INTERVIEW: DAMON FROM ALIENIST TALKS NEW SINGLE, COVID TIMES, AND FAVE LOCAL ACTS
Picking up the support slot for Northlane and Gravemind on your home turf after only playing a handful of gigs is not a bad way to begin your bands career! Wollongong’s Alienist got to do just that earlier this year. Having released one single Social Faker back in October the guys were ready to take on the metalcore world when Covid struck laying to rest gigs for the foreseeable future.
How did Alienist come about and where did the name come from?
We haven’t been around for too long, only about one year. We formed from a failed cover band and decided we wanted to start writing our own music so it just kind of started from there.
We had a massive list of names that we all thought of and through the process of eliminating the lame and taken names, we landed on Alienist. We thought it was fitting because of the psychological analysis definition, and we tend to do that with our lyrics, about the world and society anyway.
You’ve all been in bands before then?
Yeah, we’ve all played music here and there for a long time. A couple of us have more experience in touring and bands than what I do, but we are all experienced in different ways. We got started and released our first single Social Faker and then started playing gigs in October 2019,
And then you score supporting Northlane and Gravemind!
That’s right. I think we had only played 3, maybe 4 shows and then Social Faker was in a competition run by Unearthed that I think got added automatically and yeah we got a call from triple j and they asked us if we wanted to play with Northlane and Gravemind on the Wollongong leg, so that was pretty insane.
You’ve recently released a new single. Tell me about Severance.
While we were gigging we just kept writing and adding songs to the set list. Severance was a later one that we wrote for the setlist before the Northlane gig. After Northlane, we decided to take it to the studio and record it. We’ve been going to the same producer Clay Segelov, at The Brain Recording Studios, in Sydney.
The song itself is about something that we all feel, separating yourself from the world, there’s a lot of ideologies and things like that that the world likes to portray and support that a lot of us just don’t agree with. It’s even more relevant now because we all know that unfortunately the world isn’t in a great place at the moment. Sometimes you just need to take a step back , you know, cut yourself off from the world, look at yourself, and take that time to not get involved in all the drama, the horrible things that are going on at the time.
Who does most of the writing for you guys?
Mostly me, I have a whole set up at home and usually I’ll write a lot most nights on my own. There’s probably dozens and dozens of songs worth of material there but you know we sort of scrape through that and make sure we pick the best parts. We also like to get together and have a couple of the boys come over and I’ll play guitar, but we’ll bounce off of each other with ideas. Jake does his drums parts, he’s an incredible drummer, and then the lyrics I’ll do with my screamer and that’s pretty much what we do. We practice every single week, make sure that we jam out the songs so they’re perfectly tight. We just love playing together. Even if we didn’t play in the band together, in terms of gigs, I think we would still get together every week just ‘cause we love each other so much
So you guys have known each other for years?
I met Anthony and Chris only a couple of years ago but Lachlan, Jake and I have been friends for a very long time, since school. Since then though, all the experiences we have shared, it doesn’t matter how long we have known each other I suppose. I can’t imagine being in a band where you’re not great friends. The band is definitely a family, were brothers.
In a post-covid world if Alienist could tour with any other Australian acts who would be in your line-up?
Oh, that’s hard, there are so many Australian bands that we look up to.
Polaris – in terms of writing and influence they are up there for us in that regard. Northlane, Gravemind, Alpha Wolf, Make Them Suffer would definitely be up there, Dealer would be amazing. They are definitely the ones that stand out.
Covid doesn’t seem to have stopped a lot of bands from releasing new music.
Yeah, as much as covid sucks it’s been really good for bands in terms of their online presence and listening numbers, and hopefully it’s given everyone a chance to write a lot more music and spend time perfecting the craft and the sound. It’s really good to see how much everybody cares about the music in the industry.
Everyone is bringing it in the scene at the moment. In Hearts Wake are killing it with their new stuff, and DVSR are starting to release their stuff, and obviously Justice For The Damned with their new album. They’ve adopted a much heavier hardcore type sound it’s pretty insane. All the new releases are just insane actually, there’s no flops at the moment.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what Windwaker release, I know they’ve been working really hard. They have a very unique sound, and even though they have softer bits as soon as they hit with the hard-heavy guitar riffs, the stuff they write … it’s just incredible
I’ve also noticed that a lot of overseas radio shows and the like have picked up Australian releases and are spinning them.
Yeah we got picked up by a few people in the UK and the US. It’s really nice to see that they are looking at the smaller bands in the metalcore scene and just picking them up regardless of country.
What does post-covid look like for you guys?
Post-covid is hopefully incredibly busy. During covid we recorded a song in collaboration with a rapper in isolation. We did it remotely with our producer over zoom calls. That is hopefully going to come out in next month. We’ve been working tirelessly on our EP that we are going to record in the next couple of months. Obviously waiting patiently for venues to re-open and hopefully jump on a tour or jump on a lot of shows. Hopefully, we will have an EP out by the end of the year, and a music video and a single, and we’ll just keep pushing this train and hopefully get somewhere with it.
I’m so keen for post-covid shows, seeing as there won’t be any overseas acts for a while I’m hoping for some pretty sick line-ups to tour together.
I’m so excited for it all to start up again too. Hopefully by Sept/Oct we will be back in the swing of things.
Finally, what are your top 3 Aussie acts at the moment?
Number one would have to be Polaris. I get more drawn to the melodic-djenty sound that’s going on at the moment so for me personally it would also be Thornhill, Alpha Wolf or Make Them Suffer.
ALIENIST ARE:
Vocals - Lachlan Forsberg
Guitar - Damon Renes
Guitar - Anthony Vella
Bass - Chris Olliffe
Drums - Jake Ceely
