BLOOD SHED RAIN ZINE

How’d you get into hardcore?
I think my path was pretty similar to a lot of people my age. As a kid I got into Green Day “Nimrod” and Blink 182 “Dude Ranch” and then I wanted something heavier and fell prey to a lot of nu-metal (although “Obsolete” by Fear Factory still holds a little worth). I listened to a lot of god-awful music.

I think Deftones were my gateway band - I discovered Quicksand and Jawbox through them, and then Gorilla Biscuits and the Dischord stuff. Rage Against The Machine were another one - I found Inside Out through them, and at the time (being 14) I was shocked at how much more angry/raw that band was. How much better the music was.
Being a clueless idiot-teen who wanted to latch on to something, I migrated back to punk - I got into a lot of the bigger “political” bands like Refused, Goldfinger or System Of A Down. Still some terrible music there, but again, a gateway. Burning Heart was a cool thing too because they did those comps and I discovered good Euro bands like Nine and Breach. I started going to some shows at about 17 and people were cool and kept inviting to go to more shows with them - so I had people to hang with and a reason to go out and see local bands. I think that was the watershed - being welcomed into a subculture and a local scene as a youth. 
Seeing Against play to a sold out crowd with AFI, seeing Wish For Wings play to three people on a Wednesday night - driving down to Byron with a bunch of dudes to see In Name & Blood and Parkway Drive. All of this was how I got into hardcore. 
Being an adult and having more discriminating tastes regarding what is and isn’t “good” doesn’t undermine the fact that my experience was important, and it was strongly built on subculture and sponging up everything. That was an awesome part of my youth, and it’s super cool to see a bunch of younger friends experiencing the same sort of thing now.

How did Marathon start?
Marathon started after an early band called Lorna Slavin broke up. That band was really influenced by Cave In, Isis, Poison The Well and late-era-Breach. A lot of heavy/quiet/heavy (scream/sing/scream) song writing and experimenting with long instrumental passages. While I was in that band I started to get really into Converge and Cursed and bands of that ilk, and I started writing music that was much heavier and shorter. Eventually practices weren’t working and we weren’t writing anything new because all our tastes were developing in different ways.
It took me a pretty long time after that to get Marathon together properly, and our first jam was with my friend Luke Rolo on bass (currently in Tangle), who I had been in bands with, and a dude I kind of new on drums. We jammed with a vocalist but never really came back to it - it didn’t feel right at the time. I eventually got together with Matt Cook and we wrote our demo pretty much as a two piece before Craig Johnson muscled his way in to play bass.
We started recording with one vocalist who lost interest pretty quickly. We finished the demo with Nick Bellringer on vocals (currently in Traditions), but after a string of shows and before we recorded a second demo he lost interest as well. A sidenote; I don’t begrudge anyone for their interests - if I wasn’t into something I wouldn’t do it either.
So finally Luke Smith joined as our vocalist when we did our second demo. We started playing with him and recorded the “Never Safe” EP with Sam from Ghost Town. 
Arrest Records put that out, which is super rad. I kind of see that point as when we really “started” and were propelled in some kind of direction.

How did Fires Of Waco start?
After The Gifthorse announced they were breaking up, Stevie (who played guitar in The Gifthorse) turns up at my work at David Jones and asks if I’d be interested in playing bass in a band with him and Luke (who played drums in The Gifthorse). At that point I was playing guitar in Marathon and playing bass in a band called The Here & The Elsewhere, who Stevie had come to see. He had just met Allan too, and asked him to come along and see if he’d enjoy singing in this new band.
Our first jam was with Paul Voge from Kill The Music on second guitar, and I think Christian came along to the second jam and locked in well, having toured and played with The Gifthorse previously.
So that’s kind of it - we had a brainstorming session to come up with a name - “Fires Of Waco” was a name Stevie had always wanted to use for something, and was probably the best, and definitely the most vivid, out of anything we could come up with.

Fires’ music got really weird before we called it, so I’m not sure what ‘similar’ would really be. In terms of influences, yes. I want to explore the post-punk/post-hardcore influence a lot more. Bands like Wire and Magazine and The Smiths as well as bands like Fugazi and Jawbox all fascinate me for different reasons and I’d like to see what would happen following that train of thought.

Midnight Funeral are releasing a 7” EP for us very soon. It’s called “I’ll Never Look At You The Same Way”, and is our second “official” release in our time as a band. 
Our first shows since the Cruel Hand tour are with In Trenches in about a month’s time. 
We’ve already started demoing for an album-length release, and we are looking to tour the East-Coast in April.

 

It’s going well. It seems kind of compartmentalised, but I’m not sure who’s fault that is - probably promoters/bookers. There are certain bands that just don’t seem to play shows together. In saying that though, there are a bunch of awesome bands doing some really different shit, whether or not they end up playing together on the same show.
Check out Waiting Room, Thick Skin, Hope Drone, Survival, Sick People, Nuclear Summer and Tangle. I think they’re my favourite bands from the area right now, and honestly, it’ll take you hardly any time. I’m pretty sure all those bands have music on their Facebooks so just go listen.

Converge are definitely in my top-five bands and I think it would be super cool to be involved in an album they were making, but if they said I had to run 5 miles or some shit before I could play spoons on one song, I would tell them to suck my dick.
Seriously though, they make shit interesting - the fact that there were so many collaborations with people not technically in the band on that last album was rad, and it moved their sound forward yet again, which is kind of what they’ve always been about. I am very eager for this new record.

Is there anything better than Tuckeria?
I’m not sure who is reading this right now, but to fill in the blanks; Tuckeria is the best street-food-style Mexican in Brisbane (the best I have had in Australia, even). 
In terms of takeout food/casual dining, no there is nothing better than Tuckeria. Take that salty-swamp-slop that Guzman Y Gomez use to fill their vegie burrito and shoot it into the sun.