Text by Steve Kerr
Photograph by Brad Fafejta
Originally published in Staple, Oct/Nov 2004
After touring their intense 20 minute live set for the last year or so, 2005 looks set to be a big one for Auckland band Die!Die!Die!, with the the release of their first recordings and sessions with Chicago’s king of ‘tasteful heavy’, Steve Albini.
Seeing Die!Die!Die! play live is like huffing nitrous. It’s exhilarating and all-consuming at the time, but in your memory the details become a little vague: there were pounding drums, people falling over, time seemed to slow down and your heart rate sped up. Then, before you knew it, it was all over.
Die!Die!Die! are not your average punk band. The haircuts, glasses and Joy Division obsession suggest a trendy post-punk act, but they sound harder than they look. In fact, Shellac and Fugazi are clear reference points for their angular percussive sound, while the buzzsaw guitars and whiny vocals are suggestive of good old-fashioned US hardcore – pre-Rollins Black Flag, or the Beasties of Aglio e Olio.
The band formed in November 2003, out of the ashes of the “obnoxiously loud” Rawer, which had in turn been formed out of the ashes of Carriage H, the Rockquest-winning HDUesque sonic trio. Michael Prain (drums) and Andrew Wilson (guitars/vocals), core members of all these bands, met in high school.
“Michael and I have been best friends since we were 14,” says Wilson. “We really got into Nirvana and Green Day because of skateboarding – I was shit but tried really hard, kinda like my guitar playing. We didn’t have any other friends at our high school, even the punk rockers the year above us at our school were just glorified misogynistic elitist rednecks who thought we were gay because we had pink hair or wore cardigans.”
The two split up Carriage H when they shifted to Auckland in 2003. New city, new musical direction: “Carriage H was a direct result of us being exposed to bands such as HDU, Hiss Explosion and The Dead C when we were 16. When we left Dunedin, somehow all those bands didn’t seem relevant to the music we wanted to create anymore – but every one of those bands is amazing…”
So Die!Die!Die! is something of a return to their punky musical roots (if 20-year-olds are old enough to have musical roots). Another influence has been the arrhythmic grind of seminal New Zealand acts The Gordons and The Skeptics. Interestingly, these acts were often referenced by Shihad a decade ago, at the time of Churn’s release. Through some weird twist of cosmic fate, the two bands have now become buddies. “It started with an Internet argument I had with Tom Larkin during the most pathetic period of my life, about how changing their name to Pacifier and sucking LA corporate dick was stupid,” says Wilson. “He came to one of our shows and really liked it. [Shihad] think of us like little brothers. They brought the Bailterspace/Skeptics approach to the music they were into when they were young, like Metallica. We’re doing the same thing, except with Nirvana and Fugazi.”
Their impressive touring schedule has seen Die! Die! Die! play with bands across the country: “There’re bands we love in every city, it’s great to play with them – Coolies in Auckland, Cortina and Disasteradio in Wellington, The Leper Ballet in Christchurch, Operation Rolling Thunder and the International Telepaths and The Aesthetics in Dunedin.”
On top of their shows at home, the band estimates they’ve played about 80 gigs in Australia in the last six months. Says Wilson, “We seem to be far better received in Australia – I think it’s because they have a much more developed underground scene as there is no government funding and the mainstream music there is just so shit. Also I think we fit into a lot of boxes over there which we don’t here. Like we fit in with the scary old dudes who are obsessed with The Birthday Party and old Flying Nun music and young suburban punks who are into hardcore and screamo shit like that, as well as like the whole New Zealand Rock thing. We sometimes find ourselves playing like three shows a day there to three different crowds. It’s fucking weird.”
March will see the band embarking on a tour of the States and the UK. While in the US, they’ve got four days of studio time booked to record an album with Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studios. In the meantime, the band is quitting live shows for a month to prepare and write material for the album session: “A song can come from anywhere, we just jam and the songs are built from a word or some chords or sound. It varies, sometimes the words come first, sometimes the musical idea.”
The band has had a mixed time trying to commit themselves to tape in the past. Sessions with Nick Roughan (ex-Skeptics, producer for Bailterspace, etc.) were disappointing: “It wasn’t his fault, we split up the day we went into the studio,” says Wilson. More recently, the band has successfully laid down tracks with Dale Cotton (Conray, producer for HDU, etc.). The Dale Cotton recordings are due for release on Capital Recordings in March or April.
(c) Steve Kerr 2004
