INTERVIEW: DAVID FREELAND CHATS ABOUT LUNE’S LATEST RELEASE, GHOST
Melbourne’s Lune released their debut EP Ghost this week and are even about to hit 100k streams on Spotify for the title track. Our new writer Suze caught up with Lune’s guitarist David Freeland for a chat
Melbourne’s Lune released their debut EP Ghost this week and are even about to hit 100k streams on Spotify for the title track. Our new writer Suze caught up with Lune’s guitarist David Freeland for a chat;
Hey David thanks for taking the time to chat with us. For those unaware, can you tell us a bit about Lune.
We are a relatively new band, a couple of us are from other bands (Blind Oracle, I, Valiance) and a couple of us aren’t but we have all been around in the music scene for a while. Our first single, Ghost, came out in November 2019 we followed up with 2 shows. A release show for Ghost with In Vanity, Vatic and Advocates and a bushfire relief show with BLKLST, Foxblood and The City. We are keen for some more but for obvious reasons it’s not really happening at the moment. This project has been in the works for about 2 years or so.
Tell us about that.
Nathaniel wrote all the lyrics and Krys did pretty much all the music on this project. On the new stuff we will be writing collaboratively The project kind of came about as a side project for Krys so I wasn’t initially involved but a lot of it was done by Jamie Marinos and Krys then I came in later and added my production elements and Nathaniel did the vocals. So with the influence kind of stuff I think they just range from all your classic heavy bands , I can only speak for myself but a lot of like the prog metal stuff from the early 2010’s Periphery, Tesseract, and then your classics like Metallica, Slipknot and Slayer.
You’ve melded your sound; you guys don’t quite sit in a specific genre.
That’s the plan, it’s humbling to hear someone say that, it makes me feel good, like feel somewhat accomplished that we fit outside of some sort of category genre that someone has created in their mind.
I guess we are jumping onto some sort of new wave of metal. It’s probably difficult to come up with classifications for this stuff in real time, a lot of that stuff comes up in retrospect. I guess for the time being the less expectations about the way the trend is going the better, we can just completely approach it with a fresh mind.
I’m a big fan of bands that sit outside the norm of specific genres and are happy to experiment with their sound.
That’s what I’ve always strived to do, unclassifiable essentially, as much as possible but then again if someone wanted to call us metalcore, deathcore or whatever then that’s fine as well. It’s not something I personally subscribe to though. If it helps people understand it. If it gets us on a Spotify metalcore playlist then that’s fine by me!
It would have been tricky with covid because you haven’t been able to do shows and gauge a following…
Yeah it has been. The only thing you get to see is comments on social media and reading reviews and stuff its really impossible to translate that into a metric that you can comprehend
You’re not far off hitting 100k streams for Ghost on Spotify. Where you expecting that sort of response?
Yeah that’s real surprising. No way, nothing like that. Because Krys and I used to play in I, Valiance we were expecting a little bit of boost off the back of that but nothing like 100k streams. That track has surpassed most of the songs I’ve released in my 7 years!
You’ll be keen to get into live shows once restrictions are lifted..
We are talking about it. We have one member from Newcastle, Harrison our drummer, so it would pretty much be a situation where he would have to road trip it down depending on the situation. It’s also dependant on whether it’s safe to do so. We are looking at doing a Melbourne launch show as a starting point, we obviously had dates and stuff planned to go with the EP release which won’t happen, that’s all been canned. So, we are pretty much just going to take it one show at a time.
What are your plans for release day?
I’m taking the day off work and will probably meet up with the guys and take it from there. I guess then we’ll jump back in the studio and keep working on the new tracks. We’re always writing that’s what we like to do
So, you have more songs in the works for another EP, or an album or just a few single releases?
Again, it’s hard to gauge what people’s reactions will be because there are no tours or shows or anything like that. Depending on if shows start to free up and the momentum we gain from the EP, we’ll probably look to follow it up with a couple of singles. We have an album’s worth of material, but we don’t want to release it all too soon. It’s impossible to know really. I’d like to say we’ll have another couple of tracks out because we have been writing so much. The stuff that we have already written but not released on Ghost feels old already so we just kind of want to get it out there. We’ll probably talk to someone who knows what they are doing to work out a plan.
There are a few bands that are going down the single release path.
Yeah look I admire the art of the album but the thrill of having multiple releases days a year is very appealing as well. To continually assert our relevance especially right now with the way things are.
I think you guys will be okay after tomorrow, there’s been a lot of talk about this EP!
I hope so. Yeah that’s real humbling even seeing all the pre-orders come through on Bandcamp and stuff it’s just so much more than what I expected. We are literally such a puny band and we haven’t been around for even a year! The response has been so good.
To finish off what are 3 of your top Australian acts at the moment?
Justice for the Damned – They have a new album out this week too (Pain is Power) I’ve toured with them back in the day and I know they put on a great show. They work extremely hard and are one of those bands where they just get everything right and now they are getting the payoff from that.
Alpha Wolf – I’ve pre-saved their new album (a quiet place to die). I’ve toured with Mitch a lot and played tonnes of shows with them. We’re pretty close with those guys. Big respect for them they work hard as well.
King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard -I’ve got the new live King Gizzard album Chunky Shrapnel that just came out. They are probably my most favourite Australian band I froth them so much.
LUNE are
Nathaniel Smith - Vocals
Krys Smith - Guitar
David Freeland - Guitar
Tyler Hendley - Bass
Harrison Mills - Drums
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