HEAVY Music Magazine - Issue #65 - November 2018

EE

FR

SLASH & MYLES KENNEDY “LIVING THE DREAM” - THE ALBUM NO-ONE THOUGHT WOULD HAPPEN

DEE SNIDER THE ORIGINAL METALHEAD

THE OFFSPRING STONE SOUR

ANTHRAX ALICE IN CHAINS BEHEMOTH BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE

THE OCEAN THE USED MAYDAY PARADE NICKELBACK DROPKICK MURPHYS

ONLINE SHOP, BAND INFOS AND MORE:

W W W.NUCLE ARBL AST.DE · WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/NUCLEARBLASTEUROPE

NUCLEAR BLAST MOBILE APP FOR FREE ON IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH + ANDROID! Get the NUCLEAR BLAST mobile app NOW at http://road.ie/nuclearblast FOR FREE or scan this QR code with your smartphone reader!

ONLINE SHOP, BAND INFOS AND MORE:

W W W.NUCLE ARBL AST.DE · WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/NUCLEARBLASTEUROPE

NUCLEAR BLAST MOBILE APP FOR FREE ON IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH + ANDROID! Get the NUCLEAR BLAST mobile app NOW at http://road.ie/nuclearblast FOR FREE or scan this QR code with your smartphone reader!

ON TOUR

I PREVAIL

UNDEROATH

DOWNLOAD 2019

UNIFY 2019

UNIFY 2019

ERASE ME OUT NOW

DISPOSE OUT NOW

LIFELINES OUT NOW

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE

WITHIN TEMPTATION

GOOD THINGS FESTIVAL 2018

GRAVITY OUT NOW

c a ro l i nea ust ralia.co m. au

THE PLOT IN YOU

DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL 2019

RESIST 14.12.18

PREQUELLE OUT NOW

STONE SOUR Hydrograd SPEC ED

DISTURBED Evolution

HALESTORM Vicious

MUSE Simulation Theory (OUT NOV 9)

THE AMITY AFFLICTION Misery

COHEED AND CAMBRIA The Unheavenly Creatures

AVAILABLE NOW

STONE SOUR touring AU Dec 2018 w/ Good Things Festival HALESTORM & THE AMITY AFFLICTION touring AU March 2019 w/ Download Festival

maniacsonline.com.au

JANUARY TARWIN MEADOWS, GIPPSLAND VIC

WELKIN ENTERTAINMENT & WILD THING PRESENTS

10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

PLUS MANY MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED

SAT JAN 26 THE CROXTON MELBOURNE

SUN JAN 27 THE FACTORY THEATRE SYDNEY MON JAN 28 THE VALLEY DRIVE IN / THE BRIGHTSIDE BRISBANE* TICKETS: WILDTHINGPRESENTS.COM

*PUBLIC HOLIDAY

heavymag.com.au info@heavymag.com.au

EDITORIAL TEAM

Contents November 2018

EDITOR & ART DIRECTOR Carl Neumann

SUB-EDITORS

Prarthana Nandini Venunathan

SENIOR CONTRIBUTORS David Griffiths Kris Peters

CONTRIBUTORS

Anna Rose Prarthana Nandini Venunathan

PRINTING & DISTRIBUTION

Eyeball Media Enterprises Howard Duggan

PHOTOGRAPHY

Cover: Herring & Herring Live Ozzy photo: John Raptis

ADVERTISING

sales@heavymag.com.au +61 425 779 122

BACK ISSUES

heavymag.com.au/mag

We fight beside these good people:

READ AND LISTEN TO HEAVY

Please DO NOT litter. Recycle. Or, better still, collect all issues of HEAVY!

24

The Offspring

The Californian punkers look back on the making of ‘Smash’, the album that turned them into stars EDITOR WORDS

Since I was a teenager, post discovering the glories of heavy rock and metal in 1986, I’ve always wanted to create my own printed magazine. Every fourth Wednesday of the month I would scoot down to the local newsagent in anticipation of who would don the cover of “Hot Metal”. More often than not I’d spend my hard earned pocket money on two copies; one for reading and the other for the posters and cutting out cool photos of my heroes to post on my wall.

Today, my heavy friend, you hold in your hands my first ever issue of HEAVY, which I created with the help of those mighty fine people over there on the left of this page.

It was quite a smooth process while working mostly at night, out of hours of my day job. I’m proud of it. I hope you are too.

Stay HEAVY, Carl Neumann

44

Slash, Myles & Co.

The rockers are ‘Living The Dream’

38

Alice In Chains

On the making of ‘Rainier Fog’

52

43

14

The Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy talks about his recent health battles, his relationship with Randy Rhoads, and making new music

42

41 33

22

Anthrax

Stone Sour

Corey Taylor & co headed our way

Hail the OG thrash kings 58

46

20

Nickelback

Bringing their live show to Oz

Bullet For My Valentine Matt Tuck talks taking risks

48

Listen anywhere, antime, on any divice

Scan the Spotify Code

iTunes Podcast

Ozzy Osbourne is set to headline Download Festival in March. Here he addresses his recent health issues, the prospect of new music, and how he’d like to be remembered...

“I’m no special person.”

Written by Rod Yates

ohn Michael Osbourne – “Ozzy” to his fans – answers his phone in Los Angeles at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon, and immediately enquires as to the time in Australia. “9am?” he guffaws. “Oh fucking hell, too early for me!”

Osbourne is currently at home recuperating from a staph infection in his right thumb that caused the cancellation of four shows on the US leg of his No More Tours 2 run of dates. So serious was the infection that it could have killed him.

The hand surgeon said he most likely got it from a manicure, to which Osbourne replied he doesn’t get manicures. The specialist went on to explain that this kind of infection is caused by close personal contact, so perhaps it occurred while shaking hands at one of the meet’n’greets Osbourne does before each show.

After everything the 69-yearold (he turns 70 in December) has been through – alcoholism, drug addiction, the ire of the moral majority, snorting ants with Motley Crue, a near fatal quad bike accident in 2003 – it would be almost comical if a handshake was what finally put him underground.

“I’ve fucking fallen out of a window, I’ve fallen down stairs, I’ve come off motorcycles, broken my neck, it would be fitting in the crazy world of Ozzy Osbourne if I died of a thumb infection,” he cackles. “It’s hardly metal!”

In March Osbourne will bring his No More Tours 2 show to Australia to headline the Download Festival. The original No More Tours gigs took place in 1992, when Osbourne was misdiagnosed with MS and temporarily forced into retirement.

Three years later, and cleared of the disease, he returned to the road for the Retirement Sucks tour and, save for the odd stint as a reality TV star, has been there ever since.

Despite the name of his latest tour, he stresses that these shows will not be his final live dates.

“It’s not my farewell tour,” he says. “It should be called Ozzy Osbourne Slows Down tour. I’m not touring the world where I go out of my house in January and come back in December. I’ll go to Australia, do a tour, then go home for a month or two. I’m doing country by country and slowing down, cos I never see my family.

I’ve got grandkids now.”

Of all your solo albums, 1991’s No More Tears seems to be the one you draw from most heavily in your current set list. Is that your favourite?

Yes. Blizzard [Of Oz, 1980] and Diary [Of A Madman,

“When Randy was around it was a great time.”

1981] were great cos of [guitarist] Randy Rhoads. When Randy was around it was a great time. But No More Tears, we sat down and said, “Right, we’re going to do an album, and every track we’ve all got to love. Every one of us – my wife, my record company, band, everybody – has to say yes.” No More Tears took a lot of emotion out of me, cos anyone who said anything bad about it I was like a fucking Pitbull. When I make records I’m not a very nice person to be around. I’m like a fucking bear with a sore arse.

You mentioned Randy Rhoads – how often do you think of

him?

All the fucking time. I’ve been signing albums, and I see Diary and Blizzard and I think, fuck me I wish he was here. What I do remember as if it was yesterday, on that last journey from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Orlando, Florida, he said to me, “You know what, I’m thinking of giving up the rock’n’roll game.” And I said, “What?” He said, “I want to get a degree at UCLA for classical music.” I remember saying to him, “Fucking stick around, you’ll be able to buy UCLA!” But he wasn’t in the game for being a star. He was the truest musician I ever worked with. Listen to the solo on “Over The Mountain”. It’s a journey. It’s not one style, he goes on a journey, it’s great.

Your other great guitar muse is Zakk Wylde, who’s re-joined your live band. How would you sum up your relationship?

Zakk’s always been a great guy with me. When I broke my neck on a motorcycle and I came out of my coma, there was Zakk, sitting on a chair, waiting. He just dropped everything to come and see me.

He’s fucking great. He doesn’t drink anymore, I don’t drink anymore, and we get on fucking great. We always did.

Word is that you have eight or nine new song ideas. Are you optimistic about making a new album with Zakk?

I haven’t had time or the thought of sitting down with Zakk. It’s a different thing with Zakk now cos he’s his own man, he’s not that kid from New York. He’s done as much ground work as anyone else, he’s been on the road with Black Label Society, he’s as established as anything now. Whether it will work, the chemistry, I don’t know.

It should do. To be honest, I haven’t spoken to him about it yet.

Many acts who’ve been around as long as you no longer see the point in making new music, because the sales and money aren’t there anymore. What’s your take on that?

You know what? The reason I

“It’s not my farewell tour,” he says. “It should be called Ozzy Osbourne Slows Down tour.”

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

17

haven’t been so forthcoming with an album is, you make an album, it costs money to make and print, but then people steal it off the internet, and it’s unavoidable. That Adele album, 21, was the only one that actually sold more than 10 million [recently].

Do you miss the days when a record could sell in those numbers?

I don’t fucking know anymore.

If I do an album, my record company Sony will release it. But now I’m on the road more than

before I go onstage I’m shitting myself. I’m nervous. I still really care whether I’m good or not.

What happens in the final hour before you go onstage?

Do you have any rituals or superstitions?

I say a little prayer to my higher power. Be it the weather, be it nature… I don’t believe in a God who sits on a cloud with a harp, but I believe there’s got to be a

ever. The days of living on your royalties are fucking long gone. I want to do an album, just for my sake, really.

If that doesn’t end up happening and 2010’s Scream ends up being your last ever solo album, would you be okay with that?

No, I didn’t like Scream. I didn’t like the one before either [Black Rain, 2007]. [With Scream] I was in limbo between doing the TV work and being a rock’n’roll guy.

I couldn’t do an album and a TV show and a fucking book at the same time. I wouldn’t spend much time in the studio.

What does it mean to be 70 and still headlining a festival like Download?

I don’t know, I can’t answer the question. I’m fucking glad. I’m no special person. I’m just incredibly lucky. I broke my neck on a fucking bike, I died twice on the way to the hospital, I’ve overdosed on drugs several times. The man upstairs must want me here for something.

Is the rush as you walk to the stage still as strong as it once was?

Believe it or not, after 50 years and God knows how many shows, 18

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

“I don’t believe in a God who sits on a cloud with a harp”

power greater than me. I find that by handing it to someone else it’s not on my shoulders. I let them have the worry. If I go onstage worrying, I’ll fuck the show up.

You’ve given a lot of bands a leg-up by taking them on tour or putting them on Ozzfest. One was Metallica, who supported you in 1986.

What do you recall of that?

I’d go to the gig and they’d be playing Black Sabbath in their dressing room. And at the time I remember thinking, these guys are taking the fucking piss out of me. Why is it every time I pass their room they’re playing Black Sabbath? I had no idea that we were their gods. And there was a time when their manager came up to me and said, “Would it be ok if they jammed ‘Paranoid’ with you tonight?” And I said, ‘I would be honoured.’ And they were like three kids in a candy shop. They were great. I loved it.

Is there a particular song you’d like to be remembered for?

I think just being remembered is enough for me. I’ve never thought myself extra special.

The fact I’ve been able to give people a good reason to get out of bed in the morning is enough.

Written by Kris Peters After the monumental success of their 2006 debut album The Poison, Welsh metallers Bullet For My Valentine were seemingly clawing their way to the promised land. Buoyed by its success and that of their first two EPs, 2004’s Bullet For My Valentine and 2005’s Hand Of Blood, Bullet were riding the wave into their second album, 2008’s Scream, Aim, Fire, when vocalist-guitarist Matt Tuck found himself facing a predicament that could have prematurely ended his and the band’s career. Recording of the LP stopped for around six months while Tuck dealt with every singer’s nightmare in losing his voice.

“It wasn’t serious as in the physical side of it,” he reflects, “although that was a nightmare. Those kinds of things heal, so it was more psychological.

When you’ve had the successful run we had had – we went from playing in a church in the Welsh valley to playing with Metallica and touring the world endlessly for three years – it was this amazing thing, and then all of a sudden the rug was pulled from under my feet. There was a point when I thought, ‘Okay, it’s over.’ I got myself together and went through some speech therapy sessions and eventually got some coaching, and after about a year of doing that I found a voice again quite literally. It was scary for a time but thankfully it worked out and I didn’t give up. There were times on Scream, Aim, Fire when we were doing the vocals that I really doubted 42 HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

whether we were going to finish it.”

One thing that has helped Bullet stand out from most of their contemporaries is their willingness to experiment. Each album has varied from the last, with their latest, Gravity, seeing the band use more electronics and synths than at any stage of their career.

It is a decision that has divided fans and critics alike, but Tuck is adamant that the group are justified in their approach.

“We knew when we made the album it was gonna be divisive with the fans,” he stresses. “We have had some fantastic reviews, we’ve had some bad reviews, but that’s the way it is. We’ve had that since The Poison. We took a decision to do something different because that’s what we wanted to do and we’re more than happy with the response.”

While mixing electronics and synths with metal is not a new combination, Bullet have built their reputation more on the thrash/hard rock style of things. As such it could be construed as somewhat of a risky venture branching that far out of your comfort zone, but Tuck scoffs at the suggestion.

“No, it’s never a gamble,” he says. “It’s being creative and doing what makes you happy as a songwriter. I think the band’s history and success has given us the opportunity and scope to be a little bit more experimental without having to think it’s a risk.

We’re 15, 16 years into our career and six albums in

and we’ve got to do what makes us happy at the end of the day. There’s no way we’re gonna be writing for other people.”

Evolving is a term that has become more prevalent in the modern music scene, but how difficult is it for a band to evolve while staying true to their roots?

“When you’re writing songs and you’re in the demo stage it’s fairly obvious when you’ve gone too far,” he says. “The songs are still heavy, they’re still dark, the lyrical content is still as you’d expect from the band... we’re just trying to freshen things up. We definitely have our own musical identity. I think you can hear that from the self-titled EP through to Gravity. As the band has progressed we’ve grown and our lives have changed and our musical tastes have varied. I think we’ve been brave enough to venture out of the typical metal box, and a lot of bands who had the success off their first couple of records that we had wouldn’t dream of doing this. We always wanted to strive for greatness and that does take a little bit of bravery and a bit of guts. It’s something we’ve never been afraid to do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but the key to that is always be true to yourself and do what you wanna do regardless of the outcome.”

See Bullet For My Valentine at Good Things 2018 in Sydney. Melbourne and Brisbane goodthingsfestival.com.au

hrough his bands Stone Sour and Slipknot, vocalist Corey Taylor has become something of an enigma. While maintaining a high public profile, it is the honesty and sincerity in his lyrics that resonate most to his fans.

“I think much of the older stuff in terms of aggression had a lot to 22

do with my past,” he reflects. “I mean, it was either that or trying various ways to off myself, because at the time there just wasn’t the resources that the world has to offer now. It was tough growing up that way. You held onto a lot, whether it was being bullied or being abused – which I had both in healthy portions – and it kind of fostered a horrible anger in me.

It wasn’t really until Slipknot that I was able to tap into that and really unleash it.”

Taylor is currently doing the

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

rounds with Stone Sour, and despite only gracing our shores 15 months ago, the band are returning as one of the headliners of the inaugural Good Things festival in December.

“We’re changing the setup and bringing down some good stuff,” he promises. “We told everybody when we were there that we were gonna try and come back and it happened sooner than expected.”

With latest album, 2017’s Hydrograd, arguably Stone Sour’s best, Taylor says the band

refuse to rest on their laurels, and don’t wanna make yourself look are already planning to make a like a one-trick pony, so it is stronger impression with the next constantly trying to make sure one. that... it may be the same message “I feel like we’ve peaked to this but I don’t wanna use the same point,” he offers, “but I know this words to convey it, especially band and I know we have got so from a creative and artistic and much good material that we’re poetic standpoint. Luckily I working on. We started writing feel like I haven’t done that yet, new music as soon as we got on which is great, but at the same the road [laughs], we just can’t time it’s been a lot of work for me be stopped. We’re gluttons for because I go back and I pore over punishment. The cool thing is that lyrics like someone trying to find knowing that we’ve got all this Waldo on a painting from 1776. I great material [means] we can just have exhausted every word, every enjoy the rest as much as we can, phrase, everything that could be because we know when it’s time construed as a repeat, and once to ramp up the demo machine I’ve done that, once I’m happy we’re gonna have all this cool stuff to listen to. There’s no pressure on us to run right in. Obviously, I’m going to do Slipknot next year and that will allow the audience to miss us which is the best thing in the world you can have – that built-in need for a band to come back.

Just when you think you can’t wait any longer here comes this band again and you’re like, ‘God damn, they’re so good!’ You know, so we’re pretty stoked, man. We’re definitely looking Stone Sour’s vocalist, Corey Taylor forward to seeing if we can top Hydrograd.”

Written by Kris Peters Despite continuing to churn out new music nearly two decades after he entered the where I’m at, that’s when it goes music world, Taylor admits that out for consumption.” the challenge of coming up with In addition to fronting two fresh, new material is becoming of the world’s premier outfits, increasingly difficult with each Taylor also keeps himself busy release. performing solo shows as well “It definitely gets harder,” he as writing books. He is a man affirms. “Honestly, the challenge who has laid himself bare to the for me is making sure that I’m public, refusing to hind behind his not repeating myself. When you lyrics and instead openly talking get to the point... next year will about his past mistakes. His be my 20th year of doing this popularity in the music world is professionally and that’s a lot of unchallenged, and the pressure of music. That’s a lot of things to public expectation, coupled with say – especially from a loquacious that which he imposes on himself, person like myself [laughs]. You would possibly cripple many

STONE SOUR people. But Taylor roars with laughter when asked if it is hard actually being Corey Taylor.

“It depends on who is talking to me I guess,” he grins. “If it’s an internet troll then yeah, it’s a little hard, but [laughs]... look, everybody has bad days but I’m not going to sit here and tell ANYONE that it sucks being me [laughs]. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy the fact that I get to entertain millions of people. Obviously, I’ve got my issues. I’ve got stuff that I’m still trying to figure out about myself, but I’m not going to be this person that is a stoic, angry cliche when it’s so much better to just be yourself.

That’s what I preach to everyone. I preach that. I preach identity. I preach individualism. I preach figuring out who you are and then being that best person. If I were to put on a front and just kind of wander through this career that I have then I would be no better than the people that I talk smack about on a constant basis. At least with me, like me or hate me whatever, at least when you’re getting me I am... as a frontman, as a jovial dude, yeah I can be a ham. Nobody likes a good horrible pun more than I do, but that doesn’t mean that deep inside me there isn’t an anger that needs to be tapped every once in a while. There’s an aggression that needs to be let out but I don’t turn it on myself. I’m a weird, three-dimensional person who just loves to laugh at himself and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

So yeah, I’m a pretty big fan of Corey Taylor [laughs].”

“I preach identity.

I preach individualism.

I preach figuring out who you are and then being that best person...”

See Stone Sour at Good Things 2018 in Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane goodthingsfestival.com.au

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

23

The OFFSPRING

e m Co t & Ou y! a l P by Words

When The Offspring completed the recording of their third album, 1994’s Smash, they left the studio expecting life to continue pretty much as it had since forming in California 10 years prior.

“It was our hobby,” recalls bespectacled guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, who at the time of the recording was living in a two-bedroom apartment with a flatmate, working as a janitor at Earl Warren Elementary School and sharing custody of his daughter with his former partner. “We’d get together on weekends and summer vacations and travel around the country.”

All that was about to change.

By 1994 grunge was waning as a musical force, and the tastemakers and radio stations were looking for the next big movement.

“Somebody from Epitaph 24

es Rod Yat

[Records, to which the band were then signed] took a bunch of songs down to [influential LA radio station] KROQ,” recalls Noodles.

“I think they were really trying to push a band called Coffin Break.

But ultimately [one of the DJs] listened to ‘Come Out And Play’ and went, ‘Wait, what is that?’

About a month before, Dookie had come out and Green Day had hit, so people were scrambling, looking for the next big thing. And I think they were ready for punk rock. So a month after Green Day’s first hit they went with ‘Come Out And Play’ and it took off. None of us saw that coming.”

Fast forward 24 years and The Offspring will perform Smash in its entirety in December at the inaugural Good Things Festival.

Having shifted more than 11 million copies worldwide, the

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

album spawned hits such as “Self Esteem”, “Gotta Get Away” and live favourite “Bad Habit”, and to this day remains the biggest selling independent album of all time. A mix of raw punk rock attitude, everyday lyrical angst, giant choruses and the kind of spirit that imbues albums created with absolutely no commercial expectations, along with Dookie it paved the way for the mid-’90s punk rock explosion. Which must have seemed like a lot to deal with at the time.

“I don’t remember ever struggling with adjusting to it,” says Noodles.

“One thing we tried to keep in mind was, we’ve been a band for 10 years, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. We’re still the same band. The world around us has changed, but we’re not any bigger or better than we were before.

“I think it messed with everybody in the scene.”

The biggest thing,” he adds with a chuckle, “is we just drank through it all.”

The album’s origins were as humble as the band’s attitude.

As with their previous records, frontman Dexter Holland (who at the time was studying a Ph. D in molecular biology at the University of Southern California) had penned all their material, and the band cut a deal with Track Record Studios in North Hollywood whereby they’d get time at half price if no one else showed up that day.

“It meant we had to know for the most part what we were going to play,” says Noodles. “There wasn’t too much time in the studio for exploration or changing things.”

As for whether the guitarist sensed this new material would be the catalyst for the seismic musical shift that followed?

“I always feel like what we’re doing is a little bit better than what we’ve done before. You get excited about new things. But I didn’t think it was going to do what it did. I didn’t think ‘Come Out And Play’ would make it onto the radio, I certainly didn’t think ‘Self Esteem’ would follow it, and ‘Gotta Get Away’ would follow that. But I thought it was a great record, I thought it was some of the best stuff we’d ever done. I love those songs, but I had no idea when we were making them that the world was going to change around us.”

The reality of the situation started to dawn during the months following the album’s release. A KROQ DJ called Jed The Fish played “Come Out And Play” as his Pick of the Day, and soon it was making nightly appearances on KROQ’s Furious Five At 9 as

one of the station’s most requested songs. Having supported labelmates Pennywise in Alaska shortly after the album’s release, they teamed up with them again several months later to support them in Hawaii.

“We were hearing from our friends that we were getting all this radio play, things were blowing up, and even the Pennywise guys were going, ‘What’s going on with you guys?’” recalls Noodles. “They were freaking out going, ‘Are we going to have to start opening up for you guys now?’ Fortunately they were cool with it. But I think it messed with everybody in the scene.”

For Noodles, one of the most satisfying aspects of success was its impact on his home life.

“I was able to buy a house so my daughter could have her own room,” he smiles. “Things changed quite a bit.”

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

24

There isn’t much that Dee Snider hasn’t done in his career.

He’s fronted Twisted Sister and frequently made Top 100 lists of Best Metal Vocalists right around the world. But Snider is more than a musician. His appearances on Celebrity Apprentice introduced him to the younger generation, and that popularity has seen him play a character on Sponge Bob Square Pants and even appear in the Sharknado franchise. Now Snider is coming to Australia to showcase his talents as a musician and thrill his fans with the spoken word elements of his show.

When I catch up with Snider 28

to talk about the tour he becomes fixated on the name of the magazine I proudly work for.

“HEAVY!!! HEAVY Magazine!

I love it,” he exclaims. “You know I am the original metalhead. I am the Grandfather Metalhead. Day one Mountain, day one Sabbath, day one Zeppelin, day one Grand Funk Railroad – album one, day one, it wasn’t even called metal then, it was called hard rock.

“I was one of those teenagers who didn’t like the Woodstock nation.

Up until heavy metal was born everybody was kind of unified and ‘loving it all, man’, they all went to Woodstock and cheered just as

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

loudly for Crosby, Stills and Nash as they did for The Who. “But I would have been going, ‘Booooo!’ I am a true metalhead and that has never changed.

Once a metalhead always a metalhead. I have always loved it and think my new album is proof of that.

“I just found myself thinking, ‘This speaks to me more than that’,” Snider says when I ask if he can remember the first time he ever heard ‘hard rock’.

“I was a Beatles guy, they were a game changer for us 16-yearolds, but I loved ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Come Together’ more than

Written by Dave Griffiths

I loved ‘She Loves You’. And then you graduated and along came The Monkees, but there was another band out of California on television at the same time – Paul Revere & The Raiders, and they were one of the earlier heavier bands. The Monkees were all ‘I’m A Believer’ and ‘Daydream Believer’, but Paul Revere & The Raiders were singing ‘Kicks’ and ‘Just Like Me’. It was songs about drug addiction and sex and it was a little growlier and I was like, ‘Hey!’ Then there were The Kinks over The Beatles. There was something happening in the zeitgeist of the community, there was something changing, there was

a whole new generation of young people and they were starting to get angry. There had always been the rebels and there had always been the trouble-makers, but there was always an upbeatness to it. But now there was something going on.

Was it society? Was it the Vietnam War? I don’t know, but then Alice Cooper came around, and not only was it hard but what he was singing was dark and there were some sick things. And we were being drawn to that, drawn to Sabbath, drawn to Alice, and for the first time it became pick-a-side. It was either the Woodstock Nation or fucking heavy metal, and I can remember

a party where there were friends of mine from childhood, and we nearly came to blows over the music. They made fun of Deep Purple and my friends and I who were sitting there in our glitter platform shoes were like, ‘FUCK YOU!’” Dee Snider is the kind of person you can listen to talk for hours, so there is no way I am going to miss his tour when he comes to Australia... and you shouldn’t either!

Dee Snider will be in Australia for his “Spoken & Shouted” tour from January 31st to February 3rd.

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

29

we’re so excited to be a part of this, because we’ve been trying to get back to Australia for quite a bit now and then this happened”, enthuses Charlie Benante, drummer for thrash metal legends Anthrax, talking about the band’s appearance at next year’s Download Australia Festival. “We get to come down there and play to so many people and it’s really a joy for us. It’s one of our favourite places to

28

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

tour, and I’m not just saying that.”

When pressed on what fans can expect after a prolonged absence, Benante is typically coy.

“We’re gonna have to incorporate a couple of years of not coming so we’re gonna have to do a double or triple performance,” he teases. “We’ll try to do some spins

and try and light each other on fire maybe.”

Anthrax’s contribution to the thrash metal world is set in stone.

As one of the so-called Big Four, alongside Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer, not only is their worth to metal assured, but also their legacy, with Benante reluctantly

acknowledging the band’s influence on a movement that has helped shape the music world.

“I think we were one of the bands that really broke down some boundaries of traditional heavy metal,” he reflects. “We were one of the bands who embraced a different form of music and

incorporated it into our style of music. We were one of the first bands to really come on stage and all of us wear shorts and stuff like that – aside from, of course, Angus Young, him being the one and only – and we also took that and just wanted to play a form of music that of course came out sounding

like heavy metal, but we did it in a New York type of sound and style and that was the one thing that to me really stood out from us with other bands. We didn’t sound or look like the other bands.”

The musical climate that gave birth to Anthrax was vastly different to that of today. The year was 1981 and it was not just the music world that was experiencing revolution.

“The feel in music then was strictly the usual heavy metal that was happening. For me in 1981 we had this awesome stuff that was coming from England, which became the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (N.W.O.B.H.M), and that completely grabbed me by the throat and shook me like, ‘This is it!’, and I immediately was like... fuckin’ Maiden, Priest, Motorhead, all these bands took a hold of me and really helped shape the music that I was going to create after that.”

With their debut album, 1984’s Fistful of Metal, Anthrax emphatically announced their arrival on the world stage, with Benante admitting that at the time the band was more or less an angry group of individuals looking to unite through music.

“I think we basically were so young and excited back then that we just couldn’t wait to put something out and express where we were coming from,” he recalls.

“I look back at that first album with fond memories because it was a band that was definitely wanting and waiting and we put out something that we all felt really proud of and really strong about.

“Half of that record was written prior to me being in the band, and then there’s the other half that was written with me. Translating to the next record, [1985’s] Spreading 30

the Disease, I think I started to take over more of the style and sound of the band as far as writing goes because at that time [guitarist] Scott Ian started to take over the lyrics. I think Spreading the Disease was the changing moment for the band. That’s when we started to sound like Anthrax. That’s when we started to find our sound and we started to recognise ourselves in the mirror as who we were going to be.”

Since that second album, Benante has primarily been in charge of writing the music, while Ian has retained lyrical duties, a partnership that Benante happily agrees is blossoming over time.

“Oh dude, the greatest thing for me is that the last couple of records that have been written – starting even from We’ve Come For You All in 2003 – I have had such an outsource of... stuff was just coming out of me,” he enthuses.

“It was so satisfying that I wasn’t struggling at all to find a good riff, a good song, a good idea, and nowadays I have so much for the next record and I’m so happy about that, believe me. I don’t know where it comes from, I’m just happy that it does [laughs].”

Over the course of close on four decades, Anthrax have had four vocalists, a feat more remarkable when you consider many bands have failed to make the transition with two. Although no band member has ever publicly favoured one over the other, it is interesting to note Benante’s words when discussing the different singers.

“The greatest thing was...” he measures, “it’s easier for me to write when I have a voice in mind, especially with Joey’s [Belladonna] voice, it’s easier for me to write because I already hear his voice with the idea. It was the same thing

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

when John [Bush] was in the band years ago, I heard his voice and I could write accordingly and that helped a lot. Nowadays I have Joey’s voice in my mind all the time and it really helps to shape and create and I know exactly where we’re going.

“I know the next record is definitely gonna be a little more extreme, a little more angry in places, because I think where I am at this point with the world – right now I’m very angry with a couple of things that have happened. I’m also happy, so...

I think it’s going to be a really good blend of angry and happy [laughs]”.

rue morgue r e c o r d s

RUEMORGUERECORDS.COM

THANKS FOR AN AWESOME 2018!

Coming soon in 2019 new music from: Dizzy Reed, A New Revenge, Raveneye, The Kids, The Iron Horses, Horsehead, Valley Queen, Electric Hippies plus many, many more...

goldenrobotrecords.com

APP AVAILABLE FOR APPLE & ANDROID DEVICES

40th Anniversary

Australia’s Home Of Metal since 1978

Vinyl, CDs, DVDs Merch & Collectables

511 Kent St, Sydney 02 9571 6662 utopia.com.au utopiarecordsofficial

utopiarecords

Alice In

n Chains

ALICE IN CHAINS

“We had a lot of anxiety going back to the belly of the beast...”

Alice In Chains’ bassist Mike Inez on creating their latest album, Rainier Fog Written by Anna Rose

S

eattle’s Studio X had seen some things in its time.

A fly on the wall of the renowned music studio would tell you it had been privy to some of the biggest milestones in music history in the past 39 years. In late October of this year, Studio X closed its doors at its present location for the final time. But before it was forced to make way for the wrecking ball that would begin the process of putting a 346-unit multifamily tower in its place, Studio X was privy to one last spell of magic.

In June 2017 Alice In Chains

returned to their hometown, to ground zero, the very place they had recorded their self-titled album back in 1995, to give those old walls one last shake – the bittersweet sessions resulting in Rainier Fog, quite possibly one of Alice In Chains’ most introspectively dark and evocative albums to date.

“I like those adjectives!” laughs bassist Mike Inez.

Returning to Studio X was a major moment for Inez and the band, and he reflects on the experience with a complex blend of unease, pride and wistfulness.

“We had a lot of anxiety going back to the belly of the beast,” he says. “It was nice to go back to Seattle, see Rainier Fog rock into work, getting fresh coffee at the waterfront and going into Studio X… which is now gone.”

Solemnly, Inez reels off just a handful of the exceptional works created in that building.

Soundgarden’s Superunknown in 1994; tracks for Nirvana’s 1993 release In Utero; albums by the likes of Pearl Jam (Yield), Hole (Live Through This), R.E.M. (New Adventures In Hi-Fi) and, of course, Heart, who co-owned the facility when it was called Bad Animals Studio.

“Hallowed ground,” says Inez. “[It was] heartbreaking but really nice to be there at the same time.”

To be a part of history at opposite ends of Studio X’s timeline was both a cathartic and vulnerable experience for the bassist, but for a man who claims there was a good deal of anxiety returning to the “belly of the beast”, the quality of Rainier Fog suggests Alice In Chains operate quite well in such emotional chaos.

“I thought there was going to be more chaos,” Inez admits, relaying a conversation he had with vocalist Jerry Cantrell on the flight to Seattle before they began recording. “[We were] confronting the way we used to roll. We’re grown men now and responsible,” Inez adds with a chuckle. “I thought I was gonna have a lot of ghosts to face when I got up there – every street corner is a reminder of some sort of behaviour in the early days.

Surprisingly I learned a lot about myself. I got up there and there was none of that, I was so surprised.

“I learned that if we just walk

into the studio and plug our guitars into amps, everything kind of works out. We relied on each other, relied on the music, and just enjoyed the summer in Seattle. There’s no more beautiful place in America than Seattle in the summer. It’s just a beautiful spot to record.”

Having recorded their previous two albums, 2009’s Black Gives Way to Blue and 2013’s The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, in Los Angeles, recording in Seattle was a change Inez says the band needed.

“We just needed to go drink that water and breathe that air, to see a lot of our people we hadn’t seen in a while. Chris DeGarmo [former Queensrÿche guitarist] plays on a song called ‘Drone’ and he just

“The Seattle of 2018 doesn’t look anything like the 1990 Seattle... A lot of the cool rock clubs are gone now.” dropped by one day and ended up with a 12-string guitar in his lap and headphones on and we put him on the record. I think we needed to have those kinds of interactions with our people, not just guys in other bands, just everybody we know up there.”

Ultimately Inez is pleased with how Rainier Fog turned out, but that pride comes with remorse and reflection.

“It was the last album recorded at Studio X, now they’re going to have to move locations,” he informs.

“That’s the progress of Seattle. I mean, the Seattle of 2018 doesn’t look anything like the 1990 Seattle.

It’s a lot of buildings, skyscrapers everywhere downtown. A lot of the cool rock clubs are gone now.

It’s kind of like a reminder of how

things change too, you know?”

They say when one door closes, another door opens, and “they” would be right. Despite a 31-year tenure in the industry, Alice In Chains are still subject to many firsts thanks to the success of their music. Off the back of Rainier Fog’s positive reception, the band experienced their first tour in Israel in July. Even this far down the line Inez has a somewhat incredulous take on such opportunities, remarking how other bands don’t leave the United States in a career the same length as theirs, just playing casinos every summer and not venturing out.

“For us it’s still kind of an adventure. There’s nothing better for me – my wife will disagree!

“I love getting on a flight and putting on headphones, taking a long flight and 18 hours later you’re waking up in Istanbul and you hear a mosque and just the smells, and people chanting, and you realise, ‘Wow, I am so fucking far from my house right now!’ I just love that feeling. We went to Old Jerusalem – just to see that was a life changer, just amazing.”

Even more firsts are ahead for Alice In Chains – not only will the icons perform at next year’s Download festival in Sydney and Melbourne, but they recently announced performances in New Zealand, their first ever visit to the country.

“New Zealand is gonna be a first for us – I played there when I was with Ozzy’s [Osbourne] band. I love New Zealand!

“We played all over Australia in the early days, places like Wollongong,” Inez adds, that note of ennui gracing his tone. As he continues to discuss the upcoming tour the confidence and excitement returns.

“I love Australia, it’s one of my favourite places!”

You’ve never heard a brighter enthusiasm for a country such as Inez offers – another door opens, indeed.

“Sydney is a work of art! I could live there, I have so many friends there, I just love, love, love Australia. Even Perth, I’m hoping we can get over to Perth and play – it’s an adventure, I just love it.”

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

39

ood Things is coming Aussie music lovers.

Yes, the countdown is now on until the Good Things Festival hits Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. With a line-up that features bands like The Offspring, Stone Sour, Dropkick Murphys, Mayday Parade, Northlane, Dashboard Confessional to name a few, there is no surprise that music fans are getting excited. HEAVY wanted to see how pumped the bands are for the festival so we sat down and had a chat with Bert McCracken from The Used.

“I am so excited about being able to play at a festival without leaving my home country,” he says with a laugh.

“It is like a stone’s throw from my house in Sydney.

It feels like such a long time since our last shows here. What’s even cooler is it’s usually me travelling to the rest of the band but this time it’s the other way around. Touring is still so exciting for us but the one part of touring that gets under my skin just a bit, is having to fly so far. I hate having to complain about that because some people never even get to fly their entire lives. But this time everybody else has to fly to me for a change. Coming to Australia is one of the best times that you can have with a band because it

is summer time, amazing weather and everybody gets excited, Australians are beautiful people and it is a beautiful country. But you have this amazing festival with all these great bands including my favourite band and your favourite band – The Used.”

Now The Used are seven albums into a career that is nearing two decades McCracken admits that it is getting harder to pick setlists especially when they play at festivals are get that dreaded ‘shortened’ set. “We like to pay a lot of respect to where we came from with our past records,” he explains. “Some of our older songs are still some of my favourite songs to play in the whole world, so yeah we like to celebrate every second of every year that we have been doing this. I think what makes a show really exciting is when you play songs that bring that kind of magic nostalgia back to people. Music is so powerful, it is like a smell, it has that power to be able to take you back to a moment of time and then when you have a group of people all coming together and it is like a movement of spiritualism. That is our opportunity to feel that love and comradery in a way that you rarely get to on this planet... and that is such a beautiful thing.”

“We like to pay a lot of respect to where we came from with our past records.”

The Used Written by Kris Peters

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

40

An interview with Robin Staps from Berlin-based music collective The Ocean was always going to get deep. While some musicians are happy to write music about the good old-fashioned topics of sex, drugs and women, The Ocean do things a little differently.

Their new album is titled is Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic and it explores a 500 million year period of Planet Earth which included five mass extinction events.

to it. At the same time it was almost the tenth anniversary of Precambrian so there was this void, both conceptually and musically between Precambrian and our 2010 record Heliocentric that we just somehow wanted to fill with a bridge record so to speak, so yes the

we came up with an album that deals with the Phanerozoic which is the next concessive eon after the Precambrian and which glues together the music of the old ocean, Precambrian, with the new ocean which I consider to be all the events since Heliocentric, especially with Loic on vocals.”

As our discussion goes on I ask Staps how he goes about researching a time period that existed before even early man did on Earth. “It is actually really interesting,” he says the excitement now clear in his voice. “I have a real interest in geography and history... I studied that actually. I find it really interesting to sit down and read about what happened then and I found that I got even more into the subject matter now that I was writing lyrics and doing some research into it for the record. But most of it was already there and I was aware of it because I was exposed to it during my studies, so I

“...WE ARE SINGING ABOUT THE EXTINCTION OF THE DINOSAURS”

“With this record, we were in a different position to the previous one,” says Staps as we dissect the album together because the music was written first before we started to think about the whole idea behind it. That actually came to mind when I was sitting down and listening to the material and realised that it was quite similar to our Precambrian record from 2007 - it just seemed to have that same kind of vibe

just had to do a little bit of extra reading but I didn’t have to do any scientific preparation or anything like that. It is something of a new concept though because it’s not like we are singing about the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Of course, if you are going to write about a time period when there were no humans on Earth you are going to have to check over it in a metaphorical way for the lyrics to have relevance, meanings about feelings. That is what we have done in the past with our last

Written by Dave Griffiths

material was kind of doing that because you had the heaviness of Precambrian and also the clean vocals of Loic who has been in the band since 2009, it was eccentric and it just seemed like a good idea to do that and that was how

album Pelegial which was about a journey to the bottom of the sea but on a metaphoric level it was a song about a journey to the deepest depths of the mind.”

The music itself maybe deep but what The Ocean have created with this album is nothing short of a masterpiece.

This is prog rock at its finest and most beautiful.

Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic is out on 2nd November through Wild Thing Records. You will also be able to catch The Ocean in Australia when they headline Progfest in January 2019.

The Ocean

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

41

- Jenna McDougall battled some intense emotional trauma during the recording of Underworld.

Words by Anna Rose

hat a year for Tonight Alive and in the run-up to the release of their latest album, Underworld. It has been an absolute rollercoaster as vocalist Jenna McDougall battled some intense emotional trauma.

Nobody anticipated the weight the album would carry until they heard it in full, and for McDougall, Underworld has both been a cathartic process of healing and a battle to overcome the demons.

McDougall ponders carefully, saying, “It was a bit of a turbulent time – we lost a member - we went through so much leading up to making and bringing out the album. It was a really intense year.”

Touring on the Underworld cycle and having reconfigured their whole dynamic on stage, it was obvious Tonight Alive was going through the emotional consequences of the departure of guitarist Whakaio Taahi. But armed with the completely transparent honesty of Underworld, musically and personally, Tonight Alive was able to continue forging a connection not only between themselves but 42

their fans, too. “I think that’s the best thing we could have done,” McDougall says. “We were going through a lot, we had no choice but, to be honest about it – I think that’s what carried us through such an intense time.”

Though she’s blunt and concise with her observations of the whirlwind of doubt and confusion Tonight Alive experienced trying to produce Underworld in the wake of Taahi’s departure, McDougall seems hollow, desensitised almost, and seemingly still carries a lot of hurt even now. Producing Underworld was a self-prescribed medicine for her and the band, one she says still works every day.

“I come up with these words like integrity is the latest one, it’s the next step for me. To be stronger without compromise.

“It’s become a daily practice for me to have hard conversations, so being honest no matter what the consequence is, developing confidence to combat my fear of judgement and fear of reaction from people… Writing an album, it’s about me standing up to myself and what I need to learn.

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

Underworld set a lot of standards for me, and it keeps me in check.”

Maintaining the principle for honesty does, McDougall says, make those hard conversations easier. “Difficult, challenging, uncomfortable, but the relief [of honesty] after the fact is so rewarding.” Something so personal to McDougall as Tonight Alive’s latest album becomes a force of emotion and fearlessness when, along with their back catalogue of three albums, the songs are shared with a great audience, as there will be when Tonight Alive perform at Good Things Festival.

Thousands of people screaming the lyrics back at her, that many people understanding where she was coming from, McDougall says it blows her mind. “There’s almost nothing I could be more grateful for than that exchange, where I feel heard and understood, but so does that the crowd. It’s a pretty amazing gift to give to one another.”

See Tonight Alive at Good Things 2018 in Sydney. Melbourne and Brisbane - goodthingsfestival.com.au

“It was a serious undertaking,” stresses Mayday Parade frontman Derek Sanders of the band’s formation while each member was still in their teens. “I think that was the whole idea of the band really.

We all knew each other growing up to differing degrees and all played in different bands together, and when Mayday Parade came together we had the conversation beforehand that was like, why don’t we take these guys from this band and those guys from that band. These seem to be the people that are really the most dedicated and wanna make this happen and put everything into doing it – touring and leaving everything behind – and really give it a shot.

That was kind of the goal right from the beginning. And we had a plan for the next six months to write and record an EP and to play as many shows as possible, put out the EP ourselves and take the copies on the Warped tour and sell them to people outside. That’s what we did; that’s how we got started. Thirteen years later here we are...”

Growing up in Tallahassee, Florida, Sanders says the seeds of the band were sown from an early age with musical activities being a key factor in his youth.

“I started doing all this when I was very young,” he recalls, “and I

Written by Kris Peters

have an older brother who started in a band when I was about 10 years old and I kinda followed in his footsteps. I asked for a guitar for Christmas and started learning that and playing piano and playing with my brothers and cousins and we would jam and write songs together. Everyone else has similar stories and that’s part of what was so cool about Tallahassee. Back then there was always such a strong local music scene and there were a couple of dozen bands and most of them were friends and it was just a connected community.”

Borne from their early pact to get their music out to as many people as possible, Mayday Parade soon set about touring the U.S., selling music as they went. Sanders says even in their relative youth the band members had some form of plan in place.

“It kind of gradually became more and more of a thing,” he says.

“There was a band that some of us were in before Mayday Parade

called Defining Moment and it really was just learning all along the way. Things like how to actually be in a band and how to make this work. We did our touring and we would go to the malls and walk around with CD players trying to sell our CDs – maybe three or four each time – and somewhere along the way we tried that outside of festivals where there’s thousands of people lined up and we sold 100 CDs in one day. We realised we could get our music out there much faster and much more effectively doing that than trying to tour.”

Mayday Parade are heading to Australia in December on the back of their latest album, Sunnyland.

Performing as part of the Good Things festival, Sanders enthuses that the reaction to the album has been the catalyst to their performances.

“It’s been really good,” he gushes. “The album is doing really well and is keeping us moving forward. The new songs are going down great live and we’re super proud of it. We’re excited to come over. Thank you guys all so much for the support. It’s incredible that we’re still able to do this after 13 years and it’s always so much fun.

We’re very lucky and we’ll see you soon!”

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

43

iving The Dream is the album that a lot of people thought wouldn’t happen. With Slash busy on the road with Guns N’Roses once more and frontman Myles Kennedy showing his wares with his brilliant solo album, Year Of The Tiger, it was beginning to feel like we may have heard the last from The Conspirators. But they surprised us all, first with the single “Driving Rain”, which was quickly lapped up by radio in Australia, and now with the album it is taken from, Living The Dream.

Yes, Slash, Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators are back in a big, big way and HEAVY mag learnt from chatting to bassist Todd Kerns it normally all starts with a phone call.

“Well, the funny thing is The Conspirators are a band but we can’t help being labelled somewhat of a project because it has always been Myles Kennedy from Alter Bridge,” explains Kerns. “And Slash was largely working on film projects until Guns N’Roses got back together, so it was always when Myles had time we made a record, it just so happened that over a six-year period we managed to make that solo record in 2010 and then we did Apocalyptic Love

and World On Fire in quick succession, so it kept us rolling even though Myles was still doing an Alter Bridge album here and an Alter Bridge album there. I wouldn’t say that it was all that difficult getting back together, although with Slash going back to Guns N’Roses that did put us in a position where we were on hold, and I guess at any point he could have said, ‘I’m doing Guns N’Roses and that is the end of The Conspirators.’ But then he kept saying, ‘And then we will do a Conspirators record; when I am done with this we are going to do a Conspirators record.’ And I was just like, ‘Oh okay, whenever you are ready.’ I am one of those people that whenever you tell me that I have a free day I find something to do, so when the call came we were all like, ‘Great, let’s all get together and write some music.’

There is never a guarantee that when you get together what you will write will be better than what you did last time, but you do try to be better and better and better. And I think that whenever

somebody goes off to do something else, whether it be Guns N’Roses, or Alter Bridge or a solo album, or what I am doing, or what Brent [Fitz, drums] is doing, or what Frank [Sidoris, guitar] is doing, we all come back with new experiences and as better musicians and writers, and we all bring that back to the table. That is an example of a band that still brings it when they have to bring it.”

When our chat turns to how the band finds time to write music together when they are so spread out, Kerns says that comes from the top.

“It literally filters down from the top of the ladder,” he explains. “You know Slash, he has these times whether it be during a soundcheck or when he is jamming he will come up with riffs.

You get one of those iconic Slash riffs and you immediately have the skeleton of a song. We then build the song on the amazing riff that he has come up with, and you have heard those riffs as far back as Guns N’Roses and Snakepit

and Velvet Revolver and now into The Conspirators. These riffs just seem to carry these songs, and he has this ability to make it seem like they just fall out of him – I don’t know what he is doing right now but he is probably sitting in a room somewhere coming up with another riff, he is just that kinda guy.

Then when the song has been built from Slash’s riff, Myles comes in and adds lyrics and melody to it and that is kind of the brunt of the songwriting process. Our job, The Conspirators’ job, is to kind of flesh that out and turn them into songs, turn them into full working parts, but I think that is how it will go until the end of Slash’s life. He will just be churning out iconic riff after iconic riff.”

All of those riffs have certainly paid off, and while Living The Dream is clearly one of the best rock albums of the year, the promised Slash feat. Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators tour in January is going to be even more killer, if that’s possible.

Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators Written by Dave Griffiths

as he apologises for the band not touring Australia for such a long time. “That always seems to be the way, it always seems to be that we are too far between visits to Australia, so we feel a little bit sheepish about it taking so long to head back. But we are really, really excited to be coming. We have so many fond memories of Australia, and our fans in Australia have been so good to us. It has become a place that is almost a second home for us, we are getting so familiar with the place after being there so many times. We know the places that we like to go, the places we like to see and the things that we like to do... even the places we like to eat at. The Melbourne and Vancouver connection is

46

very close. The two cities are very alike to me, they are both really cosmopolitan, and both countries are just beautiful, beautiful countries. I call Australia ‘Canada with better weather’ – you get all the great things about a Commonwealth nation, you get your pleases, your thank yous and all your politeness, and it is a little warmer in Australia than it is Canada, but it is very much the same vibe. Seeing that we come from Canada it does feel like we are coming home when we come back to Australia.”

As for what the band have in store for Australian fans with their biggest production to date? “Well, we have to see about it,” teases Kroeger. “We have been on tour with this biggest show that we have ever fielded. And we are talking about adding new elements to the show... something that

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

will be very special just for Oz. It is very much an open creative process... it is not unlike a songwriting process. It is creative as well – it is very much a visual creation for the most part, but we are always trying to find ways to involve the crowd and bring the crowd into the show. Maybe even bring people out of the crowd up on to the stage.”

It is not hard to see while talking to Kroeger that the band themselves are very excited about bringing Feed The Machine to Australia. But you also get the feeling that this is a tour that their fans should be eagerly looking forward to, because it sounds like this just may be their biggest spectacle to date.

Written by Dave Griffiths

Written by Kris Peters

here was kind of a resurgence going on at that point in Boston,” recalls Dropkick Murphys frontman Al Barr of the early days of the band.

“The punk scene had kind of died down for a while in the early ’90s, whatever was going on in the scene there just wasn’t a lot for punk rock. The band here today, that didn’t dissuade them, but in 1995, 1996, all of a sudden there was a resurgence of punk and all these bands started up and some of them were really great and we were one of them, along with bands like The Ducky Boys, Trouble and Blood for Blood. Suddenly there was a lot of great bands in Boston and it was pretty crazy. From there we took it on the road and kept touring. We knew we weren’t ever gonna have a radio hit or anything, and if we wanted people to get into the band we’d have to go to their town and their cities and play anywhere and everywhere, and that’s what we 48

did.”

The brand of Celtic punk that Dropkick Murphys unleashed on the music world in 1996 was foreign, to say the least. Here was the blending of two totally different forms of music that by rights had no place together, but Barr points out that despite the fresh musical direction the band was always confident their sound would reach an audience.

“For us, again, it was something that was not... the band was into traditional folk and American folk – there was definitely that as an influence – and with the writing of our earlier material people said we were like The Pogues meets The Ramones. I’ve always said the Dropkicks have always been more of the punk-meets-Irishmeets-American-folk bands versus a band like The Pogues or a band like Flogging Molly, which is more traditional with the voracity drawing upon that punk swagger from time to time. Whereas we

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

start with the backbone of punk and go outside of our influences to include folk and Irish music.”

Dropkick Murphys have always been a band unafraid to wear their beliefs and hearts on their collective sleeve. They are known for supporting working class and union causes, have appeared on the Rock Against Bush Volume 2 compilation, supported the United Healthcare Workers East movement fighting for free and fair union elections, as well as founding the Claddagh Fund, which supports community-based nonprofits with a focus on children and veterans’ organisations.

But throughout it all they’ve maintained an individual right to expression that has never wavered from the beginning.

“I think that was always what punk was to me,” Barr muses.

“Even before I was in bands – and I was in bands since I was 15 years old – but it was always about standing up for yourself and that

was always what punk was and that’s really as far as I’d like to go.

Politics is something... I like to let you make your own conclusions about what I say and how I feel. We don’t need to get into a big debate about it.”

Along those lines, Barr strongly believes that music, as an art form, can be responsible for changing minds and opinions, but stops short of acknowledging it as a weapon.

“I don’t think it’s about being a weapon so much as being more something that draws people in,” he counters. “Music is the one venue where you don’t stop and... you don’t sit and go, ‘What’s that guy into politically or religiously or ethnically?’ We’re just all here to get into whatever band it is that we’re there to see and that’s what the focus is. That’s one of the few places left in the world these days where people aren’t judging.

We’re not judging each other and hopefully it stays like that. I don’t

know how much longer it will, but I feel like that is where the power – you say weapon, I say power – applies. Music has the power to unite us and it has the power to shake us at our very beings as opposed to having to think this way or that. With music, you can actually go with how you feel as a human being.”

After half a decade between visits, Barr says the Dropkick Murphys are dripping with anticipation ahead of their appearance at Good Things festival in December.

“We’re excited just to get down there again,” he enthuses. “We haven’t been to Australia in five years and we have a record we put out since we were there last, so we’re excited to play some of the new songs for people. We’re all music fans ourselves so we don’t just play the new stuff, we play the older stuff as well”.

With Special Guests

Tickets: Eventbrite or at the door

With the release of their new album I Loved You At Your Darkest, Polish extreme metallers Behemoth continue to carve their own path...

Written by Prarthana Nandini Venunathan

I debated an introduction for this story, but here I am. It seems almost disrespectful to not introduce a band that have changed my life in so many different ways; not to mention the fact that they have just released their 11th offering to the world, I Loved You At Your Darkest. HEAVY had the honour of chatting with the man himself, vocalist and all round good human Nergal, catching up on the latest album, yoga and all things Behemoth.

Nergal on stage is very, very different to the Nergal off stage, and his usual happy and charming self greeted me like an old friend. “Hey, I’m doing really well, thanks!

Everything is getting ready for the release of our new album so things are busy and hectic but we’re very, very excited about it all.

We’ve been so busy; we were just at Berlin for the I Loved You At Your Darkest exhibit – I’m running so high on adrenalin, man!”

His voice certainly gives that away; and continuing on from this excitement, we talk about Behemoth’s return to Australia for Download 2019, which will make it just over three-anda-half years since the band last performed here on their The Satanist tour run. “I’ll tell you this, Prat, every time we land there, it has always felt like home.

I love Australia so much and the Australian hospitality – people are amazing. Whenever we’ve gone on tour there, I’ve loved every moment – we have a lot of good friends, so many good vibes there, the weather, the culture – it’s all perfect! I remember after every tour, I’d stay back for an extra week or two just to hang out, so I cannot wait to do it again. The best part is – this time it is going to be the biggest show we’ve ever done for

54

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

our Australian legions.”

I Loved You At Your Darkest is the incredible follow-up to 2014’s The Satanist, and is an album that reflects the band’s originality, their evolution as individuals and as a unit and their dedication to unorthodox music.

“Yes, it is definitely a pretty bold attempt to redefine ourselves again, however that is one of the things Behemoth stands for. We do not like repeating ourselves consciously. It’s interesting that

you say this because just recently, I was reading an article about I Loved You At Your Darkest where someone said, ‘Fortunately it is not The Satanist Part II – and that’s exactly right. We were never trying to redo what we created with The Satanist. Due to the success that we have had the honour of experiencing with that album, many people still feel that now, we shall make The Satanist for the next 10 years! I’ve already done that – I’m an adventurous guy so let me be adventurous, let me be free and liberated within my realm.”

Delving deeper into the album, I couldn’t help but bring up one of my personal favourite tracks, “God = Dog”, a song that caused quite an excitable stir amongst metalheads everywhere, for it is indeed something very different to what Behemoth have previously done.

“Well, let’s look at it this way – it’s like aging and biology. I mean, come on, man, I’m 41 years old.

So you cannot expect me to be and perform and play like I’m 35, can you?”

At this point, I started laughing only to realise that that wasn’t a rhetorical question at all, and so I gladly responded saying “no”, to which Nergal then said, “Okay, good. Can you expect me to be 23? Well, there you go. That’s my answer to those people. However, what you can expect, embrace and appreciate is Nergal at his best at the age of 41, Behemoth at their best after all these years and that’s exactly what you get.”

Thematically, what’s always been most interesting about Behemoth is their antireligion stance in general, but also how much they adopt various aspects of religion into their art.

“Yes, there is always controversy attached to us and what we do and we love it.

‘God = Dog’ is a controversial track – and the best explanation of it is inverting God to give you Dog. However, a much deeper explanation is that it comes from [Aleister] Crowley’s philosophy which is, ‘Is a God to live in a dog? No! But the highest are of us.’ However, I like to see what people’s interpretations of our music are, and it’s been interesting to hear what people make of all our different tracks on the new album!”

This is one of the many things that I love about this band – they

are radical, they are unorthodox and unique, and they just don’t give a shit. I Loved You At Your Darkest is one of their most radical offerings to the world – it has the makings of a fine black metal album but with a magnificent air of atmospheric, symphonic brilliance and a few surprises along the way.

“I kind of had an idea right from the start about what I wanted to do with the band,” says Nergal.

“For instance, there were some rock inclinations on The Satanist and that’s what I wanted to push even further on the new album.

I think we managed to do that.

This album is more about valleys and mountains – it goes up and down, up and down, all the time, there’s so many moods, and always something that you have to pay attention to. It feels like we explored different aspects of musical realms we’ve never been to before. If you listen to ‘If Crucifixion Was Not Enough’ or ‘Sabbath Mater’, you will notice these differences. I’ll say here to those that think we’ve repeated ourselves, some of the tracks may not be super original to a lot of our fans or people that listen to us, however it’s new to us. We’ve never done it before and that’s what is interesting for us.”

For someone who has followed Behemoth for as long as I have, I’ve noticed some pretty incredible phases in the band’s career, and that’s one thing I Loved You At Your Darkest signifies – an almost enlightened form of Behemoth.

“Of course! There is no doubt that with every new record, there is a new formula behind it. When I approach a new Behemoth album, it’s like carte blanche, we can do what we want, what we feel. We’re not digging into our past to learn what we should do in the new record, but it’s something that just happens. When we release new music that comes from within

us, it turns out to be powerful. I cannot articulate it intellectually enough but it does happen on an energy level, even more so than on a brain level.”

That statement in itself made me know exactly what I wanted to talk about next, something that I know is very close to Nergal’s heart. From one Yogic being to another, I asked this legend whether he felt Yoga influenced his music in any way at all.

“Yoga focuses on breathing; breath is life. It is energy. And we all need energy. Every morning I love my coffee, it has a massive effect on me. Yoga? Takes that even further. It enhances everything.

I’m not superficial; I’m not one of those guys who says, ‘Mayhem is what got me into black metal’, and then I write an album just like Mayhem. Of course, I fucking worship Mayhem but I also worship coffee, I worship Yoga, I worship women, I worship life and death. All of this is the result of that celebration of life that you’ll hear in Behemoth’s music.”

A huge animal lover, Nergal was recently seen in a video feeding a beautiful dog named Stella Behemoth’s limited edition, cruelty-free ‘God = Dog dog food’.

Knowing that both Nergal and bassist Orion are supporters of an animal shelter in their hometown, this came as no surprise.

“I do understand when people... think it is a marketing strategy, or gimmick,” says Nergal. “However, what I will point out is that I absolutely love animals. I love dogs. I want to support dogs. I find it weird if people criticise that – wanting to give to people food for their animals. I’m glad that we did it, and if you pick one up before it’s gone, you’re one of the lucky ones!”

there was ever a director who was perfect to be at the helm of a movie that chronicles the tragic events that occurred in the Norwegian black metal scene in the 1990s it is Jonas Akerlund. The story revolving around the bands of Mayhem and Burzum is a story of murder, suicide and arson and a big fear in the metal community over the years has been that when a film was made it could be made by a filmmaker who has no knowledge of the black metal scene at all. That certainly can’t be said for Akerlund, who before he started directing video clips for the likes of Metallica, The Prodigy, Rammstein and Madonna was the drummer for Swedish black metal outfit Bathory.

The big news is for Australian movie lovers that Akerlund’s films which explore these tragic events, Lords Of Chaos, will be the Closing Night film at the country’s biggest horror movie festival – Monster Fest. With that news in hand, I sat down to have a chat with Akerlund and started with the question of why he decided to make the film in the first place. “It is a story that I have wanted to tell for a long time,” he explains. “It is a story that kept coming back to me in my head. I kind of started it and then I went off it, then I heard somebody 56

else was working on it so I gave up on it for a minute, this is all going back to about 1999. Even right back, in the beginning, I remember hearing about the Church burnings on CNN and I thought this would make a great story.”

“Then about five years ago I decided to just really go for it

and put everything into it,” says Akerlund continuing. “So I started writing it and it basically took me five or six years to get to where we are now. You know why I wanted to do it is because it always felt like this story had so many layers.

I kept seeing all these books, the documentaries and pictures online and there always seemed to be this portrait of these demons, these evil people from Norway, but to me

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

behind this facade, t,here were these young boys. They were so young that they were basically children and I thought we have already seen the documentaries and we have read the books and we know the story but what is there more to say about it? I wanted to humanize these kids and show that they were young boys. There were so many reasons why I wanted to make this movie and we had so many against us saying that this is a really hard movie to sell and a really

MONSTER FEST comes to Cinema Nova from Thursday, November 22nd to 25th for Monster Fest VII: The Homecoming From its humble beginnings in 2012 to present day with major satellite events nationwide - Monster Fest has grown to become Australia’s premier genre film festival and now in it’s seventh year has its greatest line up yet.

Highlights include “Lords of Chaos” in its Australian premiere.

Based on the controversial book about the real life black metal murders and church burnings in Norway in the early 90’s this is a real treat for metal and film fans alike.

Also on the bill is S. Cring Zahler’s violent cop thriller “Dragged Acress Concrete” an action-packed outing that lives up to his previous gore-fests with “Bone Tomahawk” and “Brawl In Cellblock 99”.

hard movie to explain to people and it is such a dark story. So yes it has been a very long, journey to get it to where it is now.

Lords Of Chaos promises to be one of the horror films of 2018 so don’t miss it at Monster Pictures’ very own Monster Fest at Cinema Nova from 22nd to to 25th of November.

You can also see the most controversial film of 2018, “Lars Von Trier’s The House That Jack Built”. This serial killer thriller has been called disgusting and evil, prompting both mass walkouts and a standing ovations at Cannes Film Festival this year.

Also on offer are 4K restoration screenings of classics including JJohn Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” and Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead II”. And, you wont want to miss “Bad Boy Bubby”, Australia’s most controversial film, returning to the big screen for its 25th anniversary with star Nicholas Hope (Bad Boy Bubby himself) in attendance hosting a tell-all Q&A afterwards.

Head over to the Monster Fest website for the full line up and dates.

www.monsterfest.com.au/2018

Written by Dave Griffiths

B

allarat is about to host one of Australia’s newest music festivals.

Performing at Karova Lounge on the 26th January will be a stellar Australian line-up including the likes of Dead City Ruins, Desecrator, Hadal Maw, Whoretopsy, Dreadnaught and Frakenbok. With such an exciting line-up planned HEAVY Mag caught up with Jake Wiffen from Dead City Ruins to find out what exactly we can expect from Blaze.

“Five or six years ago, I was saying we need to do this,” says Wiffen when I ask how important it is that regional towns like Ballarat get festivals like this. “Bands are out there spending all their money to become a band.

They spend money on practice and all of that and spend money getting themselves up and down the coast to play shows but there didn’t seem to be enough people dedicating as much money as bands were. There were no people becoming promoters or starting record labels or anything like that. So now seeing it start to happen is awesome, man. It is not only important that the bands and the content come along but also, there needs to be the support for

it and that the industry around it builds up. There doesn’t seem to be any big companies out there supporting us so we all have to do the DIY thing and just say ‘fuck it I am going to do this.’ Now that people are putting together festivals and targeting regional areas, that is fucking amazing. We need more of it!”

When our chat turns to how when you walk around a regional town and you see teenagers wearing rock and metal T-Shirts rather than associating with more mainstream music Wiffen says, “FUCKING OATH, because they are blue collar towns. Maybe there aren’t the right venues in regional areas yet or perhaps there are the dedicated bookers that they need but that is where doubledenim, flanno wearing, long-haired dudes and chicks are. They want to bang their heads, they want to go out and drink beers and listen to loud music. The cities are full of people that are overloaded for choice and they don’t really seem to give a shit where just like rock and heavy metal small towns have this kind of feeling that they are being forgotten and left behind and they need to come

58 HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

together to remind themselves that they are still there. They want to go out and go crazy and bands want to do that and see that so I think more and more we should be targeting regional areas. That is where it is, man. That is where the heart is!”

You get the feeling when chatting to Wiffen that our music industry would be in a much better place if people would only listen to the wisdom of musicians like himself, but for now, all we can do as music patrons is support the bands by making sure festivals like Blaze have a really big turnout.

Written by Kris Peters

“I t’s definitely time someone did something big scale

in Ballarat”, declared Desecrator frontman Riley Strong, talking about next year’s Blaze Festival. “I think that Ballarat’s been historically known for being a pretty metal town. If you rewind yourself a little while and go back to bands like Damaged - back when death metal was coming up in Victoria - there’s a fairly rich history in heavy metal.

Off late, it’s been a hard place for bands to pull crowds and get any awareness to which always seemed strange because it’s a young persons town, but it’s good that Livvy has put something together and if most of the community get behind it then bands can get some more exposure and Ballarat can kind of be revived again”.

Festivals like Blaze, with its Australian only line-up, accentuate the fact that Aussie metal is on par with the rest of the world, a fact confirmed by Strong.

“Australian heavy music is alive and healthy”, he affirmed.

“Just look at the amount of local talent that’s stepping out. When you get overseas you realize how much the world is aware of Australian heavy metal. It’s easy to feel disconnected being way down the asshole of the Earth and feel like you are a very, small place on a very big heavy metal map, but the world is aware. Australian metal is quite respected for the extremities of our rock and roll and our heavy metal”.

Desecrator are an old school thrash metal band, playing with a ferocity and intensity that belies their relative infancy as a band.

“We sound like an era that I was only born in”, laughed Strong, “not out drinking in! We’ve always been an old school thrash metal band, that’s where our sound resonates from and as time goes on and as the writing of the band matures... we’re coming up to a decade of existence now.

There’s not much focus on cattle-gating ourselves in that style but at the end of the day we write what we write and what comes out is what comes out and for us the clean vocal, organic, old, heavier thrash metal, that’s what resides within us. That’s what we all love; that’s what we grew up on. We’re such a live band that that’s what translates live It’s such an interactive and movement based style of music that thrash metal suits us well. There’s such a timeless amount of stuff you can do within the genre so we don’t feel in any way trapped by our old-school thrash metal vibe: we kind of feel encouraged by it”.

Written by Kris Peters

“We’ve been around a long time and some people think

we have done well just to keep it going but it feels like we’re just getting started. It feels like a new beginning for us.”

“It was pretty scary”, recalled Frankenbok’s guitarist and sole surviving member Azza Bok, speaking about the dog attack and inspiration for the artwork on their last album Vicious, Lawless. “When it first happened I thought I would never play guitar again. I could see bones and bits and pieces in my arm and I thought they would never work the same. I had tooth indentations in my bones and I think a few more seconds with the beast and he would have had me”!

Despite that album coming out less than eighteen months ago, Azza says the band already has their eyes set on the follow-up. With a couple of changes in personnel for that release, he feels that with another year and a half under their belt, the best is yet to come.

“That feels like a really long time ago”, he offered. “It feels like an old record because we’ve already got our sights focused on the next one and there is just so much energy.

That album took us years. We had so many hurdles that it was actually painful to get finished. We are all focussed on not what we did, but what we’re doing. I’m excited about writing the next one with the guys that are in the band now.

The new energy, the way the guys play with such gusto...

I’m very excited”.

In the meantime Frankenbok are busy planning their first tour to Japan, kicking off November 13 in Tachikawa.

“That’s gonna be great”, Azza enthused. “We’ve always planned to get overseas and do things but nothing really happened so we’re more than ready to go for it. Yes, we’ve been around a long time and some people think we have done well just to keep it going but it feels like we’re just getting started. It feels like a new beginning for us. There’s been a lot of line up changes over the years but I think we’ve settled into what we’re doing and personally, I think we’re as tight as we’ve ever been”.

Frankenbok’s next show on home soil is Blaze Festival in Ballarat on Australia Day, featuring a stellar line up of Australian acts including Dreadnaught, Dead City Ruins, Desecrator, Hadal Maw, Never, and more.

“Blaze has a massive feel about it”, Azza buzzed. “It’s really shaping up to be something big. It’s got great bands with a great venue and it’s gonna be off the chain. Just the vibe it has at the moment... it’s gonna be large and we’re planning to hit that one with all guns blazing”!

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

59

Written by Kris Peters

Written by Katana Louise

“It’s pretty varied”, deliberated Mitch Turner, guitarist and vocalist for Melbourne’s In Deception regarding their sound. “We classify ourselves more as post-hardcore because it’s the simplest one to pick.

We cover a wide range with a bit of nu metal, some rap and we’re starting to get a little more orchestral with our new music but overall we like it heavy. I think it’s important to do your own thing and not try to push or try too hard to be different.

We just write music that we like and play it and hope that other people like it too.

We just have a good time with it and when you’re playing live and you’re having fun all the crowd notices and it brings them to life more”.

Carving your own niche as a new band when so many others have trodden similar paths can be daunting, especially when trying to put your own slant on music that obviously comes through from your influences. Some bands fall into the trap of repeating a proven formula, but Turner believes In Deception have successfully navigated the fine line between imitation and inspiration.

“It’s pretty hard when you first start writing music”, he acknowledged.

“Often you learn songs and then you start writing songs like the ones you’ve learned and that’s just going to

continually develop in your writing skills until you get your own style. We’ve only been on the scene for a year and a half but we’ve been together as a band for about four years now. It’s taken years and years to develop”.

With the release of debut E.P Lore in May, In Deception not only took their first official steps in the music industry but also gave themselves the opportunity to purge their initial demons by releasing them through music.

“It’s sort of just a story of us as we developed”, he offered. “It’s got the first song that we ever wrote as a band, ‘Airborne’, on there.

Our drummer Jordan Ley wrote that almost ten years ago now. We start off with that song all the way to ‘Icarus’ which is the newest song on the record. You can hear the songs from the start to the end and how they progress and change and how our style has varied”.

Rather than rest on their laurels, In Deception is already planning the followup.

“We’re recording a single at the moment”, Turner revealed, “which we’re hoping to have out early 2019 and then hit the studio hard from February and get another five or seven songs released”.

Learn more about In Deception and follow on facebook.com/InDeception

60 HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

“I don’t know how to explain it exactly”, laughed Audio Reign’s vocalist Jake Fleming when pressed on the musical direction of their upcoming self-titled album, “but we are a heavy band. At the same time, we like melodics but we like to stay true to ourselves. With this album we tried to get everyone’s background and taste all combined as one.

There’s a lot of different genres out there and if you asked which one it was I probably couldn’t tell you [laughs]”.

As a band one of the most important undertakings is getting your name out there and known, providing Audio Reign the perfect opportunity to self-title their debut.

“In this day and age there’s a lot of bands out there and we just want to get our name out there and let everyone know who we are so it made sense to go self-titled. Plus with the band making the album the way we wanted it we thought this really is Audio Reign so let’s call it that”.

Although admitting it is important to make a firm statement with your first release, Fleming also insists that every album should hold equal importance.

“Whenever you put out an album you wanna make a statement”, he affirmed.

“We did try to make sure the album was all killer, no filler, and we hope we achieved that [laughs]. It wasn’t hard work to sort it out. We just

made sure what we did, we did right”.

There is no point in getting your name out there if you can’t back it up in the live arena, and this is a vital cog of the machine on which Audio Reign have staked their reputation.

“At rehearsal, we say treat it like you’re playing in front of 10,000 people”, he offered. “When people come to a show it’s not just the music they wanna hear; they want a performance, so when you’re playing you’ve gotta give it everything. It’s the old story. Play to one person like you’re playing to Wembley and that’s how we treat it”.

When Audio Reign first started in 2011 Fleming says the goal wasn’t to conquer the music world or seek fame and fortune, but rather a more simplistic, achievable goal that has seen them steadily build a solid reputation.

“We just wanted to create a new sound for Aussie rock and be the new driving sound”, he shrugged.

“Over time we’ve had some ups and downs and there’s been some problems but the whole thing with bands is longevity and sorting things out. We continue on and at the end of the day, the vision is still the same. We wanna create fantastic music and hopefully bring back the live scene and create a new Australian rock sound”.

Learn more about Audio Reign and follow on facebook.com/AudioReignBand

Written by Scarlett Ahora

“The album is a very mixed bag from the get go”, explained Carbon Black bass player Rob Giles in reference to the Sydney bands recently released album End of This. “It’s got a lot of different stuff on it.

“Unseen” is probably one of the groovier songs but we’ve got some thrashier stuff and we’ve got acoustic stuff. It’s a mixed bag but it all works well. It just sounds like us.”

“Unseen”, the latest song released from the album, was actually lucky to have even made the final album cut.

“That’s a bit of a dark horse for us”, Giles laughed, “because we went into the studio with all of the songs ready to record, but then - our drummer Steve [Giles] really blitzed it. He smashed all the drum tracks and we had time to spare so we all looked at each other and thought what do we do because it’s all still set up so we pulled a demo off the shelf and that was it [laughs]. It was only a partially finished song

Written by Scarlett Ahora

and we just shot from the hip in the studio and it turned out to be one of the best songs in my opinion. We didn’t overthink it, we just did it by feel in the studio and it turned out great”!

After releasing Principium in 2014 Carbon Black went through a few drummer changes before settling on sibling and current tub-thumper Steve, rounding out the band and sound as well as helping to create a superior second offering.

“The difference between this album and the last is we wanted a really live sound this time”, Giles insisted. “We wanted to capture that live energy and that’s something we spoke at length about with Lachie Mitchell, our producer.

I think we succeeded.

It’s got a really good live sound. I wanted it to feel like there were humans there playing their instruments - not be too clean and overproduced”.

Learn more about Carbon Black and follow on facebook.com/carbonblackband

“It started as a studio project”, recalled Matt Turner, guitarist for Melbourne’s To An End. “Myself and Alastair, who is the singer, decided to do some songs in the studio and we got eleven done and recorded them. Then it was a case of finding some band members because we realised the songs were actually quite good [laughs]”.

Testing the waters before the release of debut album Redefine later this year, To An End released “Wasteland” a killer song with ferocious hooks that is the perfect introduction to their heavy laden sound.

“I wrote that song a couple of years ago and it has been sitting on the computer waiting to be finished”, Turner explained. “That was a song built for a live audience. The whole time I was writing it I was thinking how is this going to translate live so that’s why it’s catchy and bouncy with the big breakdown at the end. We just wanted it to be big. We wanted it to be that big, live song. We actually close our shows with it and so far it has been the highlight of our set so we thought okay, we have our first single [laughs]”.

Redefine, while musically drawing parallels with

“Wasteland”, expands on the musical content with a collection of songs that Turner believes will appeal to fans from all areas of the heavy spectrum.

“Redefine is eleven songs long with a few twists and turns”, he promised.

“Wasteland” would have to be one of our heaviest songs.

We do go slightly heavier in maybe one or two more in terms of pace and some heavy grooves but then the album also has a diverse range of - I’d almost say hard rock to metal - but there’s big choruses and lots of catchy things to bang your head to”.

All of the songs on Redefine have been road tested by the band, with the emphasis placed on fleshing out the existing material with the characteristics of the band members recruited after the studio sessions.

“In the studio it was quite regimented”, Turner reflected. “The way we did it as a project was quite different to how we play the songs as a band. They do have a slightly different feel to them now and there’s a bit more nuance and a bit more personality from each of the different players”.

Learn more about To An End and follow on facebook.com/toanend

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

61

“The song is inspired by the combination of a couple of things”, explained bass player/vocalist Craig Johnson for Melbourne’s Nothing about their latest single “Self Repair Manifesto” from their latest EP, Nothing.

“It’s about a situation that I found a couple of my friends in and the idea of being in purgatory and basically battling for your survival and just choosing that your life is worth fighting for and saving. I think that in these times it’s easy to get beaten down by depression and so many exterior forces and sometimes you just need to summon up the courage to fight”.

The title of the song, while seemingly ambiguous, ties into the overall notion of healing from within, with Johnson affirming that there is a message in both the title and the lyrics.

“It’s the concept of repairing yourself”, he measured, “and the process that you have to go through sometimes when you find yourself at rock bottom and maybe thinking how the hell did I get here again? Just thinking about the steps that you need to go through to put yourself back together and to reach the goals that you want in life”.

“Self Repair Manifesto” is the lead single off

62

HEAVY Magazine / App / Podcasts / www.heavymag.com.au

Nothing’s forthcoming album, with each song being referred to more as a chapter in the overall story rather than a stand-alone release.

“It’s very much conceptual”, Johnson nodded.

“We’re toying with the idea of whether we release it as an entire album or whether we release a collection of singles. I think in this day and age it’s harder and harder to release an album. With the way music is received now it’s almost much more viable to just release singles. It’s more cost effective and you can really make every song something special. We’re looking at getting back in the studio early next year and releasing the next chapter”.

Learn more about Nothing and follow on facebook.com/Nothingmetalmelb

Written by Katana Louise