A Million Farewells Is Never Enough For Tom & Katie

What do you make of a band called Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? When one of the members is ex-Pairs and Pale Head Xiao Zhong, you know to expect something brilliant - but the earnest excellence on show on standalone LP A Million Farewells is likely to throw most listeners. A shoegaze album that is filled with more melodic rhythm and direction than most pretenders can pin down; a breakup album and band that have predictably broken up, but unpredictably created songs that overflow with warmth and buoyant emotion. A flailing chaotic unleashing of feeling and tension into a nebulous sonic cloud, an unleashing of wild feeling and abandon. So you can start with the heart-stopping euphoric caterwaul of 'Come Back Home' put alongside the soaring countrified 'Bird Is Flying' that explodes into something else in the final third, and the creeping muted noise of 'Sam's Knife', without it feeling anything more than complete. In fact 'My Life Is Over' is 'Come Back Home' distilled into a two minute format - in case the set list is cut in half? Either way, it shows the fluidity that these guys hold. But the truly stunning thing about this band and this album is the beauty that hovers ever-present throughout. This is mostly due to the beautifully arresting vocals of CeeQ - when she unleashes, it catches your breath in your throat, your chest swells. Yep, the waves of emotion cascade down, and as Tom and Katie fade away, you won't be afraid to shed a tear too. To put it simply, A Million Farewells is a stunning gem that has risen out of nowhere, like the truest of stunning forces of nature, and just as quickly disappears - but should be witnessed by all. When describing this to my fiancee, she said 'so it's like the Northern Lights for you, then?' You know what? That'll do.*

*Yes, I may have shed a tear at the sight of the Northern Lights. Enhanced though I may have been, I stand by it.

Bio Bat Piss Mass

The miscreants are back! Batpiss provided one of the best records in ages in 2013 with Nuclear Winter, and are now following it up with Biomass (out through the ever-excellent Poison City Records). It is a little more brutal - not as playful as Nuclear Winter, instead delving into more punishing dirges and ditches. Opener 'The Store' is a bruising slowburner, grinding down the gears and tearing at your psyche from the get go, Thomy's howls already stripping your inner ear. Then we have 'Death Will...', a faster track that pummels you around the solar plexus, striking you paralysed as you are drowning in sweat and spit, mindlessly pondering death and fighting for breath. Its ADD speed is almost a welcome respite, and is continued with ramped punisher 'Daredevil' then 'The Idiot' takes us into pigfuck territory, like a Pissed Jeans who are addicted to Wake In Fright and meth. The feverish motor that drives forth 'Orchard' had me thinking of the chugging rhythms of Motorhead or Turbonegro, where speed is equalled by muscle and heft, while 'Spiritually Challenged' is a track that is stuck in a gear, unrelenting in its pace and paucity of morals. We spiral back into the filth with 'Heavy Smoke' a sub three minute funeral pyre of malcontent, before 'Pulling Out' arrives - a sludge drone torture device, grinding out a feral deathmarch unlike anything the band has put to tape. 'Waking Up At The Wheel' closes things out, a pub rock song with the chassis ripped to shreds and replaced with something much more top-heavy and dangerous to all in its path. 

I'll level with you - Biomass is a much harder slog than Nuclear Winter. Batpiss have dived headlong into the backwaters of self-hatred, loathing and nihilism, tonally and lyrically - the garish cartoonishness that lay on the outer edges have all but been eradicated. What you get in its place is a band that have disappeared into their hellhole and come back fused together, a force of reckoning and destruction, maniacs on the curve, ready to take you (willingly) to the abyss and beyond.

Grab Biomass here.

INTERVIEW - Pale Heads' Rui Perreira

One of my favourite albums of the year, even though it's fresh outta the blocks, is Headless, the debut belter from Melbourne drongos Pale Heads. Featuring guys that spread all four corners of the Melbourne music scene (current and ex members of The Nation Blue, Harmony, Batpiss, The Drones and Bang!Bang!Aids!), these dudes have cobbled together an album that is relentless, throwaway, acerbic, abrasive and a hell of a lot of fun, all done off a handful of practices. The cobbled together nature of the record is what gives it its heft, and with this calibre of clientele this nuclear fusion is only going to get deadlier (whether they get tighter or looser though remains to be seen...) 

I spoke to Rui Pereira briefly as he stumbled around Sydney before Pale Heads' Blackwire Records show alongside Burlap, Dispolar and Roland Major.

SONIC MASALA - Headless was recorded in a series of blitzkrieg recordings at The Tote. Before these took place, how did Pale Heads come to pass?

RUI PEREIRA - Xiao Zhong, whose identity shall remain secret, lived in China for a good part of the 2000's. There he found a life for himself learning the ancient ways of making origami drum kits for the locals. A few years ago he came back to the Melbourne world, looking for excitement in the form of some boom boom, while in the midst of furnishing his abode. Tom Lyngcoln asked him to play percussion and Thomy Sloane, who straps the bass, joined soon after. I have been friends with both Thomy and Tom for yonks. They asked. I was thrilled to join.

SM - What has been the purpose of the band? Five or so practices and then recording and releasing an entire album is pretty solid going after all!


RP - I find there is this urgent sound to the album, raw as fuck, thousand miles an hour beats. Perhaps the main purpose was to keep the juices flowing. We were all taking breaks from our primary bands at the time so we thought it was a good idea to form another. 

 
SM - How much of the songwriting was/is shared around?


RP - Tom and Thomy pretty much wrote all the lyrics. They bring structure to the songs. We all put in musically.

SM - How do the different personalities glue together as a band? You have some loose units there... 


RP - Alright, alright... who have you been talking to? I've done my share of stupid shit while touring. Even lost my mental health one time looking at ginger bread houses in Switzerland. But as a band we all thrive on humour so that keeps us unified.  At the end of the day our similar tastes in music is the Araldite.

SM - Where does the name Pale Heads come from? Or the infatuation with heads (and the cutting off of them) for that matter? Especially with Tom's constant negative comments about his own mug, bringing it more attention seems counter-productive...


RP - It's interesting what other people's interpretation of someone else's lyrics are. For instance, I thought most of the content on the album was about peace, love and scoring lots of weed... with the occasional head chop. The beheading element is perhaps a metaphor for most humans. They are either in a day dream daze with their heads in another state or trying to chop one off to get ahead.

SM - How have the live components of the show gone so far? I heard that your first show was a bit of a balls-up...


RP - Yep. First show was at the Old Bar in Melbourne. Was a fairly noisy affair. By the end Thomy's pedals didn't work as they got drenched in beer, accidentally poured by someone who shall remain nameless. Since then we've naturally progressed live. The ins and outs of what works on stage can only be refined on the road.  Like Paul Kelly once said, 'venues are my universities'.

SM - You have lined yourselves up with Poison City to release Headless - what was the attraction to joining up with Andrew and co?


RP - Andrew was attracted to us. He and Tom had dealings in the past with Harmony and pretty soon the second Batpiss record will also be under their wing. Keeping it in the family I guess.

SM - Any particular gigs lined up that you are pumped for?


RP - Yes. 16th July 2015 @ The Convent in Abbotsford Melbourne. Playing with Flour, The Meanies and Screamfeeder. See you there.




SM - What does the future hold for Pale Heads? Will there be other releases? Will it follow the same rushed MO?


RP - We already started writing/recording the second LP. It will take a little longer to put together mainly due to Thomy touring with his other group and Tom about to be a Dad! So from this August on, till next year there will be no Pale Heads shows. Just lots of nappies.

SM - What have you been up to in particular Rui? Is Pale Heads a major ongoing concern, or are there other irons in the fire/fingers in pies?


RP - I'll be concentrating with Pale Heads in the next few months. I also work at Bakehouse studios in Richmond, 12 rehearsal spaces with one zen courtyard. That's kept me fairly fit the last five years. I dig working there. A real productive environment. My band other band 'RIGHT!' is in the process of mixing and mastering our first record. I also draw and paint in my spare time, often with my head buried in paper and ink. That will keep me busy for life.



Headless is out now - buy it here - it's an imperative.

Losing My Pale Head

As if I wasn't going to love the fuck out of Headless, the new (and wholly unexpected) album from Pale Heads, the hastily assembled Melbourne super/uber/shitgroup. Featuring Batpissers, Nation Bluers, Harmonisers, Droners, and a Pair, Pale Heads come together as a rusted barrel mess, sloshing their wrecked memories, battered bodies, and twisted limbs into one destructive black mass that rides the pendulum between these guys' past influences (blue collar nihilism, violent drunk diatribes, bucolic flannel punk, frenetic numbskull noise), the filaments drawn into a swirling abyss of madness and mayhem.

From the brilliantly explosive (and slightly unhinged) 'Thomy Cut Off A Head' Headless careens off all of the walls - the dour-with-weird-effects 'Pale Head', the charged throbbing rock of 'I Can't Lose You', the caterwauling black hole and SY instrument annihilating of 'Milk Eyes', the nobrain attack of 'Transitioning Out' with the stumbling moments of tooth-nerve-ending bloodcurdling screams of madness masquerading as lucidity; the singalong skree of 'Devotion', the melancholy outro to 'Homeless'; the roughhousing spit-drenched outlier 'Small Town Casualty'; the twisted out of shape bent sonics and wrenched emotions of 'Power & Privilege'; the inherent vitriol spewed forth out of 'The Pits'; the charged groove and growl of 'Chrome'; the gleeful destruction and Morricone twang undercurrents of 'Accountancy Is Hard' (a great track this one); and the closing title track, which feels the closest to a true amalgam of the band members' former selves (and the last few seconds of banter IS the band).

There isn't much cohesion amongst the songs per se, but seeing as the band played together five times before slamming these down on tape at The Tote is a huge reason why Headless remains so loose. But it is a badge of honour too - these guys have bashed out songs that are jammed, crushed, gutted and burnt into their contorted, blackened angularities, and are all the more cathartic for it. For something so instinctual and instantaneous to be so brutally accomplished (albeit streamlined and battered) is bloody good. Imagine what the boys will be like when in each other's faces for a little while longer. There might be more scabs and scratches on those pale heads, but the ferocity and noisy abandon could be monumental. Headless is out now through Poison City Records on blue, red or black vinyl - get in.

Pale Heads launch the album this Saturday in Melbourne at the Gasometer with excellent support from the likes of Spinning Rooms, Steve Miller Band and Slab Knackers (an Eddy Current Suppression Ring "side" project), and play two shows in Sydney the following weekend. I'm sure there are more shows to follow (Brisbane, watch out). 

Nothing Cult Of Death

Deafcult is a new band out of Brisbane who I hadn't even heard of before the other day - but considering it's a new project from Innez (Roku Music, Tiny Spiders, Feathers) and Matt Bach (The Quickening, El Motel, The Gifthorse), it shouldn't surprise me how bloody great it is. Taking the shoegaze shine of Roku and adhering it to the Nothing mould of post-hardcore ferocity, the tracks on the Deafcult EP (recorded at Incremental Studios) are incredible intense, sonorous, intricate and cathartic in their sonic expulsions. I'm blown away by how complete this six-piece already sounds - expect massive things from these guys this year.

Deafcult have a few good gigs coming up - they are supporting Pale Heads (alongside Deadshred and a rare show from the excellent Tiny Migrants!) June 20 at Trainspotters, as well as an earlier show at the Sewers fundraiser as that band prepares to assault the US with their excellent second album on the cusp of hitting the shelves (it's bloody killer) June 6 at The Underdog.

Pale And Headless

Ever since the neanderthal lurk of Pale Heads crawls out of the gutter of the mind, this lethal band are on the up and up. They are on the cusp of launching their debut record Headless (out through Poison City Records - what AREN'T these guys responsible for lately?) - and with the conscious coupling of Nation Blue/Batpiss/Drones/Pairs seed, this is gonna be one beautifully ugly bastard child. Have a listen to 'Devotion' and 'Thomy Cut Off A Head' - its dirty, rusted arse pub rock n roll at its most backward. Goddamn fucking delicious.





Pale Heads have some killer shows in the next couple months. They are supporting Sun God Replica on Monday night at the Tote, Against Me! in June 7 - and the launch of the album the day before, June 6 at Gasometer, with support from Spinning Rooms, Slab Knackers (2 of Eddy Current Suppression Ring) and Steve Miller Band. Get in.

Old, Pale Rock Heads

Should be called Rough Heads. The cream of the noise crop have come together to create some buzzsaw punk as Pale Heads, as Tom Lyngcoln (The Nation Blue), Riu Periera (ex The Drones), Thom Cones (Batpiss) and Xiao Zhong (Pairs and Bang! Bang! Aids!) belt each other around at The Tote, pressed to tape. The resultant mess is Headless, a thirteen track piece of rough-as-guts suck punch rock that comes out mid-year. 'Transitioning Out' is breakneck, and with Lyngcoln's rusted throttle on display it's a 94 second nugget of sewer gold.