Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Rocking To Beat Depression With LAUREN From PUGNACIOUS

Transcript

Rocking To Beat Depression With LAUREN From PUGNACIOUS · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  My name's Lauren and I'm the singer of Pugnacious and we are so excited to
• 0:07
  play rock Beat Suppression for the third time. We just love this event.
• 0:12
  It's one of our favorite events. We just cannot wait to play. Katie
• 0:17
  who organized it and her amazing team do an amazing event. They help all
• 0:24
  the bands. It's really smooth to play, sounds really good. It's a
• 0:29
  really good community vibe. Yeah. And in my band, I've also got
• 0:35
  Near she plays bass, Andrew he plays guitar and things, and then we've
• 0:41
  got Salmon drums. And then we also have Zoe who is in there too
• 0:47
  doing some vocals and smather stuff. So yeah, we haven't got anything recorded
• 0:52
  yet that later to join us, Lauren, So yeah, yeah, as
• 1:00
  you say, one of a number of bands playing at Rock Beast Suppression of
• 1:04
  Manson or Chaven this Saturday, September sixteen. So say, it's the third
• 1:10
  time that you guys are playing, So what makes you want to be involved
• 1:11
  with something like this year after here? And we just love the community spirit
• 1:17
  around it. We love that it's a really mixed bag of bands. I
• 1:22
  love, love love the bringing awareness of mental health issues and raising funds last
• 1:27
  year they raised eight thousand and five hundred dollars, so let's try and beat
• 1:32
  that this year. Yeah. Right, And that's a great lineup spearheaded by
• 1:38
  Black Whiskey, Gotta Fires, go Zilla, Sale Made Rejects, Brave Yourself,
• 1:42
  and more So, which brands you're most looking forward to playing with?
• 1:48
  It's a real different kind of mix of bags. It's like a bands that
• 1:52
  I would normally play with because we're more like punk. So I just like
• 1:56
  playing and seeing all the different bands on the day and just checking out I'm
• 1:59
  looking for and seen each city. We just played with them the other week
• 2:02
  for their launch that was awesome, and just really keen to have an open
• 2:08
  mind of steck and out all the bands on the day and just having a
• 2:12
  good dance and just seeing what it is because it is like a it's just
• 2:15
  like all the bands are kind of different to each other. It's it's not
• 2:20
  the same old, same old kind of bands on one bill. So it's
• 2:23
  yeah, I really loved this year too. They've got just the two stages,
• 2:27
  so like there's going to be bands playing all day and I'm no overlapping
• 2:31
  our dands too. Say, everybody has an opportunity to see every band good
• 2:36
  and of course like as much fun as a day I'll be. There's also
• 2:38
  a more serious side, as the name rock beats depression suggest. So how
• 2:43
  important our events side this when it comes to helping those who suffer depressionial rules?
• 2:49
  Oh heaps mate. Well, most people you imagine have something going on
• 2:52
  in their life, you know what I mean? And you know, getting
• 2:55
  out there, moving around, having to dance, I reckon music. So
• 3:00
  the best things for mental health, creativity again, movement of body, they
• 3:05
  are all really good things to help with mental health. So like you can
• 3:08
  do all of that at a gig. Yeah, that's true. I think
• 3:12
  one thing that's really important to notice you though, Like both those things they
• 3:16
  affect a lot of musicos from local bands and international as Like God, I
• 3:20
  speak to a lot of bands who well singers is particularly who suffered from some
• 3:24
  form of depression or anxiety or or mental health. And it's not just it's
• 3:29
  not something just because you're up there on stage and doing it doesn't mean that
• 3:32
  you're immune, does it. Now, mate, we'll go stuff going on.
• 3:37
  My house flooded last year with floods, so like I've been going through
• 3:40
  my own battles, but you know, you just got to keep on going.
• 3:46
  But you've got to have a good support network arounching and and like a
• 3:50
  lot of the songs that we sing are about mental health issues. Like I
• 3:54
  got a new something that we're going to hopefully play on the weekend. It's
• 3:58
  called are You a K? And you know it's about talking, like you
• 4:01
  know, it's okay not to be okay, but like when you hit that
• 4:04
  wall, don't forget to speak, you know what I mean. If you
• 4:08
  see your friends like acting out of sight and different, you know what I
• 4:13
  mean, like checking on them, you know what I mean. Stigma around
• 4:17
  it too, Like a lot, especially the males, don't don't feel comfortable
• 4:21
  asking for help and stuff out it because it's not much oh enough, you
• 4:25
  know, like it's something's wrong. But I think it doesn't discriminate whether you're
• 4:29
  an international or local, whether you're male or whether you're female. Everyone's got
• 4:32
  to be able to speak to someone about it, especially men, as you
• 4:38
  said, like they don't want to talk about these things. Sometimes they don't
• 4:42
  know how to talk about these things sometimes how to deal with it. You
• 4:46
  know, men's suicide, You know, they're the largest factor. You know,
• 4:50
  out of the sexes, men are higher than women. You know,
• 4:57
  it's important to reach out when like you feel like you can't. And that's
• 5:01
  hard too, because when you're in that point but you feel like you can't
• 5:04
  reach out, then you know sometimes you can't. So that's when like if
• 5:09
  you see your friends doing things something different or if they withdraw whatever, then
• 5:13
  you know, checking on them and actually follow through. No, but you
• 5:18
  know, mental health is spoken about way more now, which is good.
• 5:20
  You know, there's more support mechanisms going out there. We're raising money this
• 5:26
  weekend for free awesome organizations Headspace, Black Dog and Beyond Blue, you know
• 5:31
  what I mean. So, and even our health system is good to like,
• 5:36
  there's mental health plans out there and stuff too. So it's just finding
• 5:42
  what works for people too. I think it's important to take them on there
• 5:46
  too, like, because as much as raising money for it is great,
• 5:47
  it's also about raising awareness, like letting people know that there are places out
• 5:53
  there where you can go for help. If you're not comfortable talking your best
• 5:56
  mate, pick up the phone. There's always like there's always an anonymous places
• 6:00
  you can fall and it's just about being aware that these things exist and maybe
• 6:03
  you're no alad with it. Yeah, well that's at the suicide prevention lines
• 6:09
  out there. There's mental health lines as well. I did a few years
• 6:14
  back, I did on my mental health first aid course. Yeah, that
• 6:17
  was a really cool course to do. It was just like a one day
• 6:21
  thing for a few hours, but they went through a lot of different things
• 6:25
  and you get like a book from it. Cool. Another beautiful thing about
• 6:30
  event slide this is that there's so many bands on and people are bound to
• 6:34
  not know every band, so those go along. But Unfloven Pugnatius tell us
• 6:39
  a bit more about you, guys with high energy punk band in your face
• 6:46
  me rand a lot. A lot of our songs are about mental health,
• 6:51
  other songs about you know, going gigs, having a good time partying,
• 6:57
  and then we've also got other songs about social issues as well. And just
• 7:02
  yeah, if you like something, if you like to jump around in the
• 7:06
  pit, I'm going to check us out. I love yeah slash around a
• 7:15
  typical pugnacious live show to us in and what people can expect, as I
• 7:17
  said, looks high energy from me. I've run around a lot on stage
• 7:23
  jumping about. I'm sorry, I didn't even know I was going to be
• 7:28
  doing this kind of thing to say, I'm gonna like brown in it up,
• 7:32
  you know what I mean. We've got some stuff on Instagram and Facebook.
• 7:39
  If anyone wants to see what we do, you can check us out
• 7:42
  on there. We've got some live videos on there pretty much, and got
• 7:46
  live stuff. We're hoping to record later in the year though, on next
• 7:50
  year. That's our goal. So you say you, I hope look at
• 7:54
  a red recording. If you've got songs written to record, it's just a
• 7:56
  matter of find a charm at Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. We've
• 7:59
  got songs written. We're ready to go. We just have to find time,
• 8:03
  you know, never enough time. We're also busy. The guys in
• 8:07
  my band are in like four other bands too, you know what I mean.
• 8:11
  I'm a mart We all got kids too, life, you know,
• 8:16
  so manly children are they? And I work with kids too. They're awesome,
• 8:24
  but they are. I love mine to death, but I love it
• 8:28
  when they go home to mamma as well. Give usad. But yeah,
• 8:35
  I've got a five year old seeking seven and nine, so it's I'm feeling
• 8:41
  your pain, but I love it now. We've touched on this a little
• 8:48
  bit before. But your songs are about things like drinking, socializing, mental
• 8:52
  health, the current climate. So it's fair to say you're a socially aware
• 8:56
  band. But how important is that in the modern age when connected with fan
• 9:00
  used to sort of keep your finger on the pulse with things like that.
• 9:05
  I don't know, Like you obviously you want to have stuff that people can
• 9:07
  connect to, but like I'm also writing just for like us, I mean,
• 9:11
  you know what I mean, Like the songs I'm writing and just what
• 9:15
  I'm feeling at the time or what they're feeling, and like it's you know,
• 9:20
  some of it's therapeutic when you write, like it's fun. Some of
• 9:24
  it's just like you know, you're writing when you hang over coming back from
• 9:30
  another gig. I got some good drinking that time, and that one was
• 9:33
  going that I wrote that one just coming home, like oh no, you're
• 9:37
  going to pick up my daughter, like after I'm going to my husband's gig
• 9:41
  the night before, you know what I mean. So, like we're not
• 9:48
  trying to write like the social issue songs that we're seeing about that like stuff
• 9:54
  that's like specific of what it's kind of it's more like dystopic lyrics or things
• 9:58
  that I'm just kind of like, I wrote one song I was kind of
• 10:01
  watched nineteen eighty four. You know, we watched that after having watched it
• 10:05
  in a long time. You know, a lot of that kind of stuff
• 10:07
  going on, like that kind of thing, and they fully stay kind of
• 10:09
  like that kind of thing of social issues kind of thing, or like you
• 10:16
  know, freedom and you know, like rights, you know, and just
• 10:20
  different things like that. Or but like like I've like the song I wrote
• 10:28
  this they really want to play this weekend that I've wrote ages Go. It's
• 10:31
  called a U O K. And I'm really hoping that we can play it
• 10:33
  this weekend. We've had one jam to it. We wrote it, so
• 10:37
  I had to play for it at the end of the jam. It was
• 10:39
  like fifteen minutes at their gam and it just came together. But we haven't
• 10:43
  been out of We meant to play a gig last weekend, like one of
• 10:46
  our biggest gigs, and unfortunately COVID struck family members and we just couldn't play.
• 10:50
  So that was going to be the practice for this weekend for that song.
• 10:56
  But we'll hopefully play it this weekend. We're just winging it regardless.
• 11:00
  You don't know and no one who knows what it sounds like anyway, so
• 11:01
  it doesn't matter, right, But that song I really want that for this
• 11:07
  weekend because it's yeah, are you okay? It's all about like checking in
• 11:11
  on your mates and all of that, and so that song I've kind of
• 11:16
  not wrote for rock Beat Suppression, but that's the song I wanted for rock
• 11:22
  Beat Suppression to be for that song. So that song I wrote for pretty
• 11:26
  much. Yeah, I hope it plays next. We want to know a
• 11:31
  song called Mental Health too, and the Manic Attack and a couple others even
• 11:35
  things cool. Of course you want everyone there to be there for all the
• 11:39
  bands all day, but what time of pugnacious one in case people trying to
• 11:43
  plade around your set? I think I run about nine, Yeah, yeah,
• 11:48
  about nine o'clock, I think one. Oh. And for those who
• 11:52
  don't know, all who have forgotten what Speed Depression is one of the bands,
• 11:54
  you will tab them this Saturday, September sixteen, the song from early
• 11:58
  in the afternoon, and all the proceeds go to a very good course.
• 12:01
  So got on you for being in part of it, and I'll see you
• 12:05
  there for a beer. Yeah, I look forward to it and come along,
• 12:09
  guys. It is an awesome fun day. It's just a really good
• 12:11
  vibe. Awesome bands, sounds really good. They're the guys who do the
• 12:16
  production. They're always do a really good job for me in a band,
• 12:20
  so to pun band, you know, that's a treat and a player like
• 12:24
  so, you know, I really love the DIY gigs. They're my favorite
• 12:28
  kind of gigs, you know what I mean. But it is cool when
• 12:31
  you get to you know, haven't always out there. I always put on
• 12:35
  a good production, but everything's great place. Yeah, and all the all
• 12:39
  the volunteers that are amazing too, Like a big shout out to those people
• 12:43
  too, and all the people you know you're doing all the behind is all
• 12:46
  the sponsors that have donated. There's raffles, guys, come along, like
• 12:50
  there's prizes to be one. I'm sorry, I'm not prepared to just had
• 12:52
  all this stuff in front of me. But go to the facebook page,
• 12:56
  go to the event, all the details run it. There's a competition at
• 13:00
  the moment too, guys. So if you do want to go, you
• 13:03
  can go to their Facebook. There's a couple of things you gotta do like
• 13:05
  like a pose, comment a couple of things, share it, I think,
• 13:07
  and you could be in the chance to win two tickets to the festival
• 13:11
  for the event, and they've got raffle tickets included in that too. But
• 13:16
  come along Man's for Tavern Saturday. I think it starts eleven, twenty bands
• 13:20
  come on, twenty bands and all the money goes to mental health organizations,
• 13:28
  So you know you're doing good by comment. You're help and you're help and
• 13:31
  raise funds for mental health. So you just think of it as you're like,
• 13:33
  you know, donation charity for mental health and you get to see twenty
• 13:37
  bands with it. How good is that? I'm going to put a better
• 13:41
  myself on Thanks very much all. Yeah, awesome, Thank you so much.
• 13:48
  Look forward to it having an awesome pressing night, ye