NO HEROES – ISSUE FIFTEEN

ISSUE FIFTEEN – MAY 2012

THE OCEAN – CEREMONY HOODLUM SHOUTS KEVIN LYMAN: NO ROOM FOR ROCKSTARS BODYJAR – CANCER BATS BASEMENT – HOT WATER MUSIC YOUR DEMISE

issue fifteen

CRISIS Q&A ... p.6 Bands You’ve Never Heard Of ... p.8 Quickfire: Night Hag ... p.11 Hot Water Music ... p.12 Cancer Bats ... p.14 Almost No Room For Rockstars: Kevin Lyman ... p.16 Ceremony ... p.20

The Ocean ... p.24 Hoodlum Shouts ... p.30 Bodyjar ... p.34 Basement ... p.36 Your Demise ... p.38 Quickfire: Safe Hands ... p.41 New Music ... p.42

www.noheroesmag.com Editor-In-Chief: Sarah Petchell Music Editor: Oliver Cation All layouts by Cooper Brownlee and Sarah Petchell Words: Sarah Petchell, Oliver Cation, Lochlan Watt, Raj Wakeling, Jem Siow, Jessie Stringer Photos: Simon Atkinson, Ben Clement Cover Illustration by CRISIS This Page: letlive at Sydney Soundwave 2012

by Simon Atkinson

CRISIS! WORDS: SARAH PETCHELL

This issue we’ve done something a little bit different for the cover by getting our friend CRISIS to do the sick illustration gracing page one. CRISIS answered a few questions so you all can know who he is.

Name and Location CRISIS, Sydney.

Preferred mediums to work with.

Black markers. Black paint. Beer.

Describe your style.

Right now, black and white.

How did you first get into illustration/graphic design?

I’ve always drawn. I was given a TMNT tracing book as a kid, then I found Marvel and started drawing Venom and Spiderman. I was always getting shit for drawing rather than taking notes in classes. But I left all that behind and focused on graphics as a job for years, and still do.

I went to Secret Wars in Sydney a ways back: Heesco Vs Vars.

Heesco did this Mongolian barbarian thing that had a passing resemblance to Venom. It might have been the litres of Coopers but it got me really nostalgic for drawing and I realised I should probably pick the pens up again!

You also dabble in some street art as well. What is the appeal of paste ups for you?

I used to love the scale. But now I’m painting more and bigger walls it holds less appeal. I still do them every now and then, but the last really big one was in the Paste Modernism install at the Outpost Project on Cockatoo Island. I kind of got over the hassle of darting around in the dark for a while there.

That said, I’ve got some street level gear in the works with XCopy (xcopy.tumblr.com) so I’m looking forward to getting back out there.

Are there any particular artists you admire or look to for inspiration?

Jim Lee is probably the biggest.

His Marvel work in the 80’s and 90’s is the reason I started in the first place. He is followed closely

by Bill Watterson. His work on Calvin & Hobbes is so effortlessly perfect every single damn time.

These days I’m loving Broken Fingaz crew from Israel and John Baizley from Baroness. That guy is untouchable!

Favourite jams while you’re working?

Lately Meshuggah’s Koloss is ruling. But it all depends on the work I’m doing. For the No Heroes cover I’m to and fro between All Pigs Must Die and Gyroscope.

But the piece before that I was all over the Above & Beyond BBC essential mix and Hail Mary Mallon. Before that I just had the GTA Vice City radio stations on loop.

Painting live it’s all up to the DJ or band on the night, which can mean taking an iPod with some noise canceling headphones and a shitload of Behemoth.

Best method for overcoming idea blocks.

Don’t even sit down and start unless you’ve already got an idea. And this goes for anything creative. If there’s nothing there forcing it won’t help. You’ll probably just hate what you come up with anyway. Go to the pub or something instead you’ll have more fun.

Where can we find out more about what you do?

Hit me up on www.facebook.com/ moderndaycrisis or moderndaycrisis.tumblr.com depending on your flavour of social media.

I put stupid shit on my crisis_syd instagram every now and then too. Keep an eye out!

Editors LETTER PHOTO: BEN CLEMENT

I’ve you’ve been following us for a while, then you would know that as far as this magazine is concerned, we here at No Heroes do what we like. We put in bands and features that we’re interested in and like to show off the talents of our friends and the people associated with these pages.

And that is basically the story of this cover! I had the opportunity to see CRISIS do some live art at a club a few months back, and have been obsessed with the idea of doing a collab with him ever since. After throwing a few ideas back and forth, this grizzly demon from the depths of an amp is what we came up with and I’m really stoked on how it came out.

But that’s not the only thing I’m stoked on with this issue. I got to talk to one of the holy trinity of post-metal bands, The Ocean, on the eve of their Australian tour.

We spoke to Hoodlum Shouts about their brilliant new album Young Man, Old Man and how being from Canberra has shaped

their sound. Oliver got to talk to one of his idols – Kevin Lyman, the band behind Vans Warped Tour, Taste Of Chaos and Mayhem Fest – about the new documentary No Room For Rockstars, while Lochlan Watt spoke to Ceremony right before they head out here for their appearance at Hardcore 2012.

From there we have a whole bunch of interviews with some of the best in national and international music: Hot Water Music, Cancer Bats, Bodyjar, Basement and Your Demise, as well as Quickfires with Adelaide’s Night Hag and Newcastle’s Safe Hands.

So check it out and catch us all in Issue 16, a Hardcore 2012 special. As per usual hit us up with any questions or comments.

Til next time...

Sarah xx

The views and opinions expressed in No Heroes are not particularly those held by the publishers.

All content is copyright to No Heroes 2012.

For information regarding content, advertising or general comments, email: info@noheroesmag.com

Bands Youve never heard of BLACK COFFEE Website: None Label: Gut Feeling Not too much is known about the Canberra hardcore band known as Black Coffee. Most of the reason for that is because they played their first show on the 22 January. Another is because the band don’t get to play shows that often. So to counter what I don’t know, here’s what I do know. First off, they’re Canberra based. Second, it contains members of Faux Hawks, Repo Man, Hardluck, Life & Limb and I Exist. We also know what they sound like thanks to the demo that is available for free download through the Gut Feeling website. It’s hardcore that is fast, furious and extremely volatile – they have been known to do an Urban Waste cover.

CODE ORANGE KIDS Website: http://codeorangekids.tumblr.com/ Label: Deathwish Inc Code Orange Kids are easily one of the fastest growing bands in the US right now. Their fanbase seems to be expanding exponentially as they go from touring with bands like Xerses and Full Of Hell (a band who COK share a split release) to touring Europe with Defeater and the US with Touche Amore. Straight out of Pittsburgh, their music is a blend of 90’s scream and more chaotic hardcore that wouldn’t be out of place at either a La Dispute or Converge show. Code Orange Kids are a band to watch because they are the antithesis of what is commercially viable and yet still uncomfortably accessible and easy to embrace. You aren’t told to like them, you like them because they are likable.

HUMANS Website: http://www.myspace.com/humanshc Label: Unsigned Adelaide is famous for churches and Jungle Fever and humans. That’s humans with a lower case h. Maybe soon enough it will be famous in the hardcore scene for upper case H Humans as well. Formed in 2010, Humans have been quick to drop a demo and now an eight track S/T EP which should prick up ears across the country. Obvious reference points would be Modern Life Is War and Hopeless, but rather than mimicking such bands, Humans also develop their own style of melody and grit. Having ventured outside Adelaide only a few times, the band remains largely unknown to the northern states, something that their impassioned live shows and DIY ethic should see change in 2012.

INTO IT.OVER IT. Website: : http://intoitoverit.com Label: No Sleep Records Into It. Over It. saw its beginnings as a project by Evan Weiss to write, record and release a song every week for a year. Named 52 Weeks, the project was six months after its completion is was released in it’s entirety on No Sleep Records. Following this, Weiss wrote twelve songs about experiences he’d had in twelve different towns released and a split of five songs about five different Chicago neighbourhoods. However Proper, the first “official” release is probably the best place for new listeners to start. IIOT is the love child of pop punk and indie, so if you like the odd Death Cab or Balance and Composure song but also enjoy a dash of The Wonder Years this is quite likely to become your new favourite band.

TIRED MINDS Website: http://www.facebook.com/TiredMinds Label: Unsigned Once called “Newcastle’s best kept secret” by The Hollow’s Jesse Haddow, Tired Minds are just one of a growing number of passionate and energetic bands coming out of Newcastle. Comprised of current and former members of Inhale The Sea, Reflections and Postal, they are a “noisy post-hardcore” band. In a generation of people who love to complain about their scene, Tired Minds are actually doing something about it, organising local house shows and touring interstate just for the chance to play in front of new audiences.

‘Dreadful’ is up now on the bands facebook and bandcamp and there is talk of an EP set to be released very soon. Keep your eye on these hardworking locals.

WRECK & REFERENCE Website: http://wreckandreference.bandcamp.com Label: Flenser/Music Ruins Lives When I first heard Wreck & Reference I didn’t know what in damn hell to think! This is music that falls into no category (except “heavy”) and yet draws from all. While classifying themselves as experimental noise, such a description feels like an over simplification of a complex sound that draws from shoe-gaze, black metal, noise and hardcore across a record that is simultaneously difficult to listen to, but can’t help but draw you in. There is melody crossed with dissonance, creativity in arrangement and draws from enough influences that makes listening an exercise in unpredictability. Check out their album No Youth for the most recent work by the band (streaming in full on their Bandcamp).

NIGHT HAG INTERVIEW WITH JOEY HAG BY SARAH PETCHELL

First up, how did Night Hag get together in the first place?

We were already pretty close friends I think. Dave and Nathan were strangers to each other at the beginning but other than that we had played in bands together, worked jobs together, or hung out for a while. We took it real slow at the start – we didn’t jump headfirst into gigs. We initially got together and brainstormed what we wanted to do at Dale’s house over a case of dark ale.

If you listen to the demo there’s probably one song that resembles Night Hag now. To be honest I think it’s a bit of an inconsistent mess. Still, it helped us find a more distinct sound.

Night Hag’s music is a cool mix of black metal and hardcore, so where do these influences come from?

Probably black metal and hardcore. Sorry, I couldn’t resist being a smart ass… We came to ‘this sound’ by accident I suppose.

Nathan’s contrast of style really makes a lot of our sound; his experience prior to Night Hag was mostly grounded in hardcore punk. I think the way he interprets a lot of the riffs that Dave and I write really makes for a more punk-sounding heaviness.

Dale definitely is a punk-oriented front-man. I think he still hates black metal deep down inside.

This amuses me.

You always seem to run on strict timeframes because of touring commitments and the like. How does this impact the writing and recording process?

We practice a lot whenever we can. I don’t think it’s ever really felt like a stressful chore though.

Dave is still at least an hour late to every practice and we all enjoy drinking on the job.

A lot of the time we just work hard together. Dale is really good at pushing us without being a Nazi fuck. Ultimately it’s fun doing whatever we do and the almostridiculous deadlines are a sickpleasure most of the time.

Night Hag have toured SE Asia.

Were the shows there much different to shows back home?

The contrast is enough to fill a book. But yes, it’s very different.

The most obvious difference is that in some places the venues, promoters and bands face constant adversity. Whether it was police trying to extort money from gigs or the sheer poverty in some of the places we played, people deal with so much shit with a smile on their face. It is truly a humbling place to play and an experience you will never forget.

A really pertinent contrast of touring Java Indonesia was the concept of ‘rubber time’ (jam karet). There is an element of organised confusion that surrounds the shows. You leave for a venue thinking you’ll be three hours late,

once you arrive you find out the show has only just started, twice as many bands are playing and the night has to wrap up at a set time. Things would always just work out though. It is a beautiful thing once you learn to trust in it.

With four releases under you belts in a relatively short amount of time, how do you keep the motivation levels that high?

The motivation probably pours into the fact that we all owe Dale money. Until he’s been bled completely dry I’m sure we’ve got a few more releases in us. Truth be told we are taking it a bit easy now. Nathan has moved to Sydney so we’re long-distance writing for the time being. We’re still playing shows, only not as many.

I suppose we’ve just tried to do as much as possible from the start with this band because it’s what we all wanted from the start.

Without sounding superficial the work ethic is a very important part of this band.

So what’s next for Night Hag? What does the rest of 2012 hold?

Most of us play in other bands outside of Night Hag, so I think we’ll be spending the next few months throwing some attention back at them. We will keep writing and playing whenever we can. There will be a few interstate shows scattered around the place but I suppose all will be revealed…

HOT WATER MUSIC WORDS: SARAH PETCHELL

IT HAS BEEN EIGHT LONG,

LONG YEARS SINCE WE LAST HEARD NEW MATERIAL FROM HOT WATER MUSIC. THE SUM OF THEIR PARTS HAVE BEEN PRODUCTIVE WITH THE DRAFT AND CHUCK RAGAN’S SOLO MATERIAL, BUT AS FOR HWM ITSELF THE RELEASE OF EXISTER MARKS EIGHT YEARS BETWEEN RECORDS. SO WHAT DOES THE RELEASE OF EXISTER MEAN FOR HOT WATER MUSIC? CHUCK RAGAN TOLD NO HEROES THAT IT MEANS A NEWLY REINVIGORATED

BAND THAT ARE READY TO SHOW THE WORLD THAT THEY’RE OLDER AND WISER, BUT STILL THE SAME OLD PUNKS FROM GAINSVILLE, FLORIDA. AND I THINK THAT’S WHAT FANS, NEW AND OLD, WANT TO HEAR THE MOST. “Everything’s well,” answers Ragan to the simple question of how he’s doing. “I’m right in between two tours and I’ve got a very short period of time at home here.

“I’m a bit overloaded and a bit overwhelmed because there’s a lot to do around the house, but at the same time I’m trying to relax and enjoy my wife and my dog

and homelife. That time is few and far between nowadays.”

Obviously it has been about eight years between albums, so what made now the right time to get stuck back into it?

“Honestly, it’s just timing. It actually took us to kind of forcing it to happen because we’ve all been completely busy. Since we took the hiatus back in whatever it was, everybody started doing their own thing. The guys started doing The Draft and I pretty much made my music and The Revival Tour my main focus.

“So everything kind of switched.

When I was in Hot Water back in the earlier years, Hot Water was kind of the driving force and the

main thing that took up all of our time, so my music I did on the side and it became backburner.

When we took the hiatus, and I moved to California, those roles switched.

“When we started playing shows again back in 2008, we knew that eventually we would do another record, we just weren’t sure when because it was going to be a matter of timing. Then as we played more and more shows, we finally just decided that if we’re going to play some more shows then we’ve got to give the folks some more songs.

“The last thing we would want to do is be one of those reunion bands that are just clocking in for a pay cheque and not doing anything else. They’re just living off of their stuff.

“It was just a matter of us taking a step back, re-evaluating everything and putting a finger on the calendar. Then we found a record label and we booked time in the studio, so then we had to do it.”

You mentioned just then about forcing yourselves to write.

Does forcing it change the dynamics of the creative side of creating music?

“Not at all. Don’t get me wrong, we all wanted to do it. When I say that we forced ourselves, I just meant that we had to just pull the calendar out, otherwise we would have just kept saying that we’ll get around to it because that’s what we had already been doing for a few years. But by setting a deadline for ourselves, it was more a matter of setting a goal, and that was the way that we felt.

We just needed a catalyst and a start date, so by no means did it take out any of the creative element to it.

“I mean, all four of us write pretty consistently. Then when we came together and pulled songs together it just kind of snowballed from there. We had plenty of material.

In fact, that was the most challenging part of the whole operation because we had way more material than we needed. We just had to pull it all together and figure out what we wanted to tackle first.”

While you guys were on hiatus, was there always the intention

of getting back together?

“We had always talked about doing another record, but there was just no telling until we got into the studio. All four of us, except for sound check at shows, we didn’t do any rehearsal with all of us in the same room until we went to Colorado. That was crazy because we had never written a record like that. George, Jason and I got together, and then Chris, George and Jason got together out east, but we couldn’t get all together.

“We just tried to communicate as much as possible, sending songs back and forth and rehearsing in whatever kind of mixtures of the four of us that we could. Once we came together in the studio, I felt like the floodgates opened and we just started pouring a tonne of stuff out.”

In that time off from Hot Water Music, and in your writing in that time, did you ever write tracks and then earmark them as a future HWM track rather than a Chuck Ragan song?

“Absolutely, yeah. For quite a while. There’s a lot of stuff that kind of bridges the gap between the two as well. Nowadays it has become so easy to record as well.

I have a small, mobile studio that I bring on the road. I record on my laptop, on my phone and every which way. In the old days, I would have to pull out the 4-track and the mic stand and the cables and this and that. It was a pain, and a lot of the time I would lose ideas if I didn’t have a small handheld tape recorder near by.

“Over the course of the hiatus, the writing for Hot Water Music never ceased, but I definitely did put more focus on my own music. Then every once in a while, something would come along where I would think yeah, that would make a good Hot Water Music song someday, and just set in aside in a different folder.”

How did you finally get all the logistics to come together to write the album, especially now that you guys are spread all over the country?

“A lot of it had to do with making the plan and sticking with it but even that was tough because we’re still all working on other stuff. So while trying to solidify schedules they still all changed.

“But once we got Rise Records involved, that was a massive help, and we have a secret weapon in our band that most bands don’t have, which is Jason Black.

“That guy does a massive amount of work for Hot Water Music and he always has. He’s the one that would get a fire under the record labels’ and when The Blasting Room, Bill Stevenson and that whole gang [production team] came into play, he was the one honing the timeframe and figuring it out. But mostly it all just came down to teamwork.”

I read an interview where Jason said that it felt like you guys had a clean slate with Exister.

Do you feel the same way?

“Yeah! In a lot of ways, we’ve gone into writing before where we’ve had songs that didn’t make the record on the last session, so we’ve tried to rework it and most of the time you end up beating it into the dirt. This was different. When we came together, as I said, we had so much material that we just had to determine what we wanted to work on first.

“So we sat down collectively, listening to a tonne of stuff that none of us (as in all four of us) had ever heard before. We all had piles of songs, so it was a matter of sitting down, listening to the songs together and figuring out yeah that, that’s got potential or definitely not that at all. A lot of the songs, even if they were brought to the group in a somewhat finished manner, they just took on a life of their own once all four of us ripped it apart and put it back together.

“And it really did feel like the very beginning. Not only with the music, but doing something different by moving from Epitaph to Rise, which was a complete new experience.

“Then there was a complete new experience in moving away from Brian McTiernan. Even though he has always been fantastic with us, we wanted to take a stretch ourselves and simplify things and find out where we were at as a band, rather than do something completely familiar.”

Exister is out now through Rise Records/SHOCK.

CANCER BATS WORDS: SARAH PETCHELL

IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO SPEAK WITH CANCER BATS’ LIAM CORMIER. FOR ONE, THE INTERVIEW IS A GUARANTEED CRACK UP. BUT IT IS HIS ENTHUSIASM FOR WHAT HE DOES, AND PROBABLY LIFE IN GENERAL, THAT ALWAYS MAKES FOR AN ENTERTAINING INTERVIEW. IT’S AN ENTHUSIASM THAT IS POSITIVELY CONTAGIOUS, SO CATCHING HIM FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF HIS BAND’S FOURTH ALBUM, DEAD SET ON LIVING, PUT THE ENTHUSIASM LEVELS AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH.

When I finally get Liam on the phone he’s out of breath as he is walking back from their record label, having just recorded a video to “pump up our tour with Touche Amore”. But prior to that, he had been at band practice, where the band were re-learning the songs they had only just finished recording for Dead Set On Living.

So you basically haven’t played those songs since you recorded them, right?

“Yeah, with some of them the last time that we would have jammed them would have been when we were in the studio and Mike was doing his drums. And that was last year! I’m actually really surprised at how much we remembered. I think it’s a testament to how much we jammed those songs before we went in to record them. Because we still have that muscle memory and we can still bang them out. I was like, ‘YEAH! WE GOT IT!” Was jamming out the songs so much before your recorded a different way of writing and recording to what you had previously done?

“That’s the biggest trick to any recording: having everything finished before you start spending money. That’s the biggest mistake that we’ve made before. I guess it’s not really a mistake, but sometimes you just don’t have the luxury of time.

“But with this record, everything kind of worked out really quick.

We were able to record and demo everything in our practice space and have them finished a month or a month and a half before we started recording. From there we were just jamming the songs over and over and over again.”

Obviously then it makes the recording process a lot easier as well.

“Our biggest thing is how much songs change when you actually take them out on tour. Lots of times, the first few times you’ve actually played it is when you’re in the studio. Then you tour it for two or three years and the songs finds their own groove. This time we wanted to establish that groove before we went into the studio, so we need to fake tour all these songs.”

Right, so last time we spoke was when you were out here playing with Bring Me The Horizon and Bullet For My Valentine. Really broadly speaking, what’s been happening between then and now?

“That was the end of 2010 that we did that tour and then we went to Europe and toured like fucking crazy. We were on tour with The Dillinger Escape Plan, which is so intense because Dillinger never lets up. If you’ve seen them before, they play like that every single night and it’s never the same.

And being on tour with them is like HOLY FUCK! Because you know that you have to try and not get blown away by that which means working our arses off a million times more.

“But that experience made us a way more intense band. Not like we were trying to show them up at their own game – I wasn’t trying to dance on a chandelier – but we just needed to be completely on it otherwise we would have looked like fools. So that was 40 days of really intense shows that made us a tighter and better band. Before that, I would have thought that having toured for years already we had it down, then touring with a band like that it’s like ‘No, we need to get tighter!’.“

So the new record Dead Set On Living is out and listening back on your discography you’ve gone from being more of a hardcore band to now something sludgier and more rock and roll. To you, how is this album different to what you’ve done previously?

“The biggest thing for us was to look back over what we’ve accomplished as a band and where we’ve come from, but also recognising that we all really love the band that we’re in and the music we make, and not trying to get too far from that. We’ve all progressed as musicians and we’ve got different ideas, but at the same time I never want to move past those kids love Birthing The Giant or love Hail Destroyer or love Bears… for the sake of trying to move on.

“At the point of your fourth record, that’s almost what you’re expected to do, whereas we wanted

to write a record for Cancer Bats fans rather than thinking of what fans we should spread out to get.

The potential of falling flat on our faces in trying to figure out what the next big step would be was high and I’m not sure if we’re a next big step kind of band. I love where we’re at! I love the fans that we have and the shows that we play, so why not just make the best Cancer Bats record that we can, by doing what we do.”

But at the same time, Cancer Bats seem to be doing quite well for themselves by just being Cancer Bats.

“And that’s my thing as well.

We look at a band like Clutch or Converge, and they put out new records that are always awesome and different, but they’re still Converge or Clutch. So why can’t we just do that? Why can’t that just be our thing?”

Is there anything you particu-

larly love about the album?

“I know that it’s super cliché, but I definitely feel like this is our most cohesive and accomplished album. If someone asked what was my favourite song, I could kind of take any of them. Really, this whole album from start to finish is my favourite. Not that I hate any of the songs on any of the other records, but with this the tracklisting matters in terms of a storyline, but you could put it in any order and it would rip!”

Were there any other unexpected influences on Dead Set On Living?

“I don’t know. We all listen to tonnes of different stuff, whether Fleet Foxes or I also love a lot of garage stuff like Black Lips.

We have such a good indie rock scene in Toronto, whether it’s Lights or Broken Social Scene or The Constantines. We’ll go and see those shows because they’re just going on and I find that

there’s so much rad about that, that I can think of applying to my own band.

“But also love in folk music how dark and heavy things can be, but they’re not using amps. It’s more about the arrangements and the atmosphere. For us, looking at those ideas and thinking about how we can use them with amplifiers, then things will be so much heavier. I also love the way that vocalists will do melodies and arrangements that are so outside of the normal rock or metal context, like the phrasing of the singer of Fleet Foxes.”

So are you any closer of realising your dream of touring Australia by van?

“We’ve definitely got the wheels in motion to play more than just the big five. Our dream is to do 40 days in Australia, because Winston from Parkway told me it can be done!”

KEVIN LYMAN ALMOST NO ROOM FOR ROCKSTARS WORDS: OLIVER CATION

Warped Tour is a strange beast, an ever evolving festival that snakes its way across the US highways and byways each summer. 50 days of exhilaration and agony, that chews up and spits out as many bands as it does audience members. Warped is a festival that can make or break a band and has been the topic of many documentaries. The most recent is No Room For Rockstars (produced by Stacey Peralta) and focuses on the journeys of discovery that a collection of artists go on.

Kevin Lyman is the ringleader of this circus of misfits and outcasts and to commemorate a new festival year and a new documentary we caught up with him while he was in transit between LA and Alaska to judge a band competition, the winner getting a spot on a Warped line up in a warmer part of the USA. I’m very quick to pick up on two things about Kevin Lyman. Firstly he is very approachable, warm and friendly . It feels like he genuinely cares as much about you as you about him, and maybe that’s the secret to his success.

Maybe it’s because of the second thing I notice: Lyman is never not working. As well as running a band competition in the farthest north state of America, today also saw the launch of the Mayhem Festival Cruise event, which in December which will see Lamb Of God, Machine Head, Anthrax, Hatebreed and another dozen acts invade a cruise ship for four days.

Aside from his established role as head of Warped Tour and his new baby Mayhem Festival, Lyman also holds down a job at SideOneDummy Records (he recently signed UK Flogging Mollyesque band Skinny Lister to the label) and organises camping at Coachella.

While Lyman obviously has his hands full with multiple projects which run simultaneously, he admits he does get some time to himself, “I always try to get out and spend a day on the river and come back Sunday morning after three or four hours fishing. You take your holidays very quickly, and just try to make the best of your days off just like the best of your days at work.”

He says it is this balance and ensuring that he maximises his time that has allowed him to keep going for so long. He also says that the music keeps him going. “You have to look past the hard days and just think that there are a lot of people in the world that would love to be doing what I do and in my world.”

Warped tour has had its ups and its down, from loosing money in its first year out to cancelling shows because of hurricanes and infighting between artists, but through it all Lyman has kept it together thanks to his strong DIY ethic, not taking any bullshit from bands and maintaining a strong working crew. From his 20 years working on the LA club scene, he was able to establish strong contacts within the industry at every level as well as a deep understanding of artists, audiences and what it took to keep everyone happy.

No Room For Rockstars demonstrates his ability to mediate between management and artists while hurricane force winds, rain and lightning threaten the Houston date of the tour and it is easy to see why he has so many steadfast supporters within the bands he has booked over the years despite others’ criticism of the tours changing musical focus.

The focus of No Room For Rockstars are five artists, each from

a different background and each at very different positions in their careers. It is the story of Forever Came Calling that is a standout for their dedication and willingness to endure hardship to find success on their own merit is heartwarming and truly representational of what Warped is about.

But among these stories of endurance, commitment and struggle, Kevin Lyman sits as the ringleader, a teacher to some and a boss to others. When he started he claims he was a peer to bands like NOFX or Pennywise, going through at roughly the same age and background.

Now he says more acts are struggling with being on the road for so long, leaving family and security behind, but in the end it’s a party for the 50+ bands that share the road and that while the film has focused upon the isolation and struggles some had, the overall feel of the tour is still the same as it always has been: each band playing without hierarchy and pitching in where they can to make everyone’s experience the best it can possible be.

From the man in charge to every payer that walks through the door, the expectation is still the same, that those people who don’t fit elsewhere in society will find somewhere to be embraced by others like them, watch bands, learn something and be involved.

If there wasn’t so much anarchy it would probably be a cult.

As the festival has evolved there has been much criticism of the its increasing reliance on commercial sponsors, Kevin is quick to dispute such claims. “I suppose the first time you sell out is when you get somebody to pay for your music or the first time we had Vans sponsor the tour.”

He goes on to suggest that while

some might have a bad taste in their mouth about the advertising, it is a necessary evil to keep the ticket prices so low. Warped tour still presents dozens and dozens of bands on multiple stages every day, shipping them around the country with a full set up and crew for between $30 and $40 a date, a price which is comparable to many of the bands headlining shows.

Warped also balances its commerical necessities by supporting and promoting environementalism with recycling programs and renewable energy sources, as well as charities such as Keep A Breast and Invisible Children and even causes such as PETA. “We entertain people and let them have fun, in return about 10% are open to learn something and get involved in what we are trying to do.” Lyman says bands like 3OH!3 get out and pick up recycling like any one else , adding to both the community aspect of the festival and demonstrating how everyone is of a similar mindset.

No Room For Rockstars threw up one notable figure that could be seen as acting against the values of the tour. Christopher Drew, the man behind Nevershoutnever is highly critical of the festival, its schedule, the fan interaction and in his eyes the commercial focus.

Lyman suggests that many of Chris’s concerns and outbursts on film were reflective of his age and

the heat of the moment. “I don’t think he’s a rockstar, I think he was just tired. He was exhausted, I mean he’s only 20 years old.”

He did say thought that it’s “funny because all the things you see in the movie, while he’s playing those sets,(throughout the film Nevershoutnever is seen doing intimate acoustic sets and fan signings) he’s being paid to do those, he’s not doing that out of the graciousness of his heart.”

In the film Drew says that he would never play Warped again, but Kevin tells me that he received a call from Nevershoutnever’s management this year looking for a slot on the festival, a slot that Lyman would have graciously given had is line up not already been full.

Warped originally broke artists like No Doubt and was made famous with acts like Bad Religion and NOFX, but now the stages are full of everything imaginable and some things you would prefer to not. Such a change is not something that phases Lyman as he vehemently defends his choice of acts year after year, proclaiming the selections as a reflection of the ever evolving tastes of the target audience of the festival, the counterculture kids of the USA. Other genres more traditionally associated with the tour such as punk, ska and rockabilly are still given their position on the bill, but

in the end it is up to the kids what they choose to watch.

“I would love if kids would really embrace going out and watching older bands but it’s their time and their music. I had a band in my office the other day telling me that everyone is saying they should have been around in LA in the 70’s and 80’s and I said ‘Well you know what? You weren’t, you weren’t even born, so this is your time and your moment’.”

In his eyes, America hasn’t broken a pure punk band in years and it’s a reflection of the evolution and tastes of his audience.

While he always tries to pay homage to the bands that made the tour famous, in 2012 its bands like Taking Back Sunday and The Used that are now the veterans of the tour, having made their mark a decade ago and now reaching the last few years of their popularity. “It’s funny to be out there and hear Falling In Reverse say they can’t wait to play on the main stage because Bert from The Used is their hero.”

While Warped remains relevant and cutting edge to current trends, Kevin sees the next evolution as a throwback to more chilled bands like Sublime the original class of punk in the mid 1990’s. The 2012 Warped class features Reverend Payton and Echo Movement, two acts which in Lyman’s eyes could be con-

siderable players in the years to come. As always the real surprises and heart of Warped Tour are in the numerous smaller side stages and makeshift performance areas.

Warped Tour will make its way to the UK for the first time in years this year with a one off show in London featuring the biggest British and US bands bringing in the punters. But because this is an Australian magazine and because everyone needs to know if there is ever a chance of seeing Warped Tour back on Australian shores, I ask the great man about his plans. “I would love to, we had so much fun in Australia.

I don’t know if you heard we slept in camps and reserves, we had such a fun time.”

As I held my breath in anticipating that I might have landed the scoop of the year from the man himself he continued on to tell me that while a festival like Soundwave was dominating the market that there was little need or demand for Warped Tour in Australia.

“I would love to come back if we could figure out a way to play all those small places like Ulladulla, Coffs Harbour and Newcastle like we used to. Maybe there is room for a festival like that, we are talking about it. There is some interest to go back there but at the moment you guys have a pretty

flooded market with most bands are coming down there on their own.”

But don’t kick the chair just yet, squeezing as much as I could from the sponge, Lyman did proffer up that it was more likely that we would see Taste Of Chaos once again grace our shores. In its first run Taste Of Chaos gave us the first Australian tour by bands like The Used, Gallows, return tours by Killswitch Engage and Taking Back Sunday and helped break Parkway Drive and Carpathian in their own country.

Warped Tour will continue this year and the year after and more than likely one year Skrillex and The Bouncing Souls will share the

main stage, but that’s what makes Warped so special and so important in the counterculture movement of the USA (and hopefully the world). It is its willingness to give a stage to those like Forever Came Calling and an audience to Keep A Breast. An outlet for those who love metalcore and an outlet for those who love ska.

Kevin Lyman sits behind a desk working away on a countless number of projects, but he is just one of the guys: he will put up fences, he will man the barbeque and if you need him to I’m sure he would give you a shoulder to cry on. On the Warped Tour there is no room for rockstars and the man at the centre of it makes sure of that everyday.

No Room For Rockstars follows the lives of four very different bands and musicians as they take part in the 2010 Vans Warped Tour. The film shows the tour from each of the four acts’ different situations: one band struggling and giving their all in hopes of being a part of it; another is touring to provide for their families; a lone popstar from a completely different world and an up and coming act having trouble coming to terms with the industry he’s a part of. This is a very different film to any made about the Warped tour to date, previous documentaries have focused on the famed “punk rock summer camp” vibe but No Room For Rockstars is Warped tour in the current day, one that is very different from the first in 1995. Jessie Stringer

CEREMONY WORDS: LOCHLAN WATT

Californian five-piece Ceremony have undergone a gradual transformation since forming in 2005 – some intermittent leaps larger than others. With half-a-dozen albums and EPs paving the progression, their latest full-length Zoo sees them well and truly arrived at an old school punk sound, polarising when directly compared to their powerviolence beginnings. The jovial and excited vocalist Ross Farrar tells us where he and the band are at on the eve of their second trip to Australia.

So Ceremony has released its’ fourth album this year - Zoo. Apart from that, what else has the band accomplished in 2012?

“What have we done? That’s a good question - we haven’t really done much. I’ve been taking a lot of school... I’m coming up on my last couple of semesters here at school. I just turned in a short story for a scholarship, and hopefully I’ll get that. I moved into a new house which is AWESOME...

I’m sitting in it right now. I got a barbeque. It’s good.”

So Ceremony is definitely a part time band.

[Laughs]. “Yeah. The record just came out. So we’re trying to do stuff with that. We’ve got a really cool video that was just release for the song ‘Adult’. One of the guys from Mad Men did the video and it came out amazing - we’re pretty psyched on that.”

Getting back to Zoo. It’s moved on even further than the original sound of Ceremony. After the direction that you guys started to take with Rohnert

Park you’d think it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise to people, but that said it seems you’ve had to deal with a few express shock or surprise at what Ceremony sounds like on this latest album.

“Yeah, definitely. We’ve had good and bad. We’ve had people say it’s their favorite record ever – like they like it better than Minor Threat and Fugazi. We’ve also had hate mail saying that we’re weak, we suck, and that we’re not a hardcore band anymore.

So whatever, I don’t care either way. You either love it or you hate it I guess. Or you just don’t really care. We’ve had all kinds of different things from it.”

In terms of different sorts of opinions, I’ve read quite a few comparisons to describe the sound of the album. I guess to set the record straight - what do you believe are the most prominent influences that have been channeled into Zoo? “That’s a good question, because everyone in the band is really, really different. We’ve all kind of been listening to different stuff.

Jake’s been listening to a lot of more like old style country music, like outlaw country. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Fall, and I don’t know... just stuff like that – kind of weirder stuff. Anthony’s really into Prince, obviously. He’s always listening to pop music and things like that.

“And then you’ve got Andy, who is like the musical dictionary of the world. A new band comes out, he’s heard it. Some weird avantgarde punk music that no-one’s heard about, he’s on it. I also get a lot of music from him – I’ll go to his house and just kind of scour music off his computer and stuff.

There’s like way too many things to even start with.”

Do you guys keep up to date with much modern hardcore?

“Yeah, I’d say so. I’ve been listening to a lot of the Australian stuff that’s coming out – the recent stuff like UV Rays and those kind of bands. We’re playing some shows with Royal Headache here in The States, which is going to be pretty awesome. As far as modern, modern hardcore and The States, I haven’t really been keeping up too hard with it I guess. There are bands... some of the stuff coming out of New

York, there’s some cool stuff. A lot of the bands on Iron Lung records I’ve really been enjoying, like Kim Phuc.”

So tell us the story behind the title Zoo – where did that come from?

“I was just throwing around different titles. We were going to use ‘Community Service’, or ‘Royal Blue’ maybe, which are two songs off the record. I was just doing some writing one day, and I started thinking about Zoo, and then I looked it up to see if any other bands had ever used it, and I didn’t find any, so kind of went with that. Used it as the vehicle for like humans, and our current situation right now – the way we just go about our days.

A comparison between animals and humans, all that stuff was just flowing through my mind at the time.”

So lyrically would you say it has still kept along the general Ceremony lines - the general, honest frustrations of life?

“Yeah, definitely. That’s probably the best way to describe it - just a lot of frustration. At the same time, I took a different approach where I was a little more optimistic with my lyrical writing. For example, a song like ‘Repeating The Circle’, that song’s pretty optimistic. It’s about the moment you’re born, until you go under, but it’s more of an optimistic view on our lives.”

What would you pin that to?

Why do you think it has become more optimistic?

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve been getting older. I don’t have the same anger as I used to. I’ve kind of slowed down a little bit too – I’m more of a homebody now. I don’t live in the city anymore, I don’t go out and get all wild all the time and shit. I guess just normal growing up kind of stuff. You change the way you think as you get older, too. I don’t want people to think I’m always totally pissed off and angry all the time. I feel other stuff and that came out lyrically I think.”

How would you rate the band’s experience with Matador Records so far?

“It has been amazing. Everyone who we’ve come in contact with, hung out with, chatted with, are just really great people. They’re

very agreeable with the way that we want to approach putting out records with them. They let us do what we want. They’re not the vision of some record label being all ‘you have to do this, you’re tied to this contract, you need to sign in blood’. They’re giving us a lot of leeway with everything that we want to do. We still get to book a lot of the shows, and we’re at a point right now where if we do a show we’re like ‘we wanna play with this band, and we wanna play with this band’, and that has been really cool. We’ve played with a lot of amazing bands lately.“ What are some of your favorites?

“When we were in England we played with a band called Sauna Youth, which is really awesome.

It’s a guy-fronted-slash-girl I guess – there’s a guy playing drums and doing vocals, and there’s a girl who does synth stuff on the side and she does vocals as well, which is really cool.

Another band called Egguls - E, G, G, U, L, S - from the UK. When we did our tour there they were really amazing. We’ve been playing some cool shows lately.”

Back to the record label stuff, why did you feel it was time to move on from Bridge 9? Were you satisfied with what they did for Ceremony in the past?

“We weren’t like ‘oh, we have to get away from Bridge 9’. We’re still cool with Bridge 9, they are still our friends and we love them.

It’s just I was in New York, and I was hanging out with a friend of mine Zed, who was hanging out with a friend Robbie, from Matador, and we were kind of all hanging out, and I got to know Robbie, and a couple of months later Robbie approach me with ‘maybe think about putting out a record with Matador’. We were up on our contract with Bridge 9, and we didn’t know what we were going to do, so it was kind of heaven sent I guess you could say.”

Do you feel like Matador is a more suiting home for where the band’s sound is at now anyway?

‘That’s a good question – I haven’t really thought about that.

I think if we put out this record with Bridge 9, and we were doing exactly the same thing as we were doing before, we probably

wouldn’t get as much flak. A lot of the flak has come from putting it out on an “indie” label. People automatically think that we’re going to be different people, or things with us are going to change, but we’re pretty much exactly the same. We just put out songs that are a little bit weirder, and they’re just going to keep getting weirder, so you’re going to have to deal with it.

“You’re put it into a weird position in that hardcore kids, and kids into punk, they know about us, and they’ve been listening to us for however long, so they have to hear this record, even if they don’t anything about Matador, they hate indie rock or whatever... So we put out this record on Matador Records, so people would be like ‘maybe we’ll try it out’, or ‘maybe I should take a look into this’. I think that’s what people are doing right now, and hopefully they’re softening up on it a little bit more.”

Have you noticed any major differences between the way such an established indie-oriented label is run compared to hardcore labels?

“What we’ve noticed so far is that

they’re pretty much exactly the same, except that with Matador we’re playing a little bit bigger shows, and we’re getting more press. We’re doing stuff with Spin now which is a big magazine in the States, and we’ve gotten reviews in Rolling Stone, so the press is a really big thing.

It’s cool, because we want more people to listen to the record - we want more people to enjoy the record. Matador is a perfect vessel for us right now. They’re getting our record out there more than Bridge 9 could have in the past.”

Resist Records is looking after you guys for your upcoming Australian tour - I understand that has been in the works for a while now?

“We’ve been wanting to come back to Australia for a really long time. It was one of my favorite tours I have ever done. We didn’t get to go there on Rohnert Park, which was a shame, because I was getting a lot of emails from people saying ‘yo, you’ve gotta come back, we miss you guys’, and now that I’m coming back to Australia I could not be more excited. I’m really, really happy that we’re coming back.”

Is it true that each support band on the tour has to be approved by you guys?

“Yeah, we have like a list of bands that we want to play with, but it’s not like we have to get those bands. If the promoter comes at us with ‘oh, we got this cool local band who would be good with you guys, they really want to play the show’, then we’re like ‘yeah, totally’. It’s not like we have to have certain bands, because we can’t have certain bands, certain bands can’t play the shows or whatever.

I think Andy put Death In June on there, because he really wants to play with them. I guess he lives in Adelaide, but that’s obviously not going to happen. BUT, in a perfect world, that would happen.”

What can we expect from the setlist? Is it going to focus on the newer material, or will it be more of a career-spanning thing?

“It’s going to be everything. All the shows we’ve played so far have just been a mix of every record.

You’ll get at least one song from each record... it’s mostly two or three from each record mixed in together.”

The Ocean

WORDS: SARAH PETCHELL – PHOTOS: SIMON ATKINSON

IN EVERY GENRE OF MUSIC THERE IS A HOLY TRINITY OF BANDS THAT ARE THE REFERENCE POINTS FOR DEFINING THAT GENRE. IF YOU LOOK AT POST-METAL, THE BIG THREE ARE ISIS, CULT OF LUNA AND THE OFTEN OVERLOOKED BUT EXTREMELY INFLUENTIAL THE OCEAN. The Ocean have made their mark on the genre with their technically proficient, highly melodic and almost prolific output. 2010 saw them release two albums massive albums as a part of a highly conceptual storyline with Heliocentric and Anthropocentric and earlier this year they released an EP based around ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ chapter in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

2012 also saw the band head to Australia for the very first time, and it was in the lead up to their tour that No Heroes spoke with guitarist and primary songwriter Robin Staps about everything that had been going on in the world of The Ocean, and when exactly we can hear some new music again.

That question was answered within the first thirty seconds of the interview when Robin revealed, “I’m getting up pretty late these days because I’m recording guitars until about three or four in the morning. So I usually sleep until about ten or eleven.”

What’s going on in the world of The Ocean at the moment?

“Not too much. We’ve just had about three weeks off since we got back from Russia and now we’re preparing for that sweet Australian tour that’s coming up.

We’re going to start rehearsing at the end of the week. The other guys live in Switzerland and I live in Berlin, so they’re going to head here and we’ll rehearse for a few days. But we’re just taking it slow at the moment. We were just in Russia for about a month of really intense touring.”

What was it like touring Russia? I’ve heard mixed reports that it can either be really awesome or really scary at the same time.

“That’s exactly what it is really. It was an intense tour in all regards.

We played amazing shows in

Moscow and St Petersburg, but it was also surprising because we did decide to not just do the two or three major cities that most bands do. We did a whole month and like 28 shows or something like that. We went all the way east until the Mongolian border pretty much.

much. We toured for about seven months last year and when you play so many shows you don’t really want to rehearse unless you’re writing a new album. In the last two years, we haven’t really written much new material up and until last summer when I started writing for the new record.

“We didn’t really know what to expect from that part of Russia, but it ended up being the best part. People there speak more English and we had really good turn outs at the shows, so that was really awesome. But we also played some sketchy bars, places where the stage was really small, the sound was shit and the food was mainly cabbage for about a month. We look back on it with mixed feelings. It was an experience because we got to see Russia from an insider’s perspective.

“And then the writing process isn’t usually something that happens in the rehearsal room, where we all jam together and see what happens. We all write our own songs and then bring them together in one place once we get closer to entering the studio.

“Our tour manager spoke fluent Russian and without him we would have been completely lost.

He ended up being like our tour mum, ordering food for us at the restaurants, and we’re not really used to that kind of treatment.

But that’s what you have to do in a country where you don’t speak the language, I guess.”

Another thing I found really interesting, while we’re talking about writing, is that you wrote Precambrian in Australia…

“That’s right! The major ideas of the second half, the quieter half Proterozoic, was all written while I was in Australia. I was traveling, just doing the typical Queensland trip from Cairns down to Brisbane basically. I had a lot of time, I personally was not in a very good place in my life and I was traveling with my ex-girlfriend (which turned out to be the worst idea ever).

You’ve mentioned already that you live in Germany while the rest of your bandmates live in Switzerland. How does that work for you guys?

“It takes a lot of organisation.

There are problems where the logistics don’t always work out, but it is doable. We have all these cheap flight companies in Europe, so if the guys fly to Berlin it costs less than 50 Euro. If you plan well ahead it works.

“But then again, everything in Europe seems to happen much earlier than in Australia. We were a bit worried about this tour because a month or a month and a half ago we still didn’t have dates.

We were getting nervous, but it seems to be normal there to book a tour two or three months before the first date, whereas in Europe it’s more than half a year. That makes planning so much easier because we now know all the shows that we’re going to play in November already. So that means that I can book flights now and it’s not too expensive.

“But we don’t really rehearse so

“That’s the point when we rehearse. Last time we rehearsed in Switzerland and the guys have a room there. I have a room in Berlin, so we’re flexible and we can do whatever fits best.”

“I spent a lot of time wandering all those big, lonely beaches and had a lot of ideas in my head so I started writing on a guitar I had in my backpack, and that’s where the first ideas for Precambrian were written.”

It’s been pretty explicitly stated that Heliocentric and Anthropocentric are critiques of Christianity and that it was important to you to get those ideas across. Why was it so important to communicate those ideas with that duo of albums?

“It’s a subject that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, ever since I lived in the US basically when I was a teenager (about 16 or 17) living with a die-hard Baptist/Creationist family. I used to have discussions with my host sister all the time because she was really radical, trying to convince me that there were no dinosaurs and they were a myth

created by scientists possessed by devils. Ever since then I’ve been thinking a lot about religious matters. I’ve studied philosophy and within my studies I read a lot of really good philosophers.

“That’s something that I found with these albums. I’ve been thinking about it for a really long time and I had to somehow bring it into my music. When I started writing Heliocentric, it became clear that from the lyrical perspective it was going to become a big double album because Jona was writing songs and they didn’t really fit together with mine (at least that’s what we thought at the time).

“So we decided very early on to make it two albums and that’s when I thought that this was finally the right place to talk about these things because it’s such a large subject that I didn’t want to address it within the constrains of just one album.”

You’ve hinted at the fact that you’re getting ready to write a new album, and musically at least, The Ocean have proven to be big thinkers, so what’s the likelihood that this next record will also be a double album?

“The new record we’re right in the middle of recording right now. The drums have been tracked and now we’re doing guitars, which we’ll continue after the Australian tour. But I can’t really tell you much about what it’s going to be about in terms of lyrics or conceptions.

“I can say that it’s not going to be as much of a brainy and intellectual album as Heliocentric and Anthropocentric. We want to go in a different direction. It’s going to be more of an emotional album, I think, rather than an intellectual album. There is an idea behind it, of course. It’s going to be one continuous piece of music about 45 or 50 minutes long. We’ll probably set track marks, but it’s really designed to be listened to from the beginning to the end as it’s a progression.

“It’s not a bunch of songs connected by interludes, it’s really a musical joining and the idea behind it is a joining. So that’s what it’s going to be and we’re looking at a March 2013 release.”

One of the things that I find really striking about The Ocean is that you’re album to exist self-sufficiently outside of the traditional music system. You seem to be able to exist quite well on your own with minimal label interference. So was setting things up that way intentional?

“Well, yeah of course. That’s the way that we’ve always been.

We’ve always written our own music and have never bothered at all about fitting into a certain scene or pleasing certain people. We were happy and surprised when Metal Blade approached us and wanted to do a record with us.

“That’s what they do: they release our albums and they’re doing a great job of it. They’re very supportive of the band, which I appreciate, but I don’t send them preproductions of our album and ask if they like it. We do our thing, we deliver our albums already mixed.

No one outside of the band will hear the album until it’s done.

“We are completely self-sufficient in that creative way and I think that’s important because their

job is to release and sell records, and our job is to create music, and their shouldn’t be too much interference between those two positions.”

I know you run a label yourself, so what’s your take on the digital downloading thing.

“It’s a very difficult subject to discuss. On the one hand, from running my own label, I know that even from a label perspective you rely on downloads these days because you need to get those people. You can’t just ignore them, because that doesn’t make sense when a lot of people do download music but are willing to pay for it.

“It’s the freebie mentality that is really killing music these days, that people think that they can have something that is really time-consuming and expensive to make for free. If we can get to a point where downloads are cheaper so a lot more people are willing to pay that cheaper rate, then we can get the same income. I hope this is where society as a whole is heading but I’m not sure.

“Personally I think there a lot of

people out there who appreciate the artistic quality of music, and that is something that you can never download. If you offer a record that is packaged really well, like the vinyl boxset that we’re doing, that’s something people can’t download and they’re willing to pay the high price that you need to charge for it because the manufacturing costs are really high.

“I’m always surprised by how many people are still interested in that kind of stuff. We have a four LP The Ocean boxset that we sell through my label for about 60 Euro (about 80 or 90 Australian dollars) and we’ve sold almost 1500 copies and it’s almost sold out. It’s something that is really expensive, but people are willing to pay that price to get something really special and beautiful out of it.

“With our band, that’s something that I’ve really paid attention to, right from the beginning, to offer a holistic approach to art that is not just limited to the music, but also to the packaging and the merchandise.”

FeatuRinG

2 BRAND NEW SONGS anD 12 HARD TO FIND B-SIDES SpanninG FRom pennYBRiDGe pioneeRS untiL now!

90 MINUTE DVD the PLUS ceLeBRatinG 10th anniVeRSaRY oF pennYBRiDGe pioneeRS

out now | epitaph.com

NEW ALBUM OUT JUNE 22

NEW STUDIO ALBUM OUT NOW www.epitaph.com www.pennywisdom.com

Hoodlum Shouts WORDS: SARAH PETCHELL – PHOTOS: SIMON ATKINSON

POISON CITY RECORDS ARE ONE OF THOSE LABELS WHERE YOU KNOW THAT WHOEVER IS GOING TO BE SIGNED TO THEM IS GOING TO BE A QUALITY ACT. IN THE CASE OF HOODLUM SHOUTS, QUALITY DOES NOT EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE THE TALENT, HEART AND SHEER INTELLIGENCE THAT GOES INTO THIS BAND. NOT TO MENTION THAT THEIR BIZARRE SOUND THAT SITS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE NATION BLUE AND MIDNIGHT OIL IS AN AUTOMATIC DRAWCARD. From humble beginnings in Canberra, the band have finally released their debut full-length

Young Man, Old Man, a somewhat damning indictment of Australian society at present, but done so with a wit and humour that makes the condemnation slightly more palatable.

When in Sydney on a recent launch tour for the album, No Heroes sat in a van with vocalist Sam Leyshon and guitarist Mike Caruana, for a closer look at what went into making Young Man, Old Man. I guess the question you guys get asked the most comes from the description of your sound as somewhere between Midnight Oil and The Nation Blue.

So how did your sound come about?

Mike: “They were definitely kind of inspirations, I guess, but it’s hard to say. Literally it’s just us

getting into a room, playing together and weeding out the stuff that we don’t like. I think we had a couple of pretty solid ideas to start with and that’s what formed the sound. That has always been what we regard as Hoodlum Shouts and that’s the reference point, even today with the new stuff.

Sam: “Especially Midnight Oil – yeah ok, we all grew up with them but no one really is listening to them still. I’m not quite sure whether that at all is a conscious influence. I mean, if you were to ask us who our inspirations are, yeah The Nation Blue would come up and maybe Midnight Oil. “But until people started making the connection between us and them, I don’t think that would have come up at all. That has

with other bands, people would say it’s good that I didn’t sing in an American accent. I used to be so confused because I had never even thought of singing that way until people started saying it. Isn’t it just whatever comes out?”

Has being from Canberra influenced your sound at all and the way that it came out?

Mike: “Yeah, I agree. I think because there weren’t so many bands that were doing that sort of thing, we weren’t competing with other bands trying to be like them.

It was more organic.”

Sam: “And I guess a lot of the bands that we looked up to in Canberra, weren’t fitting into that niche. Coming from Canberra, everyone puts shit on it. You say you’re from Canberra and it’s like it’s a dirty word, so we’ve grown up with that. Instead of trying to sound like somebody else, fuck you! This is all that we’ve got and we don’t care because we like it.

Some of my favourite bands are from Canberra.”

been put on us and I guess we can see it.”

Mike: “And it probably has a lot to do with that one song ‘History’s End’ that does sound a little like ‘Beds Are Burning’ from Diesel & Dust. The thing about Midnight Oil is that they sound really Aussie, and there aren’t too many bands that sound really Aussie anymore. We just want to sound like the people we are, so maybe that’s the nearest comparison.

It’s more that we sound like The Nation Blue than Metallica in that respect.”

Sam: “In all honesty, that’s probably a good reflection of bands that want to sound like somebody and bands that want to be themselves. You can’t and shouldn’t bullshit how you sound. I remember many years back when I sung

If I think about the bands that I like from Canberra, none of them sound the same – I Exist doesn’t sound like Hoodlum Shouts and Hoodlum Shouts doesn’t sound like 4 Dead.

Whereas other cities seem to go through phases of having bands that all sound the same.

Mike: “The only conscious thing that I had was seeing exactly what you said and thinking that that’s not us, so let’s not do that.

To be metaphoric, the only landscape is a big influence to with the whole country element. Country music and country the environment with the sparseness.”

Sam: “And that was a big thing with Mike and the music, because he writes a lot of it. Mike originates a lot of it in the guitar work and lyrically. I loved how Mike described a long time ago when we were starting out about how many times have we done the Hume Highway up to Sydney to play, and that’s a massive inspiration.”

Well that drive fucking sucks! [everyone agrees] Sam: “We do it all the fucking time! We know it so well because even if it’s not to play a show, it’s to go see a show because they won’t come to Canberra. It makes the drive beautiful, I reckon that’s

one of the best things I’ve heard Mike say about it and I get where he’s coming from instantly.”

Mike: “And now that we’ve relocated to Melbourne, it’s going to be exciting to see what we come up with living there.”

How much more interesting does it make it for you guys that you don’t fit into a certain niche, especially in a live setting?

Sam: “I’m not quite sure because it’s out of our control. Especially these days, we just want to play.

We do hear of bands, like tonight with Margins and Gallucci, we have listened to these guys and have a lot of respect for them, so to be playing shows with them is an honour. But then there are bands we haven’t even heard of and someone else thinks we’ll work on a bill with them, we don’t care because we just want to go play.

“I mean today we’re playing a warehouse in Surry Hills, but originally we thought it was a gallery, and we’ve even played the State Theatre in Canberra where everyone sits down and there’s no banter like in a pub. But we can accommodate for that and I feel really proud without bragging that we can play in just about any setting. I mean, we’ve been sandwiched between 4 Dead and Boonhorse at Bar 32! And I think we still held our own.”

One thing that’s really pronounced with all your material is how aware in a cultural/historical/socio-political sense it actually is. So what made you guys decide to situate your lyrics in that kind of a context? Or is it more organic than that?

Mike: “I think that’s what Sam naturally sings about. I don’t have anything to do with the lyric writing, but the way that I see it going, is that Luke, Sam and Josh are the ones that come up with the ideas.”

Sam: “I think we have a kind of balance of the break up songs or the songs about yourself. I mean ‘Kubla Khan’, I wrote those lyrics and that was about me, but most other songs will be a book that someone’s read where you can extract the emotion and turn it into song. Or ‘Pushing Squares’ where Luke came up with the

name and that’s about getting older but still wanting to be young so it feels like your pushing squares into circles. But then there are the songs like ‘Young Man, Old Man’, ‘Guns, Germs, Steel’ and ‘History’s End’ that are quite political.”

things.

Mike: “That’s one thing about being from Canberra. It’s got nothing to do with it, but people just automatically think you’re going to sing about political stuff. It’s hard to escape that moniker.”

That song ‘Young Man, Old Man’, the subject matter of it being about a homosexual footballer is just so unique.

Mike: “That’s a weird juxtaposition, that one. But that’s something that’s dear to Luke’s heart, rugby league, and the scenario is something that we all grew up with. We all knew who Ian Roberts was.”

Sam: “It’s difficult, because I would never sit at a dinner table or out on the street and start saying this is what I believe and you should too. But this is an invited show that you pay money for. In no way would I hope in the way the lyrics are directed that they be preachy, it’s a suggestion at best. It’s just this is a story, take of it what you will when you come here to enjoy all aspects of the performance from the music to the lyrics or all together. Take it or leave it.

Sam: “But it was Josh that came up with the idea of having a modern tale. So we all read about the story and learned about it and it like this is something that deserves the respect and attention of people. You feel it too. It’s like the music is almost second in a way.”

With the historical aspect on songs like ‘Guns, Germs, Steel’, do you see it in your role as a performer to educate to an extent? Or is that too much of an arrogant way of looking at

“It’s not like you write lyrics just for the sake of writing lyrics. They’re always thought out and I and we can get really emotional about them, as reflected in our playing or in whatever mood we’re in. And that comes off in so many ways.

If people want to listen they can, if they don’t they don’t, and that’s up to them.”

So Young Man, Old Man is out now. What’s the response to the material been like?

Mike: “It has been largely positive. We had one Facebook page started up called ‘Hoodlum Shouts ruined the La Dispute show’, but that’s really the only negative so far. The nicest thing for us, is that some of the reviews have really got it. It’s not like we’re trying to make this high art or anything, but it’s nice when people look into it and see the ideas.”

Now that the album is out, is that somewhat of a relief?

I read that it took Hoodlum Shouts three years to get to this point.

Mike: “It was tough because we’re all old and jaded and cynical having been in so many other bands. We’ve seen it happen with all our other bands, you do all this work and then something happens and it goes to shit. We went through a little bit of that because we did the album, then I moved to Melbourne and Sam decided to move to the Top End indefinitely, and Josh moved to Melbourne.

“At that point we had an album and we knew that we wanted to

put it out, but we didn’t know what next. Then Andy from Poison City came into the picture and that lit a fire under us. We put out the single and then everything happened. It seems like we had to wait ages, but now that it has happened it doesn’t matter all and it’s a total relief because we’re a band again. It was in the balance for a while there, but it has reaffirmed everything for us.”

Is there anything about the album that you particularly love?

Mike: “It’s going to sound silly, but for me it’s just the fact of doing an album because I’ve never done an album before. Neither Luke or Josh has either. But for me, getting all those songs into your head and performing them as best as you can on the day. Plus we weeded a lot of songs out because we knew they weren’t going to work within the context of the album, but I feel like we’ve put together the best that we could have at the time with the songs we had written.

“The engineer, Matt Voigt, wanted another upbeat song on there, but we’ve maybe counter-balanced that with the order of the songs.

The other aspect is that we’re going to put the best songs on there regardless of whether they were slow or upbeat.”

So what’s next for Hoodlum Shouts?

Mike: “I haven’t thought heaps about where we’re going to go next musically, but I’m really excited about it. I know that with the EP we felt like we had touched on something and we definitely wanted to continue that, so that’s what we did with the album.”

Sam: “The same. I just want to keep doing what we do and write another album. That’s the same thing that we’ve done forever.

We go through up and down times, quiet and busy periods, and because I’m reactive when we’re on downtime I don’t want to push it, but when we do do it, this is the most amazing thing I do. I couldn’t imagine never not doing it and I think everyone feels the same. And I’ve never felt that way with any other band that I’ve been in.”

Young Man, Old Man is out now.

The vinyl is available through Poison City Records and the CD through HelloSquare Recordings.

BODYJAR WORDS: RAJ WAKELING

BODYJAR WILL BE HITTING THE ROAD IN AUGUST TO PLAY THEIR CLASSIC NO TOUCH RED ALBUM IN FULL. BACKED UP BY A WHO’S WHO OF AUSTRALIAN POP PUNK’S HEYDAYS. CONSIDERING THAT ONE DOLLAR SHORT, FOR AMUSEMENT ONLY AND IRRELEVANT ARE PLAYING, IT’LL BE A SHOW WORTH DIGGING OUT YOUR BALL BEARING NECKLACE FOR. THIS FOLLOWS IN THE PATH OF A SERIES OF SHOWS IN MELBOURNE AND ADELAIDE QUICKER THAN YOU COULD PULL ON A PAIR OF DICKIES, AS WELL AS THE RE-RELEASE OF THE ALBUM ON VINYL. NO HEROES CAUGHT UP WITH FRONT DUDE CAM TO TALK ABOUT BEING OLD MEN. You guys just seem to keep coming back on the scene, are you having trouble letting go?

“Yeah probably! I mean we went a couple of years with nothing, and then I guess it was the Arthouse reunion gig in Melbourne which sort of got us together playing again. It was the last week of shows there, and that place has been a punk institution.

“We just really enjoyed playing together. It’s probably something we’ve all really missed I reckon.

So hopefully we can do some more. If everyone’s up for it, we will.”

Your upcoming shows feature a line up so nostalgic it brings a tear to the eye. How did it come about?

“One of our mates is putting out our old record No Touch Red on vinyl, so we thought we’d do some shows and help him move a few. And then we thought we might get bands from that same

era, around ‘99 and the early 2000s.

“Everyone who we asked just jumped on board and was really keen. One Dollar Short came over, and it was fun, man. You know everyone was a bit bigger, and a bit balder, but it still sounded really good!”

How significant is No Touch Red to the Bodyjar story?

“I guess it was the album that broke us through a little bit, you know it got us a bit of airplay and we started getting a few international supports. We’ve always played a lot of the songs live over the years like ‘You Say’ and ‘You’ve Taken Everything’.

“A lot of people grew up sort of listening to it, that’s what we’ve heard from fans. It’s a special kind of record for us. Every band’s probably got one.”

How has it been revisiting the album after 15 years?

“There are a few moments where we are like, ‘Fuck, that was really good,’ and there are a few moments where we are like, ‘Fuck, how did that ever make it onto the album?’

“We recorded it in Canada at the end of this really long tour, during winter. We were just so knackered and tired, and we were so used to playing really fast every night, because our old drummer Ross would get so excited playing live, he’d play everything twice as fast. We recorded the album like that you know, no click track or anything, so it was all really fast.”

You guys scored a major label deal for your subsequent album, How It Works. Did the broader success ever get weird for you?

“I remember watching Neighbours once and they mentioned Bodyjar in the script! Sky was listening to Bodyjar in her room or something.

And I was watching it and I was like, ‘What the fuck,’ and all these people rang me up! We even

made it into the Who Weekly crossword!

“We got a gold album too, so we had a few industry successes.

Things where you go, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’.”

It seems like pop punk hardly gets a chance to die before someone revives it again. Do you think it will ever blow up like it did back then?

“Yeah, well I listen to some new bands, like Skyway and all those sort of bands. There are a few labels as well that are doing heaps of punk pop, and people are liking it.

“So you never know, I mean it

might come back, it was pretty massive in the 90s wasn’t it! I guess it might come back into vogue, but for us at the moment, it’s just a fun thing.”

Could you see yourself packing up and heading overseas for big tours like you used to?

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll ever do a big tour again, ever.

It’s just too hard now. But I’d like to record something again, or write a new song, something like that would be cool.

“It’s probably a bit sad, it was our full time job for probably ten years. But as you get older, you can’t just fuck off for two months like we used to. You’ve got to pay

the bills and all that shit. It’s pretty sad!”

If you were to put down some new tracks, what direction do you think it would go?

“You’d just have to see what it was like when you tried. I mean we’ve mucked around with a few things, just jamming. But we haven’t actually sat down and given it a proper go, which I hope we get around to doing.

“When we were recording No Touch Red we never sat down and went, ‘Okay, let’s right new songs.’ I’d love to do that. I just want it to be good punk rock, not too complicated. I reckon the best punk is those three chord wonders.”

Some of your band mates are dads now! Are they raising little punk rockers?

Granto’s got two girls, and one of them loves Slayer. She goes to sleep to them at night, no shit!

Granto’s brought her up on Slayer and Boycott and all this 80’s metal. She loves all that sort of shit and she’s like three years old!

“But I don’t think anyone plays guitar, they just muck around with Dad and that’s it!”

You can catch Bodyjar playing with One Dollar Short, For Amusement Only and Irrelevant in Brisbane, Sydney and Newcastle this August. Check out bodyjar.com for details.

WORDS: JEM SIOW

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BANDS LIKE BALANCE & COMPOSURE AND MAKE DO & MEND COMES BASEMENT FROM THE UK. THEIR 2011 DEBUT I WISH I COULD STAY HERE RANKED HIGHLY ON A LOT OF PEOPLE’S BEST OF THE YEAR LISTS, AMONG THEM THOSE OF MANY OF THE STAFF THAT WORK ON NO HEROES. NOW THE BAND ARE SET TO TAKE ON AUSTRALIA, SO WE SPOKE TO GUITARIST ALEX ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE BASEMENT CAMP IN THE LEAD UP TO THEIR TOUR. So who from Basement are we typing with today and what can

you say about that recent Lana Del Rey album?

Hi, it’s Alex, I play guitar and sing in Basement. I have never listened to Lana Del Ray so I can’t comment, but I have been listening to Pearl Jam. Not as recent yet much more relevant, your debut full-length I Wish I Could Stay Here came out almost a year ago now AND has been internationally accepted as one of the leaders of the pack pushing this 90’s emo/punk revival. Where is it exactly that you wish you could stay and why?

I’m pretty happy right here in America at the moment, I live with some cool friends, there’s multiple shows every week, plenty of places to eat and I just found a tight new skate spot. So I’m pretty content in Philly.

The artwork – the nicely accessorised girl head-down upon a ledge, clothing blending into the foreground – has emerged as this somewhat iconic piece of photography across the Internet. But what did you intend the image mean, if anything?

Yeah it’s crazy to see it on the Internet and places I wouldn’t expect. It blew my mind when I saw Frank Ocean had re-blogged it onto his Tumblr – that was pretty cool.

The album artwork is really important to me on a personal level. I shot it with my friend Laura Wallace in Ireland. We both took some photos and when I was running them through photoshop I somehow managed to incorporate the two together, I really liked how it looked and how well they naturally blended in color. I loved how

it was almost an optical illusion, and sometimes requires people to take a second look before it clicks.

I always liked the idea of not using and fonts or titles on the record as I wanted the artwork to become a talking point that later might become linked back to the band. The idea that someone might recognise the artwork but at the same time have no idea where it was from or what it is about really intrigues me.

Musically, we hear vibes coming from American Football to Lifetime to even Nirvana here and there. What were your biggest influences in writing the LP? We all listen to a lot of Jets To Brazil, Braid, Jimmy Eat World so bands like those have always had an influence on us musically. I wanted to write a record with a lot of different tempos and sounds. It really was just a chance to explore our sound and write music we enjoy.

You guys have only been around since about 2010 yet

last year you already completed a USA tour. What do you hope to do this time around on the West Coast when you join the Sound And Fury Festival in July?

We will be recording our new record on the West Coast before S&F. No doubt we will kick it on the beach, try and surf, eat some good food, try and thrift some cool gear just have fun and enjoy the weather. Sound And Fury will be amazing. There are so many bands I want to see and pit for, plus we have a few friends playing as well so it will be nice to hangout with them and get a real tour of the cool spots to hit.

So we should talk about your Australian tour coming up in June/July. You’re excited right?

I really cannot put into words how excited we are. It really is such a huge deal for us to come over and play some shows in Australia.

I never thought I would be able to go and tour that far from home. I can’t wait to pet a koala, jump off stuff and get a picture next to that girl’s crazy Basement tattoo.

You tweeted a public cry in search of the world’s best burger upon embarking on your international tours. What stands as the top three entries so far?

We got a tonne of responses.

Dean’s Diner in Newtown, Sydney sounds cool. Whataburger and Baa Baa Burger from Grill’d with all the extras like Brie cheese, bacon, avocado sounds like it will be amazing!

And besides the food what is it about touring that you love most, having gone across Europe numerous times with the rest of the world on the cards this year?

Just exploring new places really is an amazing feeling. We usually get to the venue early and just walk or skate around the cities or towns to find cool places to hangout or eat. I love taking photos of the places we go to and obviously filming things.

I Wish I Could Stay Here is out now through Run For Cover Records/SHOCK. Basement are touring this June/ July thanks to Broken Hive.

YOUR DEMISE HAVE BEEN BUSY BOYS IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS OR SO SINCE NO HEROES LAST SPOKE TO THEIR GUITARIST STU PAICE. THEY’VE BEEN BUSY CONQUERING ALL THE CORNERS OF THE GLOBE ON AN EXTENSIVE WORLD TOUR SUPPORTING THEIR RECORD THE KIDS WE USED TO BE BEFORE SETTLING INTO THE STUDIO TO WRITE THEIR NEXT ALBUM. SO NOW IT COMES TIME TO UNLEASH THAT NEW BEAST ON THE WORLD, WHICH THE UK FIVEPIECE DID A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO. THE ALBUM

IS CALLED THE GOLDEN AGE AND SEES THE BAND TAKING AN INCREASINGLY MELODIC, PUNK DRIVEN ROUTE, MOVING AWAY FROM THE HARDCORE OF THEIR PREVIOUS EFFORT. WE SPOKE TO DRUMMER, JAMES TAILBY, ABOUT THE NEW ALBUM AND WHAT WENT INTO MAKING IT. Last time I spoke with you guys you were about to head out to Australia for that tour with House Vs Hurricane. So how did you find Australian audiences on that tour?

“That tour as great. We had such a good time and it was a great first tour. The venues were the perfect size because they were

still quite small and intimate so the kids went nuts.

“We also had loads of time off between shows so that we could explore places we had never been before. So it was like a holiday.”

How did the Soundwave shows and Sidewaves compare?

“They’ve been so good. It has become apparent that our fanbase has grown in Australia quite considerably since that last tour. The Soundwave and the Sidewave shows have all been brilliant.

“Last night’s Sidewave show in Sydney was probably the best Australian show that we’ve ever played.”

What have been some of the highlights for Your Demise be-

YOUR DEMISE

WORDS: SARAH PETCHELL

of the differences between the two albums?

“There are definitely some noticeable differences, but they’re not quite as profound as the differences between The Kids We Used To Be and Ignorance Never Dies. I mean, The Golden Age is a lot more melodic than anything we’ve ever done before, that’s for sure. Ed does a lot of things vocally that he’s never done before.

“It’s really going to polarise opinions, that’s for sure! We basically wrote the album that we wanted to write and we wanted to hear without really thinking about what anyone else was going to think of it. We’re so happy with the final result.

“But to me it’s just the natural progression on from The Kids We Used To Be. The melodic parts are now more melodic and there are more of them and the heavier parts are just as heavy and just as fast. It’s more of a punk rock album than Your Demise has ever sounded.”

tween then and now?

“We played the Reading and Leeds festivals in the UK at the end of summer last year. That was a big deal for me because I went to Reading Festival every year from 2003 to 2008 because it was THE festival to go to. So to be able to play it is literally a childhood dream come true. That has been my personal highlight.

“But we did a whole world tour and I never thought that I would ever do a WHOLE world tour. We went to Indonesia and played in Japan. We have been doing some crazy, crazy stuff.”

When we talked last The Kids We Used To Be had just dropped here in Australia, and you’re about to drop The Golden Age, so what are some

The sound of The Golden Age is a lot more diverse, with the melodic parts and the pop-punk influences. What inspired these changes this time around?

“We all love punk rock. We all grew up listening to it when we were teenagers. We just thought that there are not enough good punk rock bands around anymore.

(Not) The One’] As well as being an incredible vocalist is one of our best friends so we knew that we needed him on the record. Then Josh from You Me At Six, again fills the same criteria of being a friend, great vocalist and we love his band, so he is on it [see the track ‘ A Decade Drifting’].

“Then there are three dudes that are friends in UK hardcore bands who we thought we would do everything we can to increase their exposure. We thought that by having them on our record it would do some good things for them.

“It’s like a family thing: we just wanted as many of our friends as involved in the record as possible.”

For you, what are you the most proud of when it comes to The Golden Age? “I’m proud of the whole thing. I’m proud of the fact that we produced this record and that it’s a bold step. I’m just proud that we’ve taken as bold a step as this and not really listened to what anybody has said or what kids on the internet are going to say.

“We’ve put our heart and soul into it and we’re going to put it out there and make the statement that this is Your Demise and this is who we are. I back that so hard and I’m just so proud of everything to do with it!”

“From the early 90’s – especially Epitaph, albums like The Offspring’s first albums, NOFX, Bad Religion, Pennywise – that’s what we love and we took huge influence from that when we wrote The Golden Age that’s for sure!”

How important was it for you guys to make that statement?

“As a band, most people that know us and are surrounded by us a lot know that we really don’t give a shit about what anybody else think.

You’ve got a gnarly bunch of guest vocalists appearing on the album, so how do you decide who you want to help you out on these projects?

“Well, everyone who is on the record is our friend and that’s basically it.

“And it made it easy for us because we went into the studio and said we’re going to write the record that we want to write, and then we start writing and it all starts to form a sound.”

“Like Jason from letlive [who does guest vocals on the track ‘I’m

The Golden Age is out now through Shock Records.

SAFE HANDS So how did it all come about?

What’s the basic rundown of Safe Hands’ history and how long have you been together?

There’s actually a long and sordid history to Safe Hands that is often, and maybe for the best, left unrecognised. We’ve been a band for going on six years now.

That been said, myself and Ben (vocals/ex-bass) are the sole survivors of that incarnation.

Though it was still all good fun with those old dudes we really feel like Safe Hands became what we always wanted it to be when Ben made the jump to vocals and Mick (guitar) and Ben (drums) joined in late 2010. Once that all happened we pretty quickly trotted out the EP and we’ve been working our arses off trying to get people to listen to it ever since.

What are the elements and influences that make up Safe Hands?

This is always a hard question to answer because we all listen to so much different music. If we were to base it off what we listen to in the van I think we’d be the world’s first post hip-hop doom rock hardcore band.

Plus, I don’t want to be one of those guys that says “Life” because really, if your life experiences aren’t influencing your music I’m pretty sure you’re doing it wrong.

Anyone who has seen a Safe Hands set knows that it’s not to be missed, but what to you is the most memorable show you’ve ever played and why?

Since Mick and Ben joined the band we’ve actually been really lucky in the way that the level of shows has been consistently awesome that maybe it’s the low points that stand out more.

It’s hard to go past playing with The Chariot at the Cambridge Hotel in Newcastle.

But then it’s hard to remember that without then remembering the following day, hitting the road to again play with The Chariot in Orange only to have the car containing the entirety of Safe Hands (bar myself) and our gear breakdown at the top of the Blue Mountains. So I’d say that show was definitely the most memorable show we’ve never played.

Newcastle seems to have a very tight knit yet diverse musical community, what local bands should readers make time for?

There currently and there always will be a multitude of great bands coming out of this city at any given time and trying to name them all would be impossible. Many of them you’ve probably already heard of, but one you may not have is Tired Minds.

They’re that awesome new-wave hardcore sound in the vein of bands like Touche Amore and Pianos Become The Teeth but with all these irresistible added touches that keep it original.

They’re currently putting the finishing touches on their debut EP and I for one am damn near giddy with excitement. Definitely keep an eye out for them.

Do you prefer playing 18+ shows as compared to AA? Is there a large difference in the crowds’ reaction?

I don’t know, it’s hard to say. I mean some all ages shows can really suffer just because kids are kids. I mean, you remember what it was like to be a kid? You’re all self-conscious and awkward. And you know most of the time kids want to go nuts and get into it, but unless that one brave kid steps

INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST ANTH

BY JESSIE STRINGER

up and starts everything, they’ll all just stand back awkwardly waiting for someone else to do it. It’s a total vibe-killer.

That been said you play some 18+ club shows and people look at you like you’re getting in the way of their partying. So I don’t know.

But the best shows we play are the DIY shows at venues like Blackwire Records in Sydney and Sun Distortion Studios in Brisbane where there’s no agendas, there’s no rules on how to be cool. It’s just people out to watch some bands and have some fun.

Do you have any particular message you like to try and push on both your record and at live shows or do you leave it up to the listener to take what they want from your songs?

Lyrically there’s not just one contributor so conceptually our songs are coming from all different angles. In that sense I don’t think there really is a message we as a band try to push but we do like to encourage people to support the scene they claim to be a part of, go to shows, buy merch, buy music and give the bands you love a reason to keep doing what they’re doing.

What does the future hold for Safe Hands?

More travelling. We’ll be in QLD and SA over the next couple of. Also there’re rumblings of a certain split something or other with a certain awesome bunch of dudes from WA. Other than that we’re just that keen to get the album out. We’re so close to finishing the whole writing and pre-production process so I think the next few months will be pretty full on.

new music THEY’RE BACK! Architects’ previous release The Here And Now was a polarising effort, that was largely lacklustre as the technical metal that so marked previous efforts departed to make way for catchy hooks.

What Daybreaker offers instead is a compromise between the two ends of the Architects scale, and while the formula isn’t totally perfected, the band are a lot closer to that elusive perfect sound. Once you get into the second track and album teaser ‘Alpha And Omega’ shit gets real with the return of the technical riffing and Sam Carter’s awesome scream. But it is the experimentation with instrumentation on this album that really marks Architects as a band pushing their skills as songwriters (see the track ‘Truth, Be Told’). The reality is that Daybreaker sounds more like a sequel to Hollow Crown and I’m totally ok with that!

3.5/5 Sarah Petchell

Daybreaker – Architects Century Media

So, you have guest vocals by Comeback Kid, The Bronx, Outbreak, Cancer Bats, A Wilhelm Scream and Vultures United on the same release. Oh and they all sing on the same song. But not at the same time. They each sing their own version of a 1.43 80’s style punk rock jam, fast and gritty but nothing too amazing (especially six times in a row). This is an amazing concept for a release, it isn’t comparing the musicians it is just demonstrating the different ways they each go about their craft. The highlight performers are Matt from The Bronx and Nuno from A Wilhelm Scream but that is to take nothing away from the reunion of both Comeback Kid vocalists Scott/Andrew on ‘Insomnia’ and Outbreak playing the double team on ‘Rally Cry’. Probably not an EP that will require multiple listens, but still cool.

3/5 Oliver Cation

Designated Vol.2 EP – Bullet Treatment Think Fast! Records

If you check out reviews of Cattle Decapitation’s Monolith Of Humanity online, then you’re probably going to hear phrases thrown around like it is their best album or that this is the pinnacle of modern death metal in 2012. I’m not sure if I would go that far, but what Cattle Decapitation have produced is an album of technical death metal (tinged with a little grind) that is executed flawlessly. But for me, where the album stands out is in the vocal performance of Travis Ryan. It is his ability to move seamlessly between screaming, squealing and singing that gives Monolith Of Humanity some interest factor beyond being a good death metal record. While to me this is a passable record, I’m sure fans will find more to like than I could.

2.5/5 Sarah Petchell

Monolith Of Humanity – Cattle Decapitation Metal Blade/RIOT I listened to this album twice before making my mind up about it. The first time I listened to it straight after listening to Isolation by Harms Way, I found Emmure’s new ‘effort’ to be weak, comical and aggressively bland.

It wasn’t until the supersonicly heavy ‘Blackheart Reigns’ that I started to appreciate the sheer brutality on offer. Upon a second listen (after watching Good Will Hunting) I noticed the intricacies in the music, the pitch bends and drops and samples and whatever else was thrown at me. Frankie’s voice is still borderline comical, but if it wasn’t it wouldn’t suit. Emmure walk that fine line between overproduced heavy mosh and headliner on the side stage at The Gathering 2013, but on Slave To The Game they are still tolerable and brutal.

3/5 Oliver Cation

Slave To The Game – Emmure Victory/RIOT From the opening seconds of ‘Just Fine’, I was hooked by Expire. Like a sledgehammer to the face it knocked me out of my slumber and into action. 12 banging songs, none over two minutes, and all vital hardcore delivered with urgency and aggression. You don’t want this album to end and because it is just not enough. If I was to pick a favourite song, I would have to list more than half the album because it delivers on all levels: no song is allowed to lose momentum, each one is a perfectly constructed slice of hardcore.

Heavy, urgent and rhythmic, Expire will be filling dancefloors worldwide within months. The new wave of American hardcore is here, Foundation, Rotting Out, Harms Way and lets add Expire to that list. Do yourself a favour, this could be the hardcore album of the year. 4.5/5 Oliver Cation

Pendulum Swings – Expire Bridge 9 Records Take your standard thrash metal riff (lets call it Anthrax) and play it with hardcore rhetoric in the foreground, occasionally slow it down to half speed for added impact and add in the odd solo to prove you can play.

That’s the formula Fire & Ice live by on this album and to be honest it works. It’s gritty, it’s inspirational and it makes you feel like you could hit the gym for two hours on the squat racks. This is Fire & Ice’s second full length of songs and demonstrates a big step up from older material, asserting themselves as a new force in the US scene. Not Of This World doesn’t re-write any hardcore rulebooks but it doesn’t need to, each song is a bite sized protein shake of fury and will play well live which is what its about. Track 11 ‘Fortuna’ has me puzzled, but I’ll let you sort that out for yourself. 3.5/5 Oliver Cation

Not Of This Earth – Fire & Ice Reaper Records

new music Straight up: Get What You Give is the best record The Ghost Inside has delivered in their career. This is a band that has grown up and on, taking their perfected formula of heavy, fast hardcore and giving it a new edge. I’m not sure how much of it has to do with the addition of Jeremy McKinnon (A Day To Remember) to the producer’s chair, but the end result is an album that maintains the hope and passion of TGI’s previous efforts and adds an almost pop edge to the breakdowns and circle pit inducing fast parts. While the first single, ‘Outlive’ represents the heavier side of the album, tracks like ‘Engine 45’ and ‘Test The Limits’ are where the band really shines. This is genuinely a solid contender for album of the year, and I can’t wait to see it performed live!

4/5 Sarah Petchell

Get What You Give – The Ghost Inside Epitaph Records

When a band describes their music as an attempt to unsettle your common notion of societal norms and allow you to view the hypocritical dualities of life, you know it’s not going to be a pop punk band. Graf Orlock’s latest experiment in cinema-grind is the 4 track Los Angeles, an EP focused on their city of residence and the opposing ideas within. If you weren’t told the above you would take this release on face value, short grind songs interspersed with clips from classic movies the song names and lyrics are lifted from. Graf Orlock are the only band doing what they do, they are the only band that could pull it off and even after more than half a dozen releases it’s still fresh and still exciting.

4/5 Oliver Cation

Los Angeles –Graf Orlock Vitriol Records It has been eight years since Hot Water Music last released an album and in those eight years a lot has happened. So it is perhaps a little surprising that in eight years not much has dramatically altered Hot Water Music’s sound and I think I speak for HWM fans everywhere when I say, THANK GOD FOR THAT! In general, Exister is the no-bullshit, rock-tinged punk that we expect from the band and opening track ‘Mainline’ emphatically makes that statement. That being said, some of the strongest tracks, for example ‘Pledge Wore Thin’, are the ones that are the most removed from the HWM sound, augmenting the typical anthemic choruses with a more mature and melodic approach. The main thing with Exister is that even though this is not a perfect album, it shows a reinvigorated and reunited band, which only gets me more excited about what the future will bring for Hot Water Music. 3.5/5 Sarah Petchell

Exister – Hot Water Music Rise Records/SHOCK

If you are at all familiar with Life & Limb’s debut EP Four Islands, then wipe all preconceptions aside and prepare yourself for what seems like an almost new band. This time around the band appear to be covering new sonic territory, taking influences less from Fugazi and more from bands as diverse as Breach and Baroness.

And for me it is this divergence of sound that makes the Sydney (via Canberra) band’s progression the most interesting. Even lyrically, Life & Limb have moved away from the abstracted, awkward and intensely personal stories to themes as varied as urbanisation and science fiction, tackled with a sense of humour rare in modern music. Like your typical 7-inch there are only two tracks on offer here, and it is definitely the B-side ‘Seems Your Buddies Are Dead’ that caught my attention from the get go. 3.5/5 Sarah Petchell

Two Hands EP – Life & Limb Gut Feeling Records When s band is picked up by Roadrunner Records you know they are special. When they are from Perth you know they are something else. Neverbloom is a landmark Australian Death Metal album, massive in its scope and truly evil in sound. The West Australian brutalists have combined deathcore vocals, hardcore breakdowns, black metal piano melody and death metal’s roaring fury for an album of songs that clock in anywhere between 3 and 7 minutes. As the album continues, the casual listener may loose focus, but for anyone studying the intricacy held within, this album will reward multiple listens. One for the metal at heart and one for the pit monsters, Make Them Suffer balance many influences and seemingly conquer them.

4/5 Oliver Cation

Neverbloom – Make Them Suffer Roadrunner Records When Off! released their first four EPs, they exploded into the consciousness of punk rock fans everywhere with a blistering assault on all the senses. So why now, after listening to the long anticipated full-length debut, am I sitting here slightly underwhelmed? I mean, the formula is there: 16 tracks of tightly wound, perfectly executed, blistering punk rock. They come in at around one minute a piece, so before you know it they’ve come and gone leaving an album at barely 20 minutes in length. But all in all, isn’t this what we’ve come to expect from the super group? And perhaps that is all part of the problem. I’m all for the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” maxim, but there is something lacking in this self-titled release that left me ambivalent.

3.5/5 Sarah Petchell

Off! – Off! Vice Records

new music All Or Nothing is the tenth release from Pennywise but their first without original vocalist Jim Lindberg. Most would have thought his resignation to mean the end of Pennywise but instead it has meant a fresh start. Zoli Teglas of Ignite has not only filled the shoes left for him but raised the bar entirely, his superior vocal skills put a new energy into a band at risk of becoming stale after such a long career where skate punk is no longer as popular as it once was. All Or Nothing is a perfect title for the album when the band could have called it quits but instead decided to give it their all – it’s fast paced and positive and the title track and ‘We Have It All’ are just two that stand out to demonstrate how every member has come together perfectly to deliver these songs in such a clean and well crafted manner.

4/5 Jessie Stringer

All Or Nothing – Pennywise Epitaph Records

Barking like a dog, Resist The Thought continue to represent the push for Australian metal supremacy, their barrage of endless noise over the assembled nine tracks on offer here leaving nothing to the imagination and being truly as unrelenting as you would hope from the genre. Recorded at Lambesis Studios in the US, Sovereignty is an aural step up for the band to an international standard, each track mixed within an inch of its life but providing a clear platform for each element of the caustic blasting dirge. Jackhammer drums, satanic vocals and steak sandwich meaty riffs will keep heavy audiences content, with the opening track ‘Legion’ standing out as one of the best. Resist The Thought have stepped up a level, keep an eye out.

4/5 Oliver Cation

Sovereignty – Resist The Thought Skull & Bones Records Last issue, Royal Thunder were brought to my attention in BYNHO, and in no time at all their debut fulllength, CVI, lands in my inbox. This is one balls out album where vocalist Mlny Parsonz’ bluesy vocals reign supreme. Swaying between bellows and cooing, Parsonz’ epitomises the heavy metal sorceress while guitarist Weaver follows her vocals with riffing that owes as much to Black Sabbath as to the Southern rock roots from whence Royal Thunder came (think Baroness or Mastodon). There are passages where the music bogs down in passages for minutes at a time, and it’s these parts that make the album hard to stomach in one sitting. CVI and Royal Thunder are definitely strongest when Parsonz’ vocals are present, so if they can reign in their proggy leanings and stick to the blues rock they do best, then album number two is going to flatten all naysayers. 3.5/5 Sarah Petchell

CVI – Royal Thunder Relapse/RIOT

Anarchy, My Dear shows promise for about four seconds and then you are hit with how boring ‘Burn a Miracle’ is considering it was chosen to be the opening track. This sets the tone for the rest of the album and the next few songs don’t do much to turn this around. Overall, the whole thing feels out of time and clumsy. Max Bemis’s writing ability still seems to be there somewhere but the music is nowhere near as catchy or interesting as it needs to be to make his usually witty and almost uncomfortably personal lyrics stand out in the way they have on previous releases. Energy is lacking hugely in this release and it feels like the whole band are stumbling along to a build up that which will never happen.

2/5 Jessie Stringer

Anarchy My Dear – Say Anything UNFD Babylon is what would happen if you took Dan Andriano out of This Addiction-period Alkaline Trio and replaced him with some synth and keyboards but that doesn’t necessarily mean a bad album, in fact it makes for a pretty damn catchy one. From the opening track ‘Voices’ you’re hit with the same catchy melodies and dark lyrics loved by Alkaline Trio fans worldwide. There’s an 80’s disco undertone to Babylon as a flip side to the less than positive lyrics but all it means is you’ll probably just want to dance instead of cry. If you were hoping this album would be Matt Skiba fronting something different to Alkaline Trio then maybe download Heavens (his earlier side-project) instead.

3.5/5 Jessie Stringer

Babylon – Matt Skiba & The Sekrets Superball Music/EMI Thorns from Melbourne are a solid dose of mosh set to tear the pit apart. The band have made it clear with this first release that they know how to write a well constructed album that is more than just the lead up to a breakdown and repeat. The band features previous members of Warbrain and Hopeless yet is vastly different than either of these past ventures. These are seven songs written more for the live reaction rather than to be played through headphones, ‘Callous’ and ‘Mine’ are stand out tracks on this short release and a sign of great things to come. This EP will definitely be a hit with fans of older Shinto Katana and Carpathian as well as Bury Your Dead.

3.5/5 Jessie Stringer

Thorns EP – Thorns Broken Hive Records

Now Available for Pre-order Break Even Young at Heart 12” Ltd to 500 Copies On vinyl for the first time, Break Even’s debut EP. Cut at 45rpm for max volume!

Now Available

VVEGAS/ABRAXIS Split 7”

MILHOUSE 7”

midnightfuneral.com

MARATHON 7”

www.noheroesmag.com