DC became bigger than ever.

Their first new album in six years revealed that founding member and guitarist Malcolm Young would not be continuing with the band due to illness. The pending album, Rock Or Bust, would be the first album in the band’s forty-one year history not to feature Malcolm. However, the role of rhythm guitarist has been kept in the family, with his nephew Stevie Young now a permanent band member.

In November 2014, Rock Or Bust challenged its mega-predecessor to a dual but fell just short of across-theboard Number 1’s, and record sales have not yet reached capacity.

And so, here they are forty-two years later, with old and new fans of all ages waiting patiently for the kick-off of their Rock Or Bust world tour in Sydney on November 4th. With two shows in every city (besides Adelaide), AC/DC are set to continue their brilliant success the world over, proving they are absolutely one of rock’s all-time legendary bands. H 4 November - ANZ Stadium, Sydney 7 November – ANZ Stadium, Sydney 12 November QSAC, Brisbane 21 November Adelaide Oval, Adelaide

27 November - Domain Stadium, Perth 6 December - Etihad Stadium, Melbourne 8 December – Etihad Stadium, Melbourne

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tour dates 20 November Factory Theatre, Sydney (LIC/AA) 21 November Max Watt’s, Melbourne (18+) 28 November The Brightside, Brisbane (18+) 17 December Fowlers Live, Adelaide (LIC/AA) 18 December Rosemount Hotel, Perth (18+) Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Maik Kleinert

Riding the melodic metalcore/post hardcore craze of the last five or six years, this Melbourne based five piece band have carved out a rather impressive career for themselves since their formation in the late 2000’s, having released two very well received albums, a couple of EPs and built a strong live following. In Australia and internationally.

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ith the imminent release of their third long player, Songs of Soulitude, the band have resolved to turn over a new leaf, both in terms of their sound and direction and the way in which they conduct and manage their career.

Lead guitarist Callan Orr, speaking from his home in bayside Melbourne, explains.

“We have been on a number of record labels in the past,” he begins, “Unified and Rise Records being the main ones and that was a great experience. There’s no secret that it’s all a bit of smoke and mirrors, and you have to build the perception in order to grow,” he explains. “We’ve learned that there are two types of bands; there’s big bands and there’s successful bands. A successful band doesn’t necessarily have to be big, they just have to have a loyal fan base and keep their expenses low. We want to keep playing music, and we think the way to do that is to build a fan base that is more loyal, not just grabbing what’s cool at the moment.”

The concept is more about quality over quantity, and making the whole thing more of an organic process. “So what we’re doing is just trying to downsize our team, get more hands-on with it, and just show the hardcore fans that they mean a lot to us. And just grow the band that way.

“We just don’t want to put all our effort into pretending we’re this thing that we’re not. We’ll see if it pays off, but we’re not really too concerned about that.”

While there were no final mixes available for listening at the time of writing, Orr also tells us that there is a marked change in the band’s musical approach on the new record as well, which may surprise some.

“We always think this could be our last opportunity to do an album,”

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he explains. “So with that in mind, we kinda got a bit selfish with it and just did an album that we wanted to do. We didn’t really worry about the public appeal too much, as we have on previous records.

“It’s just a record that we felt we wanted to do, like if another band did it and we could listen to it. That was the entire aim. We’ve dropped all our breakdowns and things like that, just going for more of a rock direction, like what we grew up listening to.”

And they got to indulge more of their childhood musical fantasies when recording the album in Atlanta, Georgia as well. “We recorded it with Matt Goldman,” he recalls, “who is our hero, from about age fourteen. We don’t really have favourite bands. Collectively, we all have different favourite bands. It just so happens that he recorded all of them!

“Again, it was like looking at this record as being the last one we ever do. We have the means to record our own record. We did the last one ourselves. It’s a lot cheaper and a lot more convenient. But this time we just wanted to do the record with someone we grew up listening to.”

Working with Goldman also brought out another side of the band and their approach to recording, which suited their new direction.

“And because of that, it became a lot more collaborative,” Orr states.

“It’s not sounding exactly the same as our other records because there’s another dude’s input into the process, and it worked out for the better.”

Songs of Soulitude is unleashed worldwide on November 13th, and the band has announced an Australian tour in support of the album, with European tour dates to follow. They also recently signed a deal with a new US booking agent, so North American dates cannot be too far away. With a new album, a new sound and a whole new attitude, Dream on Dreamer are yet another Aussie heavy band going places. H

Words: Callum Doig Photo: Courtesy of Mushroom Group

All the way from Jalisco, Mexico, Garage Punk trio Le Butcherettes have been tearing up the world since 2007 with crazy good onstage shows and now three records added to their discography.

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allum Doig spoke to the band’s founder Teri Gender Bender about the band’s third record A Raw Youth, and how the process for her and her ensemble went.

“It went really fast for me. But with the actual writing process, some of those songs were written when I was thirteen and I kinda left them in the vault for a while until now. Sometimes when I’m at home or in a hotel I record ideas in the bathroom, so when we were in production for the record with Omar, we picked out the songs that made the most sense for this record. So I had the concept like a movie and it wasn’t intended of making songs that you make into a hit.”

The man responsible for getting Le Butcherettes further with recognition is none other than Omar Rodríguez-Lopez, and he’s worked with the band since their first album. With Omar working with the band again, the band have also been signed to Mike Patton’s label Ipecac Recordings. And what is it that makes Teri and her project want to keep working with Omar?

“Omar is the kind of guy that is very logical to a point where he leaves personal feelings aside for a project he believes works best. When he produced the records we’ve done so far, he tried to serve the music, not to serve our egos. When Mike Patton was interested in having Le Butcherettes on the label, Omar said, ‘It makes perfect sense, because it’ll be what’s best for the band. Not for me, not for you, but for the band’, which was a great privilege. In the end, Mike Patton was interested in our work and it worked great for us.”

While A Raw Youth has been in the works since Teri was young, the meaning of the songs have stayed the same since they were first written.

“I guess A Raw Youth was more of a convicted album from the beginning, because I knew exactly what I wanted after working a lot on tapes. A Raw Youth was written in honour of all the rebels that have fought for something they believed in. It’s not a political or an activist

album, it’s just for those people throughout history that started from the bottom that believed in something. Even though they’re scared, they’re gonna eat their fears and continue with their beliefs, because we’re all here for a quick second.”

Teri’s music in Le Butcherettes isn’t influenced only in what surrounds her own life and the music she brought herself up on. It just so happens that her home country Mexico, has served itself as a major part of inspiration for her poetry, because of its beautiful landscape and yet dark history.

“They’re my roots, it’s where I come from. It’s one of the most beautiful countries and there’s so much juice engraved in the culture, but it’s also so depressing because there’s so much death and injustice.

When I started playing in the States, I could easily see the differences between the two countries. In Mexico, everything is so unsafe. For example, my mother was kidnapped when she was eighteen and so was her boyfriend at the time and she escaped for her life after being taken to who knows where. So, Mexico has rich beauty but also a dark history, such as sacrifices, torture, everything revolving around death.”

Making appearances on early Le Butcherettes discography included Henry Rollins and Shirley Manson (Garbage). This time, for A Raw Youth, John Frusciante and Iggy Pop appear as the new guests on the album.

“We kind of attracted each other. It’s funny, because I was young and I would go on these walks with thoughts surrounding my universe and I would say to the universe, ‘Please, let me someday work with Iggy Pop’ and I would keep repeating it. What led me to meet Iggy Pop was Mike Watt from the Minutemen. He was into our band, and he thought it was a good idea to get us to tour with Iggy Pop, and Iggy agreed to it. It was then an immediate connection, and there was no objective of getting him on the record, it just somehow worked out organically!”

A Raw Youth is out now through Ipecac Recordings. H

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Words: Jeremy Vane-Tempest Photo: Courtesy of Arising Empire

France. It’s a country known for endless poor-taste jokes about ‘the War’, but any metal fan worth their salt knows it as the home of game-breakers Gojira. Luckily, there’s a new arrival for those who like their metal a little more towards the Discoveries-eraNorthlane end of the spectrum.

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hey’re called Novelists, and they’ve got a new album out now through Nuclear Blast called Souvenirs just jam-packed with djenty goodness. That low-end comes courtesy of bassist Nicolas Delestrade, who was good enough to give us some of his time.

The thing that immediately becomes apparent on listening is the incredible clarity of the mix. That becomes even more impressive when Nicolas revealed that he did it all in-house. Nice one, dude.

However, it should be acknowledged that he had a fair bit of time to work on it.

“We actually had a few songs on the album written before we put out our demos and EP”, explained Nicolas. “It was definitely more stressful, though, because the demos were really good and we wanted the album to surpass them. We’ve really taken our time to make sure that these songs are the best they could be. We’d be disappointed if we released an inferior product.”

Souvenirs is Novelists’ debut record, but they’ve already amassed over thirty thousand followers on Facebook. “It helped that we were all in the same two bands before Novelists started, so our fans followed us across”, Nicolas acknowledged. “Our first song, Twenty Years, went over way better than we thought it would, too, so that helped at lot with exposure and interest. We also try to do everything as professionally as we can. We want our fans to know that we’re just not messing around.”

France’s heavy scene is in a similar situation to what Australia’s scene was back in 2007. There was no real Australian presence on the international stage, and then a little thing called Parkway Drive happened. Nicolas reckons that he sees a similar shift happening in the land of the long, white baguette. “Well, Gojira really helped”, Nicolas

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stated. “Betraying the Martyrs and Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! got really big a year or two ago, too, so those three bands have really paved the way for French bands to make something for themselves. Labels now see French bands as viable signings, which wasn’t the case five years ago, because, to be honest, all the French metal bands were shit. Except Gojira, if course.”

Nicolas may be a native to France, but he’s recently moved ‘abroad’.

“I moved to Berlin a year ago”, Nicolas revealed. “I moved because the cost of living in Paris is crazy, and I’m a freelancer so I can work anywhere, so why would I live in one of the world’s most expensive cities? I like Berlin way more than Paris. Paris is quite posh, and if you don’t have much money there isn’t much to do. You get bored very quickly.

Berlin’s ideal for people who aren’t particularly wealthy. No one’s earning €10 000 per month in Berlin. There’s a large amount of people here in their early to mid twenties. People that age don’t have a lot of money, so the city has had to kind of mold itself around that facet of its identity.”

Novelists are about to head out on the first U.S. tour. The differences between touring in Europe vs. the good ol’ U.S of A aren’t lost on Nicolas.

“The good thing about touring Europe is that you only need a van,” he explained. “You might need a ferry to get to the UK, but you can just drive. Plus, if the tour’s cancelled, you can just kind of go home. There aren’t any visas or passports to worry about. We’re heading to the U.S. in November with I, the Breather, and it’s a totally different story. We’ve had to book flights, visas, and it costs so much more. Touring Europe as a European is extremely convenient.”

Souvenirs is out now via Arising Empire. H

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Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Courtesy of Caligula’s Horse

Brisbane’s Caligula’s Horse is a band on the brink. On the brink of cracking Australia and the rest of the world right open. Everything appears to be in place, they have two fantastic albums behind them, and their third album Bloom is a true masterpiece, and will be unleashed upon the world by the time you read this.

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hey have record labels, management and booking agents, nationally and internationally, in their corner. They have a passionate, very real and very powerful live show and some hard arsed national and international touring behind them, including some excellent supports for such luminaries of heavy and progressive music as TesseracT, Opeth, The Ocean and plenty more.

It appears that their time is now. And their enigmatic front man Jim Grey, with all possible humility, agrees, although with credence given to some harsh realities of the music business that remain.

“This is the time for us,” he says with understated confidence, “it feels right. All of us are obviously still working to support ourselves, and we’re still just poking our head into the world of global music.

I think it’s important that people know that. The more people that know that the bands that they like who appear to be having some moderate success are still working to support themselves is really important. It might stop them from stealing music so much!

“But right now, the time is right for us to step out onto the global stage.”

And Bloom is the ideal platform from which to launch this national and international assault. Whilst their first two albums are excellent, and really established their name in the industry in Australia, this new album is a step forward again, a true world class piece of art. Again, Grey is quietly confident about its prospects.

“I’m feeling some real anticipation for this one,” he admits, “just purely because it’s a big step forward for us. It’s our first major label release for starters, and secondly, sound-wise it’s very different to what we’ve done in the past. I mean it’s still got our core energy and that progressive approach to melodic metal. At the same time there’s a lot of alternative rock in there, there’s a lot more positivity and brightness and lightness to it.

“I’m sure our fans are going to love it and I’m sure it will have something for everybody.”

It’s actually been quite a quick turnaround from their second album The Tide, The Thief and River’s End, which was released in late 2013. Producing something of such quality in only two years whilst all the band members still hold down day jobs and look after families is quite an achievement. Grey confirms that it was indeed a relatively quick process, and is happy to give some insight into the album’s journey from early writing sessions through to the completed work we hear now.

“Towards the end of last year, Sam (Vallen, guitarist) and I

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started messing around with a couple of the tracks,” he recalls, “Firelight, the second single was the first song to complete itself.

“But at the beginning of this year, we really knuckled down and we went ‘we’ve gotta get this album done’ and we demo’d everything.

And it basically went from song zero to one hundred percent in less than six months, which is the fastest we’ve ever done.”

He also agrees wholeheartedly that there is a clear and strong progression from one album to the Words: Salla Harjula next on all three records. “Absolutely,” he says emphatically, “if only because the writing process and the way we work together have become so much more efficient. We’re well practised at what we do now and we enjoy what we do and I think that that’s what life is.”

The woes of the music industry are well documented, and these are exacerbated by Australia’s isolation, Bloom, by prog prodigies Caligula’s small population, governments who Horse, has a running theme of disdain the arts and other factors. playing with dynamics: contrasting Caligula’s Horse are one of a few gossamer frailty with intensity and Aussie bands that are bucking that force. Songwriter Sam Vallen’s love for trend, and Grey’s advice to young ‘70s prog can be heard in the organic song structures, although Bloom is bands trying to get somewhere in thoroughly modern with its heavierthis country is simple and sobering. than-ever, crystal clear soundscape.

The musicianship is extraordinary “I think the best piece of advice I can give is just to support each other, across the board, although the band’s most exceptional resource is singer Jim to be honest,” he offers. “You’re going Grey. Grey’s mix of fragile power and to struggle, and it’s going to be a silky timbre provide constant goose hard road, so why would you make bump moments.

The album blossoms into full flower enemies and do it alone? at Dragonfly. Opulent and lithe, lavish “Being a better person makes your and graceful, ambitious and fluid, the art better and makes your life better song leisurely unfolds into such beauty in general, and you’re just going to it breaks your heart.

Ultimately though, this album make better music. So just dig music, grows with every listen. Bloom won’t and be a better dude, that’s the best wither with the passage of time. It’s piece of advice I can give.” a perennial.

Bloom is out now via InsideOut Music. H

Bloom

by Caligula’s Horse

Words: Will Oakeshott Photo: James Lano

For the most part, any religion is seen as a saviour, strength and hope for its followers; guiding them through their lives in a blissful loving existence no matter what trials and tribulations they may encounter.

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hilst this general outlook is exactly that, indefinite, belief of this nature’s purpose is to enrichen the lives of those who have faith in it.

However, such strong conviction in religion, especially with the vast array of different versions available worldwide ultimately breeds conflict. The Westboro Baptist Church in recent times has been a prized controversy in numerous situations due to their intense morals. Such examples include the people’s embrace of homophobia and antisemitism amongst other disputes; although viewed as more of a “hate group” to the public eye, their persuasion has sparked worldwide concern for the faith’s narrowmindedness.

Florida’s metalcore newcomers Wage War march strongly against ideologies like this (as do many people throughout the globe). As guitarist/backing vocalist Cody Quistad explains, their track Basic Hate a volatile and venomous expression of resentment taken from the forthcoming debut album Blueprints, encapsulates the band’s accepting nature but disgust toward such uninformed hostility as Westboro promotes.

“That’s probably one of the oldest songs on the record and at the time it was written, Westboro Baptist Church was huge in current events. The working title was actually called ‘Westboro’.

“The controversy has died down to a degree so the song kind of took a new approach and general outlook on the people that would use a religion (or in the aforementioned case more similar to a cult) to preach hate. People come from all different backgrounds, cultures, and choices but it is no one’s place to judge anyone.”

It’s this understanding, humility and honesty that cause the quintet’s LP so engaging eleven tracks which make-up the for the listener. Personified to the degree that the entire band are wearing their collective hearts on their sleeves; it is safe to assume that through the help of Fearless records and a grueling upcoming touring regime that Wage Wars’ fan-base will soon become global.

“I would say a majority of the record is about growing up.

There’s some very personal stuff on the record that would take a while to explain but a lot of it is triggered from everyday life and just finding ways to cope. We wanted to write something that’s relatable and deals with real life but will in some way reveal that there IS hope and things WILL get better. Life is full of ups and downs, and how you get through it makes you who you are. They define the blueprints of who you are as a person.”

A song entitled Youngblood will certainly enhance the fivepiece’s rapport due to its sombre yet authentic and sensitive nature.

A “goodbye letter” of sorts, the message of the track relates to how the outfit together reacts to some truly devastating news, but in a communication of familiarity. As Cody enlightens: “‘Youngblood’ is about a kid from our hometown who took his own life. Truthfully, I had only talked to him a few times but he left an impact on me. When I got the news, it hit me like a brick. Could I have said something? Done something? But you can’t live in that mindset.”

He reiterates. “He was so talented and had a bright future so it prompted that song. It is slightly specific but if you’ve gone through something similar I feel like the feelings and words would be the same.”

Before the blogosphere erupts with idiotic opinions mistreating Wage War for being a part of the oversaturated metalcore niche; the quintet does bring a distinctive identity with them. By no means completely separating them from the adored genre, the band’s technicality and diversity is certainly impressive. But what influences the musicians themselves?

“Our influences stretch so far across the map. There are definitely some nu-metal pushes on the record which is something I would like to explore a little more but overall we weren’t too worried about staying in a ‘genre’.”

What helped in finding Wage War’s direction then?

“The goal was to write the best songs possible, by whatever means. I personally listen to a ton of Pop / R&B and country which sounds odd, but one can learn a lot about songwriting through them.”

To begin the push of the record, Wage War is hitting the road with two of the genre’s elite in label mates August Burns Red and the forever charming Every Time I Die. Sincerely a very wishful lineup to be a part of, it plagued this scribe to ask how Cody reacted to such incredible news?

“Yet another dream that has come true! I collapsed on a restaurant floor when I got the news. We’re genuinely fans of all of these bands and are honored to be a part of it; very thankful that they’re taking us out.”

Blueprints is released on 27 November via Fearless Records/ Unified. H

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Words: Callum Doig Photo: Courtesy of Cooking Vinyl

Georgian metal outfit Baroness are one of the most mesmerising and artistic sludge acts to reveal as much beauty and value as they can in an audial format that represents the same detail that’s stroked from the paintbrush of John Baizley.

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n 2013, John Baizley hired Nick Jost on bass and Sebastian Thomson on drums. This being their first time in the studio as part of Baroness, Baizley felt that things were looking up for the band, and that it felt just like starting a new band.

“It gave Pete and I the feeling that you get when you start a band. Things are new and exciting, and it’s tough to feel like that, having played in Baroness for thirteen years at this point. So, it was great to have two new people to bring their energy and spirit into the writing and recording process. We’re really excited to share the stage with them, as well.”

For the last two records, Baroness went to John Congleton to help produce the Blue Record, and Yellow & Green. This time, Baizley turned to David Fridmann to produce Purple. According to Baizley, Fridmann is one producer he has wanted to work with for quite a while. “He’s been on the top of my list of producers for a very long time. Given his background on the bands he has worked with, I didn’t think he’d be very interested in working with us. He’s one of those producers that has the luxury of being able to choose the bands he wants to work with. When we contacted him and got back to us, he was not only interested in the band, he also knew exactly what to do. In my mind, he’s very much an engineering production genius. It makes a huge difference and impact on the record when you’re working with someone who operates on the same level he does, not just on the engineering knowhow, but the creative impulses as well.”

So, four records on, Baroness apparently haven’t lost their touch in writing the music and the concepts that reflect the persona of each album. From Baizley’s point of view, whatever he writes is whatever that comes to his mind.

“It’s the same as it ever is when you write concepts and records for Baroness. It’s just to reflect on the experiences we’ve been through and the period of time from the last record. I’m not the certain lyricist who tries to adapt other people’s stories, or make things up in a fictitious way. I put my pen on the paper and I start to write, and whatever comes out, comes out. There isn’t a grand concept behind the record, it’s simply about those things that have

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occurred within the past three years that everybody goes through at some level. Sometimes, the stories I’m telling are very specific. I tell them in a way where they don’t need to be my story. Hopefully, other people can see or relate to the things I’m addressing.”

Chlorine & Wine was the first track to be heard from Purple on social media. Being a diverse song for Baroness, it turns out that it was Words: Callum Doig the one song that really showed what Purple was really going to sound like, and Baizley wanted to make sure that it was something different, yet also similar to what Baroness have always stuck with.

“It’s kind of the one song on the record that had all the little pieces that we think are recognisable in the band’s sound. It’s also much longer Why bother coming up with a clever than the rest of the songs on the when you can just let out all album. We wanted to come out with title, of the colours of what your album this big, long epic song, because it’s is gonna sound like? That’s what definitely different from the majority Baroness have always done since of the album. We thought it was a the Red Album. Purple represents more progressively ambient take good song, because it had all the stuff awith the same sludgy, mid tempo we wanted to have in it. We’ve been thrash and low-tuning identity that through some dramatic, difficult Baroness manifest. With songs such things, and that song addresses some as Morningstar, Try to Disappear and & Wine, Baroness ram both of those issues, and it has that life Chlorine heavy and progressive characteristics and energy that we thought would from the likes of Genesis and Pink be important to show our audience. Floyd with Mastodon and Neurosis.

It was a good song to prove that we’re Progressive sludge metal is still at its finest nowadays, and Baroness’s still writing music.”

Purple proves that.

Purple will be released via Cooking Vinyl Australia on 18 December 2015. H

Purple

by Baroness

Words: Jeremy Vane-Tempest Photo: Courtesy of Teramaze

Old adages such as: ‘practice makes perfect’, ’patience is a virtue’, ‘hard work always pays off’, ‘good things come to those who wait’ all spring to mind when researching Melbourne based, Australian, progressive metal band, Teramaze.

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etting the seal of approval from the greater metal audience is not a small challenge. Many bands work for decades, slowly building their fan base and live crowds, in the hope a record company will reach out and take them under their corporate wings. Others work year after year releasing albums out of their own pocket and making less than zero touring. It’s a hard slog, especially when years of blood, sweat, and tears were poured on hot coals.

Either way the aforementioned adages are each, unto themselves, true. Hard work does payoff. Practice does make perfect. In the music industry sometimes things take off from the very first album; sometimes things don’t warm-up until a few EPs or albums are in circulation, and a certain maturity takes hold.

It wasn’t until the release of Teramaze’s third album, Anhedonia (co-produced Jeff Waters, Annihilator/Dean Wells), that founder and guitarist, Dean Wells, found his place and the band started to take shape. With the follow-up of 2014’s Esoteric Symbolism the band broadened the soundscape further, with a solid mix of progressive metal and speed metal chops.

Soon after the 2014 release, with good advice from a friend, Wells sent Mascot Label Group demo versions of what was going to be the next album. Turns out Mascot had been seeking a metal act to sign for over six months and hadn’t yet made a decision. Home to the likes of Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society, Flying Colors, Joe Bonamassa and Paul Gilbert, Mascot knows talent when they hear it, which bears testament to the ability of Wells and his crew.

“My friend said, ‘Send me some demos and new stuff.’ I’m like, yeah, alright. I knew that he knew him [ex-Dream Theater manager], but I didn’t think much of it. Literally, a week later, I got the phone call. And he goes, ‘Want a contract?’ Then they paid for us to do the album, which was pretty rare these days.”

A year later the signed Teramaze are on the verge of launching their latest album, Her Halo.

“I’ve produced everything. This time around I was paid to work on it, which was kind of strange but was really nice. It took a lot more time and we worked really hard on getting the right sounds and just being a little surer of it. It had to be next level for us, and I think it is.”

Her Halo not only has a perfectly polished sound there’s lot of room in the songs and a definite feeling of freedom and movement, which is refreshing. The album is not just a collage of technical musicians cramming their feelings into a box. Sure, there’s a definite sense of structure, and the technicality is up there, but each track is a song - real songs, not just good musicians showing off how good they are.

“That was a conscious decision from the band. Part of it was pulling back with being too over the top with my guitar and not having stuff everywhere, so the songs stand up on their own. When you’ve got a lot more space in the songs, it’s actually harder to come up with things that hold the melodies. And, there’s a lot more room to make mistakes. I try to make each note, as a lead player, hold a story. That was the hardest part for me, to keep it interesting. I think some of my best playing is on this album even though it’s not super fast.”

Her Halo is a concept piece based around a female entertainer who is a part of a traveling show, set back in old times. She goes through a lot of different life experiences performers go through: a love triangle, self-travail, artistic tribulations, she even dies. The impressive album artwork does a good job of describing it all.

This new album is brilliantly produced, and the technical ability of each member is world class, but what are Teramaze like live? Has anyone even seen them perform? Can they deliver? Are we ever going to see them? Or, is the European or American prog-metal scene going to absorb and gobble them up for themselves?

“We are booking shows around Australia, and we’ve been looking around for the best tours in America and Japan and looking at chaperoning with a bigger bands in Europe. It’s definitely the next step.”

Her Halo is out now via Mascot Label Group. H

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Words: Will Oakeshott Photo: Courtesy of Spinefarm Records

One would have to trust the wise words of a decorated science fiction novelist and professor of biochemistry Isaac Asimov when he articulated that: “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is”.

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t could be assumed that this statement refers to the idea of acquiring knowledge through experience, investigation, discovery and the modest notion of living life. However, the degree of what education can be attained from simply existing relies upon the exploratory nature of the individual. For London’s industrial postpunk prodigies Killing Joke, an absolutely immeasurable wealth of wisdom has been procured after an astonishing seasonal thirty seven year career together including not only musical journeys to some of the most abstract areas of the world, but also in each member’s outside professional occupations and interests.

Enigmatic and eccentric front-man Jaz Coleman is a mecca of such ambitious learning. Besides his flirtations with being controversial as a large personality in music, his commitments outside the world of Killing Joke will cause any interested reader to be undeniably astounded (more on that later). But to begin, Mr. Coleman would much rather talk admiringly about the other men in Killing Joke, his “family” as he lovingly puts it and their endeavour for higher learning.

“It’s funny, two members of our band left school at fourteen; but then three of us in Killing Joke lecture at universities even though we have no qualifications at all.”

Jaz continues. “In a way, Killing Joke was our university, our invisible college. It was our further education and we always had a massive appetite for reading everything. Occultism and history were big favourites and we always had a near compulsory reading list of books which we would exchange, then we would discuss

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these things in great detail. I think I always took it for granted but comparably, other bands are probably quite brain-dead to our recreational pursuits and our intelligence.”

The next point of interest is what subjects are the members of Killing Joke able to lecture on? One clear topic would surely be music?

“I remember when Martin (‘Youth’ Glover, bass) became a professor for music for the East London University. On his first day he had well over one hundred students in attendance for his first presentation. He went onto say: ‘The fact is that only one in every hundred makes it in the industry’. That was his opening line, what a c*nt,” he laughs.

That there lies the infamous sense of humour, which the band actually upholds (Jaz especially) amongst their bleak yet atmospherically beautiful industrial post-punk formula; a recipe which has influenced bands from heavyweights like Marilyn Manson and Metallica to the more alternate universe of Nine Inch Nails to My Bloody Valentine. But to investigate further on this “learning discovery”, what about Jaz’s education? As his outside interests may surprise even the most devout Killing Joke fan.

“It certainly is higher learning though being in a band and travelling like we do; recently I designed two buildings and had them built. In my opinion that makes me an architect of sorts and I never went to an architectural college. Of course before you ask, the structural side of things I had checked by engineers. But I embrace the sort of punk ‘have a go’ philosophy; there is no fear of failure in

Killing Joke College.”

Safe to say he could most likely qualify as an architect; although this is literally the tip of the iceberg. As the conversation carries on, a tidal wave of experiences is literally crashed upon this writer

by Mr. Coleman; after countless minutes of amazement and admiration on my behalf, most notably about his second profession as a symphony orchestra composer. It is completely bewildering to know that the quintet have recently released their new studio album entitled Pylon.

“It’s going to be a long trip in support of this album, at least a year but most likely longer. I’m taking a month off to do a tour with the St. Petersburg state symphony orchestra also; in between touring with Killing Joke and also some recording here and there.”

Does the composer work influence the Killing Joke creative persona adopted by Jaz though?

“I had been working in Russia actually while we were writing Pylon, so I had quite a different insight and mindset. It was amazing; I had a terrible experience in Moscow and a fantastic one in St. Petersburg. It was during the period where the Ukraine and Russia were having their human rights controversy; I was booked into record this requiem mass for Kurt Cobain and I ordered the Moscow state film orchestra to perform this piece but when I arrived they were nowhere to be seen.”

Jaz elaborates further. “Instead there was this daft orchestra by the name of Ratmiroff State Symphony Orchestra and they could not play any of the music and the person in charge basically f*cked off with all of the money,” laughs Jaz. “It was terrible; I had three days of just trying to deal with shite musicians and screaming at the management in the UK. So I came back to Europe, I was in a real shit mood understandably because all the money was gone. I had basically been robbed and I was in potential breach of contract with this classical music label. So I was f*cked and I wrote a letter to the Russian Minister of Culture and my manager handed this to the Russian Ambassador and it basically bitched about the loss of money and how it made Russia look bad.”

One cannot doubt he certainly stays true to his punk rock roots, albeit in a rather imperial manner. He resumes. “Then in light of all this the country itself had its own issues. I honestly did not think anything would come of it but the next thing that happened was I was flown to St. Petersburg and the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra did my work on this floating stage in the Tsars’ palace. It was one o’clock in the morning, there were 15,000 people there and it was for the White Nights Festival. It’s practically daylight at that hour, strangely enough. Then, what was even more peculiar was the press conference after, where I was asked about Pussy Riot with all these cameras on me. It was completely f *cked, I had no idea what

to say because I was so taken aback. So I said, ‘I have heard their music and to be honest I think they should probably add another six months onto their sentence for being such horrible musicians’, which was risky but everybody laughed their heads off at myself taking the piss. The next day I was offered the composer job with St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra for two years and they recorded the whole Nirvana requiem mass for absolutely nothing.”

Believe it or not the extra-curricular activities do not stop there.

Mr. Coleman has now undertaken an extra position still involved with music composition to a length. However, it’s not the “what” that he is accepting which is most impressive, it’s the “with whom”.

As he enlightens.

“I am also working with the United Nations Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland, which has ultimately led into some more detailed work with the UN itself. To quote a song from Pylon entitled Into The Unknown, I should first say there is always ambiguity to Killing Joke lyrics, sometimes there is at least two meanings behind what is being said. The chorus of the track goes: ‘After disclosure comes, man takes his rightful place amongst the stars’. What does it mean? Disclosure is best described by the work of Dr Steven Greer (Ufologist seeking top secret alien information); my point is that in the 21st Century we will find that we are not alone in the universe. It is actually more complex than that. We have to somehow evolve into a different type of civilisation, which is going to be very difficult because we are all at war,” he laughs.

“Jaz develops the song topic further. “You see we would all have to be singing the same song, be on the same page and forget the wars of the past. As far as I can understand it Capitalism is dead.

We need a new planet and a half to rape now. Infinite growth is no longer possible; unless it is sustainable it is going to be thrown out.

Either way we are headed for certain extinction, it’s very simple.

These are things I believe in passionately and why I have begun working with the United Nations. I don’t think it is a perfect body of work, but it certainly could be.”

As hard as this may seem to absorb, the topic of this beautifully distinctive track continues on to the point of a revolution of humanity. But for now, if there is any hesitation that the outside responsibilities of Killing Joke may take precedence over the outfit itself, Jaz has these closing words: “We are always going to push to do better things; that is the wonderful thing about this band. We haven’t reached our best but we are definitely going to! That’s why I love rebellious, explosive, f*ck-off rock music!”.

Pylon is out now through Spinefarm Records/Caroline Australia. H

4545

Words: Jana Angeles Photo: Courtesy of Escape The Fate

Formed in Las Vegas, Nevada, Escape The Fate have been a band that has never failed to deliver excitement for fans. If there’s anything that goes by it, there’s a sweet feeling of joy when you realise that happiness is the best revenge.

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rior to the release of their fifth studio record, Hate Me, lead guitarist Kevin “Thrasher” Gruft spoke with Jana Angeles and was more than thrilled to be part of an incredible journey since joining the band in 2013.

Originally being a band member of post-hardcore band, LoveHateHero, Gruft has had invaluable experience working in the music industry as a producer/songwriter and the opportunity to work on Hate Me was a dream in itself.

“It was awesome,” says Gruft as he talks about the new record release. “We wrote about forty songs and I’ve worked with several heavy metal artists. With this being one of the first Escape The Fate records I’ve done, I think all that knowledge in the studio really helped do our pre-production and get the band prepared to go into the studio with heavyhitter producer, Howard Benson. It’s been an incredible journey.”

As Gruft spoke, it could be easily sensed how passionate he was about Escape The Fate. While joining the band not too long ago, he witnessed the line-up changes with members coming and going. With the departure of bassist player, Max Green in 2012 (soon after he re-joined the band in 2013 and left shortly in 2014) and the Money Brothers (Michael and Monte) in 2013, he was fully committed to the band despite discouraging circumstances. Their fourth studio record, Ungrateful, had critics in despair as their lack of creative direction lost sight of the band’s vision. As inspiration, they took the chance to reflect on their recent obstacles, which resulted in Hate Me being a much-needed makeover for the band.

“We had a grand perspective that we just wanted to well everything else out of the water and surpass any prior record and make an epic album - so we poured everything into it.

We wrote songs, which described the way we were feeling about critics being harsh to the band or parting ways with old band members and all sorts of different trials. Through the flames, we have survived and grown stronger,” he continues.

“So a lot of inspiration started out in that direction and that’s where you get, Just A Memory, which touches on getting screwed over from the past and overcoming these things. A few songs that are a bit more uplifting like, Remember Every Scar. You could think that it has a more negative influence on the scars of your past but it’s more about embracing those feelings of anxiety, depression and conquering them. All those trials that you go through in life - that’s actually what makes you who you really are so it’s like, ‘Why not embrace that?’ and it won’t conquer you. So it’s kind of like a riseabove vibe from the record.”

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Being a well-respected producer in the rock scene of music, it was clear that the band were in good hands when it came to working with Howard Benson. Having worked with names such as Three Days Grace, Hoobastank and Flyleaf, Benson played a strong part in the detailing and flow of Hate Me. Gruft continued to explain how difficult it was to pick the perfect songs that would fit into the record and this was because everyone had different tastes in what music they loved. He then said that “the dynamics of the different personalities” in each band member was what made the entire process unique.

“One of his [Benson] strengths was helping us pick what songs to put on the record and of course, when you’re making a record, you want the record to flow,” Gruft says on compiling the track list of Hate Me. “You want it to be like a rollercoaster and have its ups and downs with some slower BPM songs and faster, more shredding ones so we wanted to create something exciting and diverse for our fans. We wanted to create something epic and unique and I think it stands true to what Escape The Fate really is while progressing at the same time.”

Gruft had the opportunity to work with frontman Craig Mabbitt on side project, The Dead Rabbitts before joining the band. One thing that the lead guitarist learnt during the whole process of making Hate Me was the importance of open communication. With everyone living in different cities, distance didn’t stand in the way of their creativity, justifying how much of a collaborative process it was.

Gruft mentions that they had a “tonne of inspiration” for the record and felt like “they were moving forward” as a band. Furthermore, he shared that there was no bad blood between Escape The Fate and Falling In Reverse. Having done the Bury The Hatchet tour, it represented an event of reconciliation, ending the Craig vs. Ronnie battle (for most people anyway).

For one thing, Gruft acknowledged how open the band was into trusting one another and that is, to release something meaningful and powerful as Hate Me. Mentioning how hands-on they were, it’s clear how much initiative it took to rebuild something that was close to falling apart.

That being said, Escape The Fate have had their fair share of battles and fortunately for them, this record has given them the opportunity to shine in the spotlight with Gruft adamantly saying, “We’ve weeded out all the bad seeds and all the cancerous people that can destroy a band from the inside.”

Hate Me is out now via Eleven Seven Music. H

Words: David Griffiths Photos: Courtesy of Shock Entertainment

April 5th, 1994 is a date that is etched in many music fans memories forever. It was the date that one of the most important men of the 1990’s music scene was found dead in the guest house of his Seattle home.

T

he news stories flew out thick and fast – ‘Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is dead’ – it was news that sunk many music lover’s hearts worldwide. Worse still was the news that followed, the police believed Cobain had placed a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Of course, like many celebrity deaths there were soon conspiracy theories circulating, many indicating that Cobain was in fact murdered and that the police report about his death was very, very wrong.

The Cobain murder theory received more legs in 1998 with Nick Broomfield’s controversial documentary Kurt & Courtney. While the docco itself hinted the police report was correct, many who watched the docco and saw a very new view of many of the people in Kurt’s life formed an entirely new theory on what happened around the time of April 5th, 1994.

Now comes one of the most damming documentaries that you are ever likely to see about the death of Kurt Cobain, Soaked In Bleach.

The film’s director and creator, Benjamin Statler, couldn’t be a better candidate to make a docco about Cobain’s death. A self-confessed Nirvana fan and a filmmaker involved with the two very well received documentaries Act Of Valor and Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope.

Chatting to Statler, you soon learn exactly where he comes from and what kind of filmmaker he set out to be. How many other filmmakers watched Rocky III and then wanted to make films about exposing the truth? Statler is also quick to explain how the death of Cobain affected him.

It affected me hugely,” says Statler with a huge breath. “I was 20 years old at the time. They are never easy years, and it wasn’t easy news for anybody, but for me and I guess a lot of people, the twenties ballpark are still formative years and I’d just been through an emotional time and he was my poetic hero. So when I heard he made that choice that was a pretty dark cloud over me for a long time. But I had enough positive things and influences in my life that I didn’t do what sixty eight kids that we know of did at the time; copycat suicides. And that is just the ones that we know of. But yeah, it affected me greatly.”

One of the things that really surprises the audience when they sit down to watch Soaked In Bleach is just how honest the documentary is with its theory of what happened to Kurt Cobain on that day. While many theories out there come from supposed ‘friends of a friend’, Statler went right to one of the key men in the Cobain case to get his version of events – private investigator Tom Grant.

“Before I decided it make this film I discovered Tom Grant’s website,”

explains Statler after I ask how Soaked In Bleach first became an idea.

“So I was always dreaming of bringing the objectives, the mountain of objective stack and bringing it to the mainstream. It did feel like a movie was about to begin. Now I first heard about Tom Grant in Nick Bloomfield’s film Kurt & Courtney, which had a lot of great stuff in it and I’m very thankful to Nick for that. I’ve met him and he’s a great guy, but I just felt like cobaincase.com [Tom Grant’s website] had so much great stuff, it was just mind blowing. I was thinking, how have I not heard of this, how is this not in the mainstream? And I thought that was very unjust that it wasn’t so I thought I’d change that.”

Statler is quick to point out that Tom Grant isn’t one of these ‘friends of a friend’ that so many people talk about. “Tom Grant was, had been, an L.A. County Sherriff Deputy before he became a private investigator.

He had numerous cases and having got to know Tom I know that he is very much a family man and he has moved away from Malway and he is very much about his grandkids etc. So he is very different to the way that many people have portrayed him. The detractors will try and say that he is this man who is obsessed with this conspiracy theory and that couldn’t be further from the truth. He is a man who wants to spend his years now with his family and his grand children who happened to be a very ethical man who cares very much about truth and justice and isn’t going to compromise on this, he isn’t going to give in.”

“Tom’s involvement began when Courtney (Love) called on Easter Sunday, 1994 and said that her husband was missing, for whatever reason, and his investigation was underway. First of all Tom explains in the movie what a conspiracy theory actually is, because that is a word that is often misused, it simply means two or more people involved in a crime. Still a lot of people use that term (conspiracy theory) meaning that it is the unaccepted story or the fringe type story, but it doesn’t mean that all. If Tom believed that only one person was involved in Kurt’s death it would be a homicide theory but he believes two or more were involved. Just look at the word it is actually; co-inspire – conspiracy, so he believes two or more people were involved in the death of Kurt Cobain.

So yes, he believes there was a conspiracy to murder Kurt Cobain.”

One of the best things about Soaked In Bleach is that it doesn’t leave its audience wondering and instead puts Tom’s theory out for all. “Tom is very open. He believes Courtney had Kurt killed. Tom points out that Kurt was divorcing Courtney and taking her out of his will and that age old motive was there. He just found there were countless contradictions that occurred from day one while looking into her.”

Soaked In Bleach is now available through Shock. H

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DARK MOON RISING

Pernicious

Director: Justin Price

Director: James Cullen Bressack

Stars: Stasi Esper, Eric Roberts, Cameron White, Timea Saghy

Stars: Ciara Hanna, Emily O’Brien, Jackie Moore

Summary: Young student Chace’s world is turned upside down when werewolves turn up in his town and begin a spate of deadly attacks, including massacres.

He soon realises that the girl that he has a crush on, Dawn, may or may not be a werewolf while his own future is unclear after a chance meeting with Danse and her werewolf hunter father.

Summary: Three young Americans arrive in Thailand to teach English but the three privileged girls soon find themselves very unhappy at the state of the accommodation that they are staying in. That soon becomes the least of their worries as their disrespect of local customs soon means they awake a ghost that is hell-bent on revenge.

I

A

t’s funny how some critics will jump onto a film somewhat unfairly. Read a lot of reviews for Dark Moon Rising and everybody seems to say the CGI doesn’t look great and the story asks more questions than it answers. Well maybe I’m in the wrong but I’m going to defend Dark Moon Rising.

Sure this isn’t a film that is going to win awards, but it certainly deserves some credit. Director Justin Price is a young man making films on the tiniest budget possible so the fact he can afford any kind of CGI is a mere miracle in itself. Yes some of the CGI looks pretty fake, but then so did the knife coming out of Tom Hiddleston’s face in Crimson Peak… sometimes a film is about more than just CGI. Likewise many have criticised Dark Moon Rising for failing to answer the big questions like whether Chace is a werewolf or a werewolf hunter. The truth is this is the first film in a trilogy so there is plenty of time to explore which he is. To level that criticism isn’t entirely fair as the film is told from Chace’s point-of-view. He doesn’t know what he is, so why should the audience. Likewise the question of why the werewolves are after Dawn… again Chace doesn’t know so that’s why the audience doesn’t know either.

To be fair, maybe Price shouldn’t have kept so many secrets close to his chest but Dark Moon Rising has many pluses. His werewolves are original, they can control the weather, can breath poisonous gas (cop that lame Twilight wolves) and have other amazing skills. The film also moves from being a sci-fi drama through to some well choreographed fight sequences that more than hold their own.

Dark Moon Rising really does show what young filmmakers can achieve these days with virtually no budget, more important though is the fact that it leaves the audience with so many unanswered questions you want to watch the other films in the series.

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quick glance at the poster for Pernicious and any horror fan could be forgiven for wanting to run in the other direction.

A cast full of hot American girls is normally a recipe for disaster. It’s what happens when a filmmaker feels that hot flesh will sell DVDs rather than a good script. But with Pernicious looks can be deceiving, because despite the poster this really is a horror film of substance that is well worth a look.

From the very talented James Cullen Bressack, Pernicious once again shows that the Thai film industry is helping America make some very good cult cinema at the moment. First The Raid now Pernicious… this marriage of film industries is really producing some good offspring.

So what can you expect from Pernicious? Well simply it is a ghost story that goes into some really, really dark territory. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill tale of Casper going bump in the night and frightening three scantily clad girls. No, Bressack has made a film that at times has torture scenes that equal Hostel while the film turns the genre on its head by giving its female characters a sense of power rarely seen. As actresses Ciara Hanna, Emily O’Brien and Jackie Moore seem to embrace that power and show that they are not just pretty faces and instead put in some pretty decent acting performances. They aren’t Oscar winners but they are certainly some very good current day scream queens.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Pernicious though, is the metaphor for its horror. We’ve all seen those tourists that stampede their way into a country and have absolutely no respect for anything around them so when the girls do it here it comes as no surprise at all. The fact that Bressack is able to turn that everyday thing into something that can wake an ancient horror is a stroke of brilliance.

Pernicious is a horror film full of surprises. Check it out.

Plague

The Gallows

Director: Nick Kozakis, Kosta Ouzas

Director: Travis Cluff, Chris Lofing

Stars: Tegan Crowley, Scott Marcus, Steven Jianai

Stars: Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown, Ryan Shoos, Cassidy Gifford

Summary: A group of survivors during a zombie apocalypse find themselves sheltered in a farm shed determined to keep the ‘monsters’ at bay. However, when some move on determined to find other survivors Evie decides to stay adamant that her husband John is stay alive and will return. He does, but their very existence is then questioned when the weaker John is suddenly confronted by an alpha male, Charlie, who demands shelter with the couple.

Summary: Twenty years ago, a small Nebraskan High School was rocked by the death of a student during a staging of The Crucible. To pay tribute on the anniversary the school again decides to stage the play this time with school jock Reese Houser playing the lead role alongside drama nerd Pfiefer Ross. But struggling with his lines the day before the play leads Reese’s best friends Ryan and Cassidy to think the best option is to trash the set to prevent the play from happening. Horror pursues.

T

here is a certain rush when you find a film that you are sure is going to become a cult classic. For those who attended the 2014 Monster Fest that film was the new Aussie horror Plague. Plague blew away its audiences, demanded a second cinema be opened up for its screening and along the way found itself in The Good The Bad The Ugly Film Show’s Top Ten films of the year… no mean feat for a low budget Australian horror film.

Plague is pretty much the perfect film from start to finish.

The fact that the film has a low budget certainly doesn’t hold it back. The zombies look realistic and horrifying and then the filmmakers themselves deliver a brilliant storyline to match.

Plague is a real horror drama. Yes, there are zombies who constantly have the main characters lives in danger, but there is the horror of human emotions at play as well. Yes, like any horror film buff I love the zombies at hand here, but the sense in this movie moves up several notches when it suddenly becomes John vs. Charlie over who is the bigger male.

The realism that Plague manages to bring to the genre is similar to what have loved about The Walking Dead. The setting, the characters and the way every plays out at times makes this film some eerily realistic it almost feels like a docco-drama. To generate that much realism into a horror film is not an easy thing to do and this would certainly suggest that Nick Kozakis and Kosta Ouzas are two filmmakers that we will certainly be hearing a lot about in the future.

There is no use beating around the bush. Plague is one of best horror films to have surfaced over the past few years.

Naturalistic and dramatic, this is the kind of film you can watch over and over. Five stars all the way.

N

ow it’s not very often these days that a mainstream horror film comes along that is worth looking at, but that can’t be said for The Gallows, which is a welcome relief from the onslaught of Paranormal Activity films. Perhaps though, to be fair, it is worth pointing out The Gallows was an indie film that was then bought out (whoops I mean by) a larger distribution company.

The Gallows feels like a flashback to the 1990s when decent horror flicks like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream were in our cinemas…but with one exception. Unlike Craven and Williamson before them, here the filmmakers opt for the dreaded ‘lost footage’ trope. The shaky cam aside it just seems that the modern day filmmaker has no idea that this style of filmmaking actually decreases the amount of suspense they can generate from their film. Here the lost footage filmmaking sees the teens running around in very poor lighting and the audience doesn’t even get a decent look at the ghost that is coming after the poor hapless teens. Maybe I’m sicko but I like seeing my teens getting sliced and diced in graphic details, not in shadows so dark I have to squint to see what the hell is happening at the screen.

“Still, The Gallows does enough to make itself watchable.

The story is original (something that can’t be said for most commercial horror films) and the filmmakers over come the fact that most of the teens here at unlikable and instead of barracking for their survival you are hoping that they meet a grisly end…and without spoiling anything there is an awesome twist that would suggest that Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing certainly have rosy film making careers ahead of them.”

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Words: Robyn Morrison Photo: Adrian Pagano

You’ve probably heard the old adage, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.”

That’s technically correct in a majority of music industry stories but you just can’t rest on networking alone. You’ve got to have two essential ingredients to ensure longevity in this business - a solid work ethic and passion.

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M

ichelle O’Rance shares her insight into being a copresenter of a metal radio show on 4ZZZ and being a label representative for a global heavy music label, Century Media.

Michelle explains she nudged her foot in the door of the music industry by writing for a music website. “At FasterLouder, I was pegged pretty quickly as the go-to metal person. I picked up so many heavy metal interviews, and it was so surreal. I’d be in my bedroom interviewing bands like Korn and Static-X… “From FasterLouder, I started branching out and I’d always looked at 4ZZZ and I thought it would be fun to work in radio. I’d always been told how much I love to talk,” she laughs. “I ended up getting an internship at 4ZZZ in the interviews department and fell in very quickly with the heavy metal side of things.”

The name of the show at that point was ‘Metal Up Your Accessway’ but the show is now run under the banner of ‘The Metal Maiden and The Doom Hippy’. “That’s how I met my co-host, The Doom Hippy. A couple of the guys taught me everything about being on air and I brought a couple of local bands into the show every week.”

From there, O’Rance turned her focus to local gigs and built up her network of contacts amongst the bands. The focus for ‘The Metal Maiden and The Doom Hippy’ show was to concentrate on those local bands to give them the exposure that’s so hard to come by at that level. “The original show was in a later spot but since it’s been re-branded, it’s now on Sunday nights from 8pm to 10pm.” Three years on from that re-branding, the show has grown and built on quality content. “Now we book up three to four months in advance with bands who know they’re going to have a release or start recording.”

Co-hosts need to have that special chemistry to keep a radio show interesting. Different to TV, there’s no visual aspect to complement the audio. You really do need music and interviews that will appeal to the audience, because if there’s no audience, ultimately there’s no radio show. So what are the key qualities co-hosts need? “We have a great rapport,” says Michelle. “We just got along so well from the very beginning. Being able to banter and not take offence about things that they say and being able to learn about the bands that they love. You can take that on as an interesting fact and make that interesting for the listeners as well.”

And for those listening at home in aspiring bands, O’Rance explains how music is selected to be played on the show. “I base it around what’s coming up, so if a band’s got a release coming up we’ll definitely have the single sent to us. I dedicate about half an hour of the show every week to locals. The local bands love it because of the exposure and they know there are people interstate, like promoters or other bands, listening to the show that might want to put them on a gig. I think it helps to get the word out there.”

Sometimes you’ll be offered an interview with a band that you may not know a lot about, yet there’s an opportunity to engage your listeners. Michelle offers this advice. “Research.

Research the hell out of the band. If you’ve read interviews or listened to YouTube interviews, listened to their big singles, controversial singles, things like that; just so you know what you’re going to say and sound informed.”

The show comes together on a Sunday afternoon for Michelle, just prior to it airing that night. “I look at what’s coming up for the week, check out the emails I’ve been sent and put it together. I usually play an opening song and then Doom will play a few songs. Doom’s very old school, he loves his CDs whereas I’ve got everything pretty much digital. We bounce off each other. I might have played something from the new Megadeth album and then I’ll leap onto the next release coming out. Then the physical release will come out so Doom will revisit that a little bit later on down the track to keep people interested.”

Michelle has recently taken on a role at Century Media Records. She explains the juggling act between the radio show and her job as label representative. “I do have a day job as well,” she laughs. “I do ten to twenty hours a week of Century Media work. It just depends on the releases coming out, who’s touring and what media we are setting up. I’ve been up at 3am to make sure media have been connected to someone in the States or someone in Europe [for band interviews]. It’s kinda cool because I can come home from the day job, chill for a few hours then start my Century Media work. That’s about the time Germany’s getting into the office and getting moving.”

You can listen to the dulcet tones of ‘The Metal Maiden and The Doom Hippy’ on 4ZZZ at 4zzzfm.org.au/program/ doom-hippy-and-the-metal-maiden on Sundays from 8pm AEST and connect with Century Media and all their great artists at centurymedia.com H

HEAVY OVER THE HOME D E C 3 R D B R I S B A N E @ N E W G L O B E T H E AT R E - H O P E D R O N E / E T E R N A L R E S T + D E C 4 T H S Y D N E Y @ T H E V A LV E B A R - T H E S E E R / R I S E O F AV E R N U S / G O D S O F E D E N + DEC 5TH MELBOURNE @ REVERENCE HOTEL - ICONIC VIVISECT / HOLLOW WORLD + D E C 11 T H P E R T H @ A M P L I F I E R B A R - L O ! [ S Y D ] / F O R S T O R A + D E C 1 2 T H M E L B O U R N E @ T H E T O T E - M E TA L O B S E S S I O N . N E T B I R T H D AY F E S T

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Words: Cameron Cooper Photo: Courtesy of Mortal Sin

Name: Mortal Sin Formed in: Blacktown, NSW. 1985 “Classic” line-up: Mat Maurer – vocals

Andy Eftichou – bass Keith Kristn – guitar Paul Carwana – guitar Wayne Campbell – drums Recommended: Face of Despair (1989), Vertigo Records

When most Aussie rockers were teasing their hair in local bar bathrooms, one band of Sydney boys were flying the thrash metal flag worldwide. With an array of lineup changes and an output of solid albums, Mortal Sin spent their career crossing countries and generations alike. Some people said they were the next Metallica, but the band were crafting an original sin.

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W

ith an abundance of promoters and Soundwave bringing hundreds of heavy bands to Australia every year, it’s hard to think of a time when even the biggest of metal bands had trouble making the trip to our shores. But it wasn’t all that long ago – in the ‘80s – that Australia was a heavy metal wasteland.

All that was about to change, when vocalist Mat Maurer heard Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All in 1984 and decided that was his calling. By chance, he met Wizzard drummer Wayne Campbell, and the two bonded over their desire for something heavier than the traditional metal/hard rock scene that was kicking around.

Wizzard’s Maiden-influenced sound didn’t gel with Maurer’s voice, so the trio of Maurer, Campbell and Wizzard axe-slinger Keith Kristn struck out on their own. They were soon joined by Andy Eftichiou on bass and Paul Carwana on guitar, cementing the “classic” Mortal Sin line-up in 1985.

The quintet found themselves ruling the Sydney scene, and hit the studio with the intention of recording a demo over three days. However, the manic sessions would result in the band’s debut: the uncompromising Mayhemic Destruction LP. Initially

self-released by the band, the record caused a stir overseas when it ended up on rotation at Shades record shop in London.

“They played it in the shop, and the dude from Phonogram was there! He thought it was the new Metallica album!” Maurer explains. “I got a phone call from this guy late at night saying he’s from a record label in London. I’m like ‘Yeah, right...’. I also got a call from MCA records in America, but that was two months later, so we had two major labels calling us up!”

Mayhemic Destruction was re-released on Phonogram Records internationally, and the band’s success skyrocketed.

With the addition of Slaughter Lord guitarist Mick Burke, they were ready to take on the world. Unfortunately, management and promoters weren’t quite as keen.

“We tried to get on the Clash of The Titans tour in ‘87. We’d been on the cover of ‘Metal Forces’ and ‘Kerrang!’ – That was unheard of for any Australian band!” Maurer explains. “Even though we were big here, we were as big as we could get. We had to take it to the international stage.”

The band’s next break would come in ‘89 with the release of Face of Despair, spawning one of the band’s best known bangers: I Am Immortal. Burke’s ferocious guitar playing and a savage production job meant for a more morbid and focused album, scoring them a slot on Metallica’s Damaged Justice tour.

Later that year, the band organised the Metal From The Heart show, a huge event in support of Cystic Fibrosis at The Enmore.

Headlined by the band, the show marked one of the first with future comedian Steve Hughes behind the kit.

The year’s antics proved to management that Mortal Sin could play with the big boys, and months later the band were overseas supporting Testament, followed by another international escapade with Faith No More. While the success was nothing to sneeze at, it served as a reminder that the band had just missed the thrash metal boat.

“By the time it came, Testament had moved 100 steps ahead of us, Anthrax had moved 100 steps ahead of us. We kind of fell by the way side,” Maurer laments. “Mortal Sin were as good as any of them, but because we were from Australia we were left in the doldrums – out of sight and out of mind.”

Compounded with the usual wear-and-tear of touring, being a day late and a dollar short weighed heavily on the band.

Maurer had decided it was all too much for him, announcing his departure at the band’s homecoming show.

Striving to keep the wheels turning, Eftichiou crafted a new line-up with vocalist Steve Sly. Lasting close to two years, the line-up released Rebellious Youth (Every Dog Has Its Day in some markets) in ‘91. The album was closer in tone to Megadeth or Anthrax than previous material and gave the band oxygen to keep going, but it simply wasn’t Mortal Sin, and the group dissolved in ‘92.

“The musicianship was top notch,” states Maurer. “Having musicians of that calibre in the band forced me to lift my game.

It challenged me.”

The band returned in ‘96, with the line-up of Campbell, Eftichiou, Maurer, Anthony Hoffman and Troy Scerri releasing the Revolution of The Mind EP in 1997 – a feedback-drenched curbstomp to the face of a scene that had abandoned thrash.

The short-lived line-up said their goodbyes in ‘98 due to a lack of chemistry, and it wouldn’t be until 2004 that Sydney’s thrash kings would return.

Mortal Sin’s return saw them take on an all-new generation: although the glory days of the ‘80s were long gone, the mid-late ‘00s saw young metalheads gaining an interest in old school metal. For Mortal Sin, this culminated in ‘07 when the line-up of Maurer, Eftichiou, Luke Cook and guitarists Mick Sultana and Nathan Shea released the gobsmacking An Absence of Faith. The self-financed record stands out today as one of the greatest releases in modern thrash, superior to the comeback records many of the band’s overseas-peers would drop in the next few years, and easily on par with the new bands soon to ride the wave of thrash’s revival.

“The musicianship was top notch,” states Maurer. “Having musicians of that calibre in the band forced me to lift my game.

It challenged me.”

In case it wasn’t painfully clear that the Sinners were here to stay, the band delivered a triumphant, crowd-crushing set opening for Slayer and Mastodon that same year.

“We knew that was a chance for us to get out there. For me, I thought, ‘If we don’t get this show, Mortal Sin are nothing’. It’s another gig that took us a step higher. It was great to have young kids come up afterwards and say, ‘Wow I’d never even heard of you guys! You’re Australian?!’”

The show and album worked in the band’s favour, and saw them take a number of trips to Europe, sharing the stage with the likes of Megadeth and Overkill, as well as their second visit to Wacken in 2008 (their first in 2006). The next big shift came for the band in 2010 when Sultana stepped down from the group. Youngblood Ryan Huthnance stepped in and the band released Psychology of Death in 2011. Although still thrashy, the album took the band in a slightly more groove-oriented direction.

This streak of success didn’t come easy, with the final few incarnations of the band functioning as a self-funded operation.

“When we did the last two albums, we had no record label,” Maurer explains. “We had to do all the tours ourselves, we had to ring festivals...no one wanted to sign Mortal Sin.” Due to personal differences and the stresses of having five dudes living in each other’s pockets on tour, Maurer decided his time with the band was over in 2012, announcing via Facebook he was taking his leave on 14 February. The band attempted to push on briefly with Nekrofeist growler Dave Tinelt on vocals.

The new line-up was met with mixed reception, but by the end of April the writing was on the wall, and the remaining members called it quits. Although rumours continue to bounce around every few months about a resurrection, it seems NSW’s premiere thrash band have committed their last sin.

“Leaving it there with a really good album – up on a high – I think that’s a good thing. Whether something happens down the line? I dunno mate, I really dunno,” Maurer states.

Regardless of whether they ever take the stage again, Mortal Sin left an undoubtable mark on the Aussie metal scene. Devoid of ego or huberous, Maurer looks back on the band without concerns over if they were the “first” thrash band in Australia, nor is he interested in trying to compare the different line-ups.

Instead, the singer – not currently involved in any projects – is proud of the legacy left by the band, each line-up and record solid in its own right.

“Every album is different, although it’s still thrash,” he explains. “I want people to say ‘Mortal Sin have their own sound’ and I think on Face of Despair and Psychology of Death, you can undeniably say ‘That’s Mortal Sin’.”

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Words: Nathan Eden Photo: Courtesy of Iron Maiden

Heavy Hitters The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden

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ccording to the New Testament’s Book of Revelation, the number of the beast is 666. It is only mentioned once, but oh how we have dwelled over it as the years have passed. It seems we love to associate meanings to numbers. In terms of the album itself, the numbers don’t lie. The Number of the Beast has sold countless units and permeated the fabric of heavy music ever since its release back in the early months of 1982.

Upon release, from a band who had just employed a new set of pipes belonging to a bloke named Bruce Dickinson, the album was met with as much criticism as we might expect from a general public with little inclination to read between the lines. Social conservative groups managed to display what might be construed as hypocrisy by simultaneously extolling the virtues of the book from which the title was lifted, whilst also demanding that the 40-minute masterpiece be banned and derided.

Iron Maiden are, of course, something of an institution unto themselves and so it would appear to be a difficult task to consider an album such as The Number of the Beast as though it was a fresh piece of work.

But let’s try.

I guess we could forgive the church groups who gathered to smash the record with hammers. I mean, ‘80s Maiden were anything but subtle. The old suggestion that any press is good press might be relevant here. Ask anyone from Ozzy to Marilyn Manson and they’ll probably tell you that controversy doesn’t hurt record sales. Maybe The Number of the Beast owes as much of its success to opposing demonstrations and burning vinyl as it does to those who sang and banged along with it.

Misplaced Satanist-branding aside, the album was a monumental and important landmark in metal. All sorts of lists bearing the words “best-ever” “essential” and “greatest” hold these eight tracks in high esteem. Right from the opening track Invaders the album appears grandiose and, perhaps owing to the era during which it appeared, at no point does it feel contrived.

Iron Maiden turned out tracks which told a story that many in their wake have garnered inspiration from. None better exemplified than the

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album’s first single, Run to the Hills; a song in which Dickinson delivers both perspectives of New World conflict between the European settlers and North American natives. It remains one of the band’s most iconic songs, fusing the gallop of chief songwriter Steve Harris’ bass with complimenting drums, heavy yet melodic guitars, and the debuting vocal soaring of the new front man.

Personally, my very first recollections of The Number of the Beast blasted out of five-foot speakers emblazoned with homemade flags of the band’s mascot, Eddy. The speakers belonged to an older guy who lived up the road. As an impressionable youngster, I was as blown away by what I was hearing as I was the strange-smelling smoke impregnating the air of his houso granny-flat. The thunderous riffs were equally matched by Dickinson, who appeared to be mounting a challenge to Rob Halford, et al, alongside the other members of his new band. All twin-guitar intricacy and power, Maiden forced us to listen simply by turning it on and turning it up.

Pick your favourite band that followed and they owe heavily to Maiden and The Number of the Beast. It’s not too difficult to see why.

There really isn’t much to fault on this album. Tight instrumentation, the perfect vocal foil, even the lyrics are on point in what is rightfully considered an absolute classic.

Legends in their own right, Metallica and Slayer have both accepted that they simply wouldn’t be the bands they are without this record.

The Maiden tinge is perhaps even more obvious with bands of the ilk of Avenged Sevenfold, all of the power metal crew, and even melodic death metal. Experimenting beyond the rock and blues scales of most metal bands of that era, Maiden paved the way for a grand and symphonic

future by incorporating a classical approach.

What all this basically means is that the band who positioned themselves at the forefront of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, did so whilst setting a blueprint for, not just a few bands here and there, but for a variety of future genres. They were also the link between Sabbath and Metallica on the heavy music chain. You can hear Kill ‘Em All in the rolling riffs of the guitarists and relentless drumming of the late Clive Burr, on “Gangland”.

If the sign of a great album is Side B being equally as strong as Side A, then The Number of the Beast is a classic in every sense of the word.

In fact, whilst the first half of the album shouldn’t be undersold, it is the second half which makes it great. The title track, which carried so much of that controversy, the forementioned Run to the Hills and Gangland, followed by what is perhaps the band’s most enduring epic, Hallowed Be Thy Name, a seven-minute tale of a prisoner awaiting his time to be hanged. Dickinson has, in the past, mentioned how satisfying the song is to perform live, suggesting that taking that journey to the audience is akin to narrating a movie.

It is interesting that the singer made this point. Maiden’s legacy, if nothing else, was to show that a heavy song doesn’t have to be about girls or cars. It can be a voyage that fans and band take together. The Number of the Beast stands as the first shining example of the excitement of packing your bags and allowing yourself to be taken on such a journey.

By today’s standards it isn’t the heaviest album you’ll hear and, despite the title, nor is it the most evil. But it deserves its place in history as a true game-changer nonetheless – Christian church groups be damned. H

If the sign of a great album is Side B being equally as strong as Side A, then The Number of the Beast is a classic in every sense of the word.

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Big Ass Tour Dates with The Amity Affliction, The Ghost Inside and Motionless in White 10 December Logan Campbell Centre, Auckland 12 December Qantas Credit Union Arena, Sydney 14 December Perth Arena 16 December Adelaide Entertainment Centre 17 December Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne 19 and 20 December The Riverstage, Brisbane

Words: Jana Angeles Photo: Courtesy of Super Duper

A Day To Remember have won the hearts of millions with their genius mix of pop punk and metalcore influences. With the band due to tour Australia next month, leading frontman, Jeremy McKinnon had his reasons as to why the band just loved making consistent trips to the land Down Under, mentioning that it was “the amount of people who care about us” as the reason for the band returning.

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y 2011, the band had already done some headlining shows in the country and it wasn’t long until they became one of the headlining bands of Soundwave Festival in 2014. “It’s a trip, like honestly,” McKinnon pauses slightly as he talks about the rapid increase of listeners in Australia. “I never anticipated any of this happening to us so it’s crazy that ten years later we’re still doing it [playing music]. It’s just wild - I can’t believe we’re still doing it.”

Fuelling his creativity on other aspects of the music industry, McKinnon has been working alongside different bands to help produce records as well. Having worked with bands such as The Ghost Inside, The Devil Wears Prada and recently, Neck Deep, he mentioned how much of a rewarding opportunity it was to work with people that were ready to craft their ideas and turn them into songs. His excitement was pouring as he spoke.

“It’s actually amazing,” as the frontman sighs happily while talking about life as a producer. “I get fulfilled as a writer without all the negatives of being in the band and worrying about making the wrong choice. So it’s like I get to tell people, ‘Hey, this is what I would do and I think this is rad.’ It’s actually all the positives, none of the negatives,” he laughs. “I actually prefer producing these days.”

During a discussion with his girlfriend, McKinnon established the idea of Self Help Fest and it was to bring bands and fans together through the power of music. It was this vision that started as the Floridian band had the opportunity to showcase their music around the world and it began inspiring others to live a certain way as they heard songs like Better Off This Way or Right Back At It Again. McKinnon shared how empowering the connectivity of music is around the world, especially when it came to the struggles

of another person.

“I think it makes it easy for people to be connected to not only the band but to the rest of the fan base and share experiences, you know,“ he says. ”Like for instance, you can buy a song you really like and go on a website called songmeanings.net and you have a little discussion with all the people who love that song and talk about what it actually means. That’s such a deeper, deeper experience than just listening to a song and just liking it. I think the best music does make you feel that; it makes you feel connected to it.”

With the band’s career spanning over ten years now, McKinnon explained how surreal it was to be part of something for so long.

Along the way, there have been bumps on the road, which have made for some tough learning experiences; but to travel the world while sharing their music, has always kept them moving forward despite these challenges.

“It’s crazy seeing people around the world listening to the same stuff. Like a band like us can go and play and you know, try to connect with people who give a shit - it’s crazy how music has been easy to access for everyone around the world now,“ McKinnon says.

“It’s just bringing all these different cultures and people together.

It’s humbling and it’s crazy how music can take you to those places.

“We’ve learnt a lot about the business and how everything works around the world you know. We’re in a lawsuit right now so we’re seeing what going through the courtroom system is like and it’s just crazy all the different places that this music has taken us. I honestly think there’s not just one specific thing that I’ve learned.

It’s just been a really wild ride that we’re still on and I think it’s changed us all for the better.” H

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Words: Steven Jenkins Photo: Jeremy Saffer

On tour with…

Last year, southern deathcore pioneers Whitechapel, formed a crowd-funding campaign so that they could have the opportunity to create a DVD featuring a documentary and live show.

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ell, here we are one year later and it has finally arrived.

Lucky fans that contributed to this campaign were the first to receive it, whilst the rest of you will be able to purchase it as of now. We spoke to guitarist Alex Wade on how The Brotherhood of the Blade was created and more.

“Our drum tech, whose name is Mathis Arnell, is also a videographer, so basically when he was on tour with us he was also filming. So it’s basically just a collection of our touring schedule over the course of 2013 and most of 2014. He compiled it all together and gave it a real cinematic feel and it has a lot of interviews with the band members and things like that. So it’s definitely a good look into us as a band and what we are really like.”

With bands such as our very own Ne Obliviscaris taking part in crowd funding campaigns so that they can tour the world, it has become an acceptable and popular way for bands to achieve their goals. With no massive funding from major labels, it’s up to the bands to set out and make it happen with the help of their loyal fans as Alex explains.

“The response was actually more than any of us expected, it was pretty crazy. We asked for $35,000 US dollars and we ended up receiving about $58,000. So it was almost double what we requested and just to see our fans come in that strong and help support us and help us do something like this on a big scale was really cool to see. If we would have went to our label and asked for $60,000 to make a DVD then it probably wouldn’t have happened. That’s a lot of money to ask for to try and put a DVD together. So I think it was really cool to show instances where crowd funding is actually a very useful tool for a band if utilized properly.”

“I think the DVD ended up being more than we expected it to be in terms of what we set out to achieve. But since we got the extra funding we were able to multi-track a full live set in our hometown and get a professional engineer to mix it. It was cool that we were

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able to add all those extra features because the fans helped us out.”

“We’ve been talking about making a DVD for at least 4 years now, we’ve only been an active band for 9 years. I think it was actually good that we waited until a little bit later in our career to make something like this. When we were younger the funding wasn’t really there and our fan base was a lot smaller. So I think it was good that we took our time and getting our fans involved in the process has made it that much better.”

Whitechapel, not surprisingly, chose their hometown of Knoxville Tennessee to film the live show. With a vocal crowd cheering them on, it’s clear to see it was the obvious choice and best destination.

“We did entertain the idea of perhaps filming it somewhere else but logistically it just made more sense to film it in Knoxville TN. They gave us our start so it was easier for us to do what we needed to do in order to film it in our hometown. We thought about shooting in somewhere like California, but I’m glad we ended up doing it in front of a home crowd. “ For those who didn’t contribute to the crowd funding of this DVD, don’t you worry because you’ll get to see it and enjoy it as well. Alex Wade says that it wouldn’t have been possible without the fans and urges people to pick up a copy, because it sounds like it truly is a quality release.

“As a band we definitely put a lot of effort into it so that it could happen and to make it as good as possible for the fans, because that’s what they deserve. I just hope that everyone enjoys it. It’s a double disc DVD with a documentary and a live show and the second disc is a live recording of the concert, so you can jam it in your car or at work. I think it’s pretty cool and I’m sure that fans will be happy with what we created for them supporting us.”

The Brotherhood of the Blade is out now. H

Babyjane Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Courtesy of Babyjane

Babyjane have shared the stage and studio with some of the biggest names in hard rock. For bass player Paul Judge, this band was his last shot – and it is certainly paying off.

Being a hard rock band in Australia is a tricky situation: you share a pedigree with the likes of AC/DC and Rose Tattoo that almost by default - makes every open chord and raspy vocal line drip with a distinctly Australian brand of hard rock. This attracts crowds all over Europe and the U.S., but our island home doesn’t make reaching them easy. If you happen to be from WA, the problem is amplified.

Nevertheless, Perth’s Babyjane have carved out a niche for themselves over the last seven years. A good thing, too: for some of the members, this was their last crack at rock ‘n’ roll domination.

“We were all considering hanging it up, but were still hungry enough that we didn’t quite have it in us to give it up all together,” bass player Paul Judge explains. After having played in various bands on and off over the years and becoming increasingly disillusioned by band collapses and venue closures, the band gave it one last push.

“If this hadn’t worked, I really think we would have all walked away,” Judge states.

The endless frustrations of trying to survive in the music world comes through in the band’s sound, which is steeped in the often-overlooked era of the early ‘90s. Far from grunge or alternative rock, Babyjane draw their influences from the matured and heavier sound many hair bands gravitated towards in the later days of their careers. As a result, the four piece offer a more ponderous and thoughtful brand of hard rock than many of the ‘80s revival bands kicking around. They certainly wear their influences on their sleeves, with the band’s last album, Make It Sick, seeing a guest spot from ex-Mötley Crüe singer John Corabi.

“It was just a matter of sending him an email and him answering it!” Judge explains. The collaboration came about while the band were in Nashville recording with producer

Michael Wagener. “We had no idea what song we would get him in on, just that he is one of our favourite singers off one of our favourite albums [Mötley Crüe’s self-titled from 1994].”

The U.S. connection doesn’t stop there. While Judge is quick to acknowledge Babyjane’s following, overseas is still a work in progress. The band certainly have a relationship with some of the nation’s best. They teamed up with ex-Guns N’ Roses axe-slinger Gilby Clarke on new singe Do Ya, and their upcoming album, 23 Sins is set to be produced by Keith Olsen, whose portfolio includes Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake and Scorpions.

“I wouldn’t say we have a massive following in the U.S., but they’ve been playing our music on independent radio over there,” Judge states. “At Rocklahoma, all our merch sold out, so something is building.”

If the band can achieve the same kind of leap in quality they did between 2010’s Are You Listening and 2012’s Make It Sick with their third full-length, their fan bases both here and abroad are certain to grow. Judge attributes the potency of their new tracks to a refined songwriting process.

“We aren’t getting heavier, but I think we are getting more consistent,” he states. “We are all writing equally now where as when we did the first album it was songs from previous bands that we were too precious to let go of, so it sounded a bit halfbaked. On this third one, we are really in tune with each other musically now that we’ve been playing together for so long.

The songs have gotten stronger, more melodic, and a lot more confident.”

While it is still early days for the Babyjane empire, the band seem keen to keep the ball rolling for as long as they possibly can.

“This is the band we all wanted to be in, the band we all wanted to see when we were in other bands,” Judge beams.

“We’re happy with what we’ve achieved in the last few years, and we’re really happy we’ve taken that one last jump to try and make music work for us.” H

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Vessel Born

Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Luke McClean

Vessel Born may come across as somewhat of an odd name for a heavy band, and may have some people scratching their heads as to what it means or signifies. But frontman of this exciting new Brisbane based metalcore/melodic death metal five piece, Shaun Coar, states that the name has a definite, deeper meaning and message behind it.

“I don’t know whether you know the laws of the sea, if you are born on a vessel out on international waters, you don’t really have any citizenship to any particular country,” Coar explains, “and I thought that someone just being a citizen of the world was far more interesting than just being confined to one place.

“We all live on the same planet and we’re all the one people, it just seemed a silly thing to me, people’s ideas of borders and all that sort of thing. I think it may go over a lot of people’s heads,” he laughs.

The band have their debut EP about to be unleashed, and apparently its title also ties in with the concept of being ‘vessel born’. “That’s also why the coming EP is called Stateless,” he reveals. “If you are born out at sea you are stateless. You don’t belong anywhere.”

The name also doesn’t really give an indication to the uninitiated as to what style of music the band plays, so Coar is happy to give his perspective on what his band does.

“It’s metalcore, but it’s got some rock undertones in there,” he describes, “and it’s just a good blend of different influences.

We have some catchy choruses and breakdowns and stuff like that, and some fast-delivery verses, and hopefully people will enjoy it.”

The EP has been a year in the making, and while Coar and the band are very excited to have it finally seeing the light of day, he also feels that it is just an introduction to the band.

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Something fans to get a feel for their sound while they work on even bigger and better things.

“We’re definitely ready to put it out!” he states. “We’ve been in the studio since October/November last year, so it’s been a long process to get everything up and running, and getting a new band out there. We’re very keen to get out there and show people what we’re about.

“We’re already writing material for a new album, so we’re following it up pretty quickly. The purpose of this EP is to just introduce us to the scene in Australia, and hopefully people out there take it on board.”

The band should have an EP launch tour announced by the time you read this article, so keep an eye out on the band’s Facebook and other social media. Longer term, the band have some pretty lofty ambitions for themselves.

“We want to get overseas,” he proclaims, “get over to the States and obviously Europe. I don’t really have a limit set on it. We want to get out there and do as much as we can, and grow as much as we can.

“And just making good music, I think that’s the biggest thing for us. Success is great on any level, but unless you’re happy with it yourself, you know? We just want to make the best possible music we can.”

Assisting them to this end should be the buoyant current state of the metalcore scene in Australia and around the world.

“It does [help],” he agrees without hesitation. “’Unified’ have been really pushing the genre forward, at that label, but there’s other bands on other labels that are doing great stuff as well.

Hopefully that sticks around for a bit longer, but there’s always room for other genres as well. I love hearing a lot of different styles of music.”

Vessel Born’s debut EP Stateless is out on 20 November. H

Lillye

Words: David Griffiths Photo: Courtesy of Lillye Most bands or artists have had a moment mid gig when something has happened to make their performance stop. For some it has been crowd members punching on, a drunken idiot invading the stage or in extreme cases a blackout happening at the venue. Not many can make the claim that Lillye lead singer Virginia Lillye can make though... she recently had a gig that was abandoned after the venue she was performing at came under missile attack.

Missiles aside, the last twelve months have seen Lillye explode onto the Australian music scene. Their debut self-titled EP saw Virginia being likened to Chrissy Amphlett, while the band were told they were good enough to stand alongside Aussie classics like AC/DC and Rose Tattoo. Then came their video clip for Who I’m Meant To Be, which saw the band having to do stunt training.

Talking to Virginia it is easy to see that what she has been most proud of over the past few years though has been getting to travel to Afghanistan and perform for the troops serving there. “It was absolutely incredible; it was the most amazing experience of my whole entire life. You hear so much on the media now and then about what is going on but to be there first hand and to actually talk to the men and women in the forces and see the incredible job they are doing over there. You know I never thought in a million years I would be given that opportunity and to hear the different stories and hear what they are trying to achieve over there is mind-blowing and now Lillye are going to the Middle East in December to the troops so the boys will get to see what I’ve talking about.”

Of course heading into a war zone is still a dangerous thing to do and Virginia explains how the missile attack came about. “It was very nerve wracking. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m was assured that my safety would be looked after while I was there, that my safety was number one. And they actually proved that while we were in a

certain area of Afghanistan and at each port of call you are briefed at how dangerous that area is at the time and you’re briefed on alarms and whatever. So we got briefed at this place and got told we were on high alert and were told this certain alarm means a missile is coming in so if you hear that get to the floor.

“So lo and behold on the last performance of the tour a country singer and a comedian had done their sets and there are all these Australian, Dutch and New Zealand troops going crazy and I’m three songs down from the end of my set and start to see the back of the crowd dispersing and I’m thinking ‘oh they don’t like my Alanis Morrissette cover’ and then more people started scattering and the band stopped and we heard the siren and we were like ‘oh shit’ there was actually a missile attack coming in. I legged it off stage and a Special Forces guy grabbed me in his arms and covered me on the floor and we were all safe. That just shows how loyal they are to their performers going over there.

Now Virginia is back in Australia away from missiles she says things are still hectic for Lillye. “We have a few more shows before the end of the year and then we have Australian Music Week in November. We are one of the bands chosen to play there, then we’re off to the Middle East to perform for the troops and during all of that we are working on our brand new album. Hopefully that will be released sometime in the next six months, and it will be an album full of energetic rock.

“So to our fans out there we love your guts and hopefully people are realising that we aren’t that serious. Everyone thinks we are so serious, and we aren’t we just want everybody to have fun at our gigs... yeah HAVE FUN that’s the main thing.”Lillye’s independent self-titled EP is out now. H

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Do I Scare Ya?

Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Moana Barroso

This Sydney based fusion of punk, metal, rock. electronica and all manner of other styles has a very quirky approach to the writing and delivery of their songs, and to the management of their career overall. They like to do things their own way, and to hell with convention. Frontman, multiinstrumentalist and founding member Buzz Burnsen gives a little insight into the history of the band and the concept behind their output.

“The band dates back almost ten years ago,” he begins his recollection. “Basically, it came from me being a courier where I’d be doing really long trips, driving past farms and all that kind of stuff. I’d get no reception, I’d listen to my CDs a billion times. I found myself singing a lot of my tunes in my head. So most of the songs are loosely based around the farm.

“It’s a bit ridiculous and silly, but fun all the same.”

The concept developed and Burnsen had the idea of making this project far more than just a traditional three to five piece rock band writing and recording songs and playing live. And although his initial attempts to make that happen were unsuccessful, with persistence the vision is now becoming a reality.

“Moving forward, I wanted to put a community project together where you got people from different bands to come in and sing some of these songs and play together, and record and what-not. It didn’t really happen at the time, because everyone had their own thing going, and no one really understood the vision.

“But that vision, that I had many moons ago, is finally happening now, which is really cool.”

That vision has now culminated in the recording of the band’s debut album, the very appropriately titled Not Your Average Garden Variety, which features members of bands such as Not Another Sequel, Just Another Prequel, Internal Nightmare, Acid Nymph and plenty more. Plus there are opera

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singers, DJs, saxophonists and seemingly a cast of thousands.

“It’s all built up into this album now and we’ve finished.

And we’re really happy with it!” He announces proudly.

The album will be launched at a strictly one-off show at the Bald Faced Stag in Sydney on Saturday the 21st of November, a show for which the band and their many guests are going absolutely all-out.

“At no point did we think we’d make a show out of it,” Burnsen admits, “but it’s actually happening.

“We’re only doing one show,” he continues, “obviously there’s too many people that are a part of it to be able to keep doing it. But it’s going to be an absolute full production. We’ve got costumes, we’ve got backdrops, we’ve got props, we’ve got puppets, all that kind of stuff. It’s just going to be insane!”

Beyond the album’s release and the launch show, the future of the band is actually a little up in the air. “We’ve talked about it,” he says, “there possibly is going to be a future. We’re still going to be selling merchandise and whatnot. We plan to do another music video.

“After that, (guitarist) Scott and I have talked about maybe doing the comedy circuit, as an acoustic type of thing. Maybe a comedy, puppet sing-along type of thing. So there’s that, but there’s also the possibility of doing another album, which will mean bringing in different musicians this time. See if anyone is interested in joining us on a second voyage. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

The launch gig also features an excellent support card, including Captain Kickarse and the Awesomes, The Main Guys and the Other Guys, Moof De Vah and Kevin Dystopian. This will undoubtedly be one of the gigs of the year. H

Jackson Firebird Words: Rod Whitfield Photo: Kane Hibberd

Jackson Firebird are quite the anomaly. Just a two-piece, they hail from the Victorian regional town of Mildura, five to six hours northwest of Melbourne on the Murray River. It’s a beautiful, peaceful place, not overly well known for the loud, kick-arse rock ‘n’ roll bands it produces. However, this band is putting Mildura on the rock map.

The band are set to release their sophomore album Shake the Breakdown, and frontman and guitarist Brendan Harvey, speaking from the aforementioned beautiful town, is happy to reflect on what turned out to be quite a lengthy process, bringing this album to full fruition.

“It’s really been over the last couple of years,” he reveals. “We did a test, back in 2013, we did a couple of tracks. And when we were talking about starting a new album, we were in Austin, Texas doing South By Southwest and we hooked up with our producer Chris ‘Frenchie’ Smith, to see if it would all gel before we jumped in the deep end.

“We were busy touring at the time too. We’d been to Europe, Brazil, a lot around Australia and a bit of Canada. So it all took a bit of time. We did some demoing, a lot of jamming in Melbourne and Mildura. A lot of old farmhouses we blew the cobwebs out of!” He laughs, “But we got back over to Austin in November last year, and put it down.”

Being in Austin, Texas to do the album was both an inspiring and immersive experience. “Yeah I really enjoyed it, mainly because there were no distractions,” he recalls. “We weren’t in our home environment where you get your day to day stuff. We were just in the studio with the producer, and we just lived and breathed the record, we didn’t have to do any other chores. It was just basically pure rock ‘n’ roll, and sleep. And while we were working, Australia was sleeping.”

The band will be touring nationally by the time you read this, going everywhere except WA at this stage, and that includes a show in Mildura. That name does not show on the list of dates for touring rock acts very often, but for these hometown heroes, it’s an absolute must.

“It’s a bit of a strange one,” he admits, “but we gotta do a hometown show, or we might get disowned!

“We used to have a pretty good circuit through here, a lot of bands traveling from Sydney to Adelaide would call through. But over time,

the venues stopped catering for them, and noise restrictions, and venues changing up the vibe. We’ve been lucky enough to be able to come back and play every time. We’ve been around for so long, we’ve got that hometown following.”

They always get a rousing reception from the locals when they play their old stomping ground. “Yeah, it’s a pretty full-on show. It’s almost chicken wire material!” He jokes.

They also try to give a local act a crack on the bill when they play Mildura too. “Every time we play up here, we like to give a young local band some experience playing a live show, and having some rowdy punters abuse them!” He laughs again, “We never really bring anyone up with us (from Melbourne). We like to give a younger band, who don’t get the opportunity, a bit of a run.”

Believe it or not, Jackson Firebird’s official history goes back almost a decade, and Harvey reveals that, while they have tried out other members over the years, it has always ended up just the two of them, and this is likely where it will remain for the rest of their career.

“Yeah, we’ve been bashing away at Jackson Firebird for quite a while now,” he states, “and even prior to that, myself and Dale (drums) were jamming in various bands for years. It’s been a long time, and that first stuff we were doing years and years ago, we ended up being the only two rockin’ up to band practice!

“It’s good. We just know each other, our ins and outs, and if you throw in a third person, which we tried years ago, maybe a bass player or lead guitarist, but it just never gelled, you know?”

Do you think you have another decade or more left in you? “Yeah, we’ll just keep playing. We just do it because we love playing. We still feel pretty grateful for what we’ve done already. We’ve done a lot more than we thought we’d ever do. Getting to play out of town in Bendigo once was our highlight. I remember thinking ‘well that’s it, we can retire now’!

“To be putting a second album out, and seeing the world just doing our songs that we bash out in the shed, and getting good support, is amazing. We’ll keep doing it as long as people keep listening. And of not, we’ll still be doing it in some dirty old shed in Mildura!”

Jackson Firebird’s new album Shake the Breakdown is out now via Warner Music Australia. H

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Words: Cameron Cooper Photo: Kai Swillus

While some bands are turning down and easing up as they go, Saxon refuse to let off.

According to vocalist Biff Byford, the band are still hitting hard – coming through like a battering ram.

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astes change with age. When it comes to music, familiarity breeds indifference. This has seen a great deal of bands hop off the metal train and release softer material, but those with metal in the veins always keep the faith. Thankfully, NWOBHM overlords Saxon have hearts of steel.

“We’re not going to get calm and subdued in our old age,” says Biff Byford, frontman of Saxon and un-wavering supporter of heavy metal. “We’re going to go down all guns blazing, mate!”

Just two years after the thrashy Sacrifice, the band – in their thirty-seventeenth year under the Saxon name – have released the utterly uncompromising Battering Ram. In the past, the band have walked the line between punky, ferocity-charged metal and AC/ DC-style rockers. With the new album, the emphasis has been on heaviness.

“I wanted to do an album that was full on. Something like a Battering Ram, basically!” Byford exclaims, his battle-hardened voice beaming with confidence over the new release.

For the most part, the songwriting on Battering Ram was helmed by Byford and bass player Nibbs Carter, resulting in an album chock-full of low-end rumbles and bottom-heavy riffs. A shake-up to how the last few albums have come together, Byford also took a much smaller role in production by handing the reigns over to Andy Sneap, who first worked with the band on Sacrifice.

“He mixed the last album. I did some vocals with him, as well.

I did a side project with him called The Scintilla Project, so I’ve gotten quite used to working with him and I trust him,” Byford explains. “Production is really about controlling the project and making sure everyone is in the right place to concentrate on their performance. I think Andy did a great job of that.”

Sneap’s band mate, David Bower of Hell, was also involved in the album, performing on the keyboard-driven Kingdom of The Cross, a song built around a poem Byford wrote in memoriam of World War I. “It was a bit of a gamble! That was gonna be on my solo album

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I work on every now and then,” Byford states. “Nigel [Glockler, drums] had a really nice keyboard part so I put them together. It’s about all the countries that fought in the war, not just the winning side.”

Byford explains he sees heavy metal as a great medium for storytelling, evident on the progressive tune Queen of Hearts, which draws on the Alice In Wonderland mythos.

“I read the books and bought all the Alice In Wonderland films.

I wanted to write a song about a dream or a nightmare, in the style of King Crimson or Yes lyrics that are great but don’t really mean anything because they’re surreal. I think it’s my favourite song on the album at the moment because it has a lot of depth to it.”

The consistency of the band’s output is matched by their lineup. Saxon’s last big change-up was in the mid-‘90s when guitarist Doug Scarratt replaced Graham Oliver. It’s a bit of an anomaly when considering the massive line-up changes many NWOBHM bands feature. Byford chalks this up to the band’s carefree vibe.

“We can spend a long time apart and then when we come back, it’s on again. I think we are very lucky with that,” he states. “Nobody is signed to a contract that means they have to be in the band forever. I think because of that we are pretty close. We’re together for the right reasons.”

The band’s camaraderie has carried over to their on-the-road antics, which haven’t really changed too much since their younger years.

“Obviously there aren’t as many girls involved these days! But we do party quite hard. I think that is all part of being in a band – it’s being out with the boys! When you come off stage you’re adrenalised, so the next thing you want to do is have a bit of a drink and a laugh. It’s a great job, what can I say!”

A great job that, hopefully, Biff and the boys are at for many more years.

Battering Ram is out now via UDR GmbH. H

How to make money with music through synchronisation and

licensing

Often overlooked as a viable income stream, music synchronisation placements can be highly lucrative, both in terms of income and promotional opportunities.

There’s a saying that goes, when the song gets played, somebody is getting paid. And whenever you hear music being played alongside anything visual, the copyright owner of that song is getting compensated. But for many musicians, the notion of attaining such an arrangement seems way out of reach. Well I’m here to tell you that the process of getting your music “synched” may be simpler than you might think.

Music synchronisation is simply “synchronising” music to a visual media such as movies, TV shows, commercials and video games. There are generally two routes to obtaining a “synch” placement.

Firstly, you could try and acquire a synch opportunity yourself. Write and record some music, create a professional looking press kit and pitch your product yourself. Approach production companies, advertising agencies, video game organisations, film-makers and production supervisors. I’ve seen this strategy work on numerous occasions and this technique is exactly what a band like Fear Factory did early in their career. It’s potentially a great form of income and can expose your music to a much wider audience. Alternatively, you could approach a synchronisation agent.

Synch agents are like brokers who connect visual medium producers with music copyright owners. They have great contacts and professional relationships with advertising agencies, production houses, games companies and music supervisors. Basically,

anybody who’s creating a production of any type that requires music. These companies send out briefs to the synch agents – looking for a particular type of song for a scene in a TV show, for example. Companies obviously can’t just use any music without official permission from the copyright owner, and they’ll often have a budget to pay the artist to use their music.

So, is there good money to be made with synch deals in Australia? When I spoke to Tyler McLoughlan from the successful Australian synchronisation company The Sound Pound, (thesoundpound.com), “absolutely” was her response. “There are lots of opportunities. One of the composers I work with, earned about forty grand last year.” That’s nice incidental money that you could reinvest back into your music career for stuff like merchandise, touring, recordings. The opportunities are endless.

To get a synch agent to take you on, you need to contact them and impress them. So how do you impress synch agents? Well, according to McLoughlan, “first and foremost, write good songs and have them recorded well. I often get people send me stuff and the recording is just atrocious and there’s no way I would look at representing something like that.”

“Be short, sweet and to the point and provide links. Never attach anything. Show what you’ve got going on. For instance, radio play, touring or supports. Show that you’ve got some runs on the board, or that you’re working towards that. Also, having

your music in order is important.

I get a lot of random emails or CDs in the mail and I’ll open the links or the CD and none of the information comes up in iTunes. I’m not going to deal with that. Make sure you understand Gracenotes, which is how you get to have your songs pop up on iTunes or other media players. Also, keeping an instrumental version of your track. There’s so many examples of placements that have fallen through because somebody couldn’t produce an instrumental quick enough. Also, don’t ever send anyone an email and say ‘my music is hugely sync-able.’ That’s a term that a lot of people tend to use and as soon as I see that, I usually delete.”

I asked Tyler what platform should be used to present your music to synch agents: “YouTube or Soundcloud links to begin with, and then if I’m interested, I’ll ask you to send a Dropbox with the MP3s. Don’t send large files straight up because they take up a lot of space.

So if you believe your music is well written and produced, and you can imagine hearing your track on the next KFC commercial or version of Grand Theft Auto, It might be worth your while approaching a company like Tyler’s Sound Pound. A synch deal might not only provide a hefty pay check, but also some great promotional exposure that could help skyrocket your career.

If you’d like more information or coaching on how to build your successful music career, contact rodney@musicbusinessfacts.com

Rodney Holder has been a drummer, writer, promoter and manager in music for over 20 years so when he talks, you listen. He's best known as that guy from Alchemist, that guy from Metal For the Brain and that guy who runs musicbusinessfacts.com.

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Now Hear This Rants from the desk of Jason PC Words: Jason Fuller Photo: Jason Fuller

Do bands playing heavier music styles really need a Producer?

And what’s the difference between Producer and Engineer?

There are a couple trains of thought about this and while I agree in part with both and sit in the middle, I don’t think a judgment can be made that suits every band that comes through the studio door.

One train of thought often expressed very eloquently is that made by Steve Albini (Nirvana, High on Fire) who looks at the recording session like a photograph of the band and that his job is to accurately “capture” the band in the studio. Indeed, “In Albini’s opinion, putting producers in charge of recording sessions often destroys records, while the role of the recording engineer is to solve problems in capturing the sound of the musicians, not to threaten the artists’ control over their product”.

(Originally published in MTSU Sidelines, March 16th, 2004).

Another Producer/Engineer I admire is Seattle Producer Jack Endino (Nirvana, High on Fire). If I remember correctly he has said words to the effect that a recording session can be seen as something more like a painting, and instead of a simple photograph, can be a more artistic rendering of the band at that time.

While both of these guys are “engineer/ producers” working for the most part within similar styles, there is another that can give you some excellent results as well.

This is the he kind of “big name producer” that can completely take over and control every aspect of what a band does in the studio. Often bands think having the big name producer will help them sell records but you have to understand that giving control to a big name producer is giving someone complete control of the session, including the budgeting, where you will record, who will engineer, the power to change arrangements of songs or writing entirely new songs, changing instrumentation, even band members, etc.

I’m not into these guys for the most part and for most musicians reading this it is simply not a real world situation you will find yourself in.

Another reason I used these first “engineer/producer” guys as examples was so that if one was inclined, one could

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further investigate albums by the same bands and determine if the role of producer had an effect and what that effect was.

So do you need a producer? Probably not. Maybe a little sometimes? Most bands have an innate sense of what they want to accomplish and most bands simply just need an engineer that can reproduce whatever noise it is they are making. While I am generally against interruption from outside forces within the confines of a band in the studio (e.g., managers, girlfriends, mates, etc.), all these opinions don’t mean shit to me and in almost all situations these people shouldn’t even be in the studio.

But sometimes I have felt the need to step in and “help” a band.

I am by no means the kind of guy who, when you come into Goatsound, would replace a musician (I have actually seen this done by big name producers and it is sickening). I lean more towards, if that’s how you play then that’s simply how it is.

Moreover, in most cases, I don’t care if you can play or not.

But there has been occasion when someone outside of the band (engineer or producer) talking to a member can assist to help the band achieve what they are trying to do. For example, if you find yourself in the studio with a producer or engineer and they are telling you that your snare sound is really shitty, you should listen to them, not because they are always right but because just maybe they are.

Another common engineering request is letting the drummer know they have their cymbals too low. It is common for faster metal players to place cymbals right over the toms. This, for an engineer, is a pain in the ass and almost all engineers will tell ask you if you can lift them up. They are not doing this because they want to “change your playing style man.” They are asking you to move them higher because you inevitably are going to ask during the

mixing to “turn the toms up man.” Or worse the drummer will simply bitch to the rest of the band that the drum sound is shit.

The engineer will then try and explain that the reason your drums can’t be turned up is because they are in such close proximity to the cymbals turning up the toms is only turning up the cymbals.

What I am saying is that sometimes it is generally better to try what the engineer is saying and sometimes a band may need a producer to step in and tell the drummer firmly that he needs to raise the f*cking cymbals!

These decisions on using a producer or engineer need to be made before you enter the studio and can only be made once you know what it is you are trying to achieve.

Are you making Bleach for $400 bucks or In Utero for a few hundred thousand? Are you Pink Floyd or Fugazi? All of these things sound f*cking great to me and they all have very different approaches.

In very simple terms, do you need someone to tell you what to do or do you just need someone to capture everything exactly as it already is? Only you really know for sure just remember to lift the fucking cymbals off the toms and you should be fine.

New Gear Highlight I just bought and received my new guitar lead from UTA. A while in general a new lead is hardly anything to get excited about this one allows the guitarist to vary the capacitance of the lead with a switching system built into the lead that changes the tonal qualities of the guitar being used. It allows the guitar sound to be opened up in new ways and while it can seem subtle at times it may be that edge a guitarist is looking for in the quest for the ultimate guitar sound. I’m sure gear nerds will be all over this product very soon. Check it out at undertoneaudio.com H

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