Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Rallying The Nation With BEN ZILLA From GOATZILLA
Transcript
- 0:21Speaker 1: Gooday.
- 0:21Speaker 2: This has been from Goat Mozilla Chanda Crispy from Heavy
- 0:26Speaker 2: Mag and this is all about our upcoming album, alien Nation,
- 0:31Speaker 2: which released sixteen of August, so our first album that
- 0:38Speaker 2: we've dropped since twenty nineteen. So massively excited and massively
- 0:44Speaker 2: stoked to be here talking to Crispy about it.
- 0:47Speaker 3: Beautiful bad thanks for joining us tonight.
- 0:48Speaker 4: Brother.
- 0:52Speaker 3: So as you say, Godzilla, unleash you, you are of
- 0:54Speaker 3: alienation this Zilla. So you say you're excited about it,
- 0:59Speaker 3: brain it, that's got to be an understatement. Like there's
- 1:02Speaker 3: been a long time between albums. You put a lot
- 1:04Speaker 3: into this, bro, Like how you feeling? Did you think
- 1:07Speaker 3: that it finally captured the true Goats?
- 1:09Speaker 2: Still the sound none of there's the sounds of it
- 1:14Speaker 2: is always evolving and and and growing. But this one
- 1:18Speaker 2: it's it is. It's very it's different from Motherfucker Saurus.
- 1:25Speaker 2: It's you know, we absolutely love it. It's still certainly heavy,
- 1:29Speaker 2: it's got it's got that heavy, the heavy background, it's
- 1:33Speaker 2: got the still got the punk roots very much, so
- 1:38Speaker 2: we're still very much a punk rock band, but bringing
- 1:42Speaker 2: in more elements.
- 1:42Speaker 1: Of metal as where as we're as we're.
- 1:45Speaker 2: Evolving it's this is all stuff that's been written, probably
- 1:54Speaker 2: through COVID and so on, and with with the two
- 1:59Speaker 2: Pizza P one and P two coming in and throwing
- 2:03Speaker 2: their stuff in, and Mick as well as Drama, who
- 2:07Speaker 2: brought the real because he's a good fifteen plus years
- 2:13Speaker 2: younger than us, and he bought some more modern metal
- 2:18Speaker 2: vibes and sensibilities to it. So yeah, look, we're yeah,
- 2:22Speaker 2: we're really excited. It took a lot longer than we
- 2:24Speaker 2: originally thought, be course of COVID and everything that went
- 2:27Speaker 2: along with it.
- 2:29Speaker 1: We ended up recording it all ourselves.
- 2:33Speaker 2: There's one track on there, Guy Cooper from Serotonin recorded
- 2:37Speaker 2: which is Nightmare, and Guy helped me out with the
- 2:40Speaker 2: vocals because I don't have the patience to sit there
- 2:42Speaker 2: and bloody hack away at logic and try to try
- 2:47Speaker 2: to second guess my vocals, so he did that. But
- 2:49Speaker 2: everything else saw all the guitars, all the drums and
- 2:54Speaker 2: the bass we recorded in home studios and P two
- 3:01Speaker 2: Pete Janssen mixed and mastered everything himself, so big learning curve,
- 3:08Speaker 2: but absolutely loved it. And yeah, the the results speak
- 3:13Speaker 2: for themselves.
- 3:14Speaker 1: Absolutely stoked.
- 3:15Speaker 2: We we're very really excited. With what we've put together
- 3:21Speaker 2: and especially having it on vinyl too, So so yeah,
- 3:25Speaker 2: so stoked.
- 3:27Speaker 5: Now.
- 3:27Speaker 3: I don't listened to her before we had a church
- 3:29Speaker 3: and Iden, the first thing that jumped out of me
- 3:31Speaker 3: was very guitar driven, corrected, saying.
- 3:34Speaker 2: That, yeah, I mean we're we're a guitar band and
- 3:38Speaker 2: that's and that's where, you know, that's that's where everything
- 3:41Speaker 2: that all the music we love is heavily guitar bass
- 3:45Speaker 2: and comes from guitar heroes, you know.
- 3:47Speaker 1: From Yeah, there's bluesy stuff there. P two is a huge, huge.
- 3:53Speaker 2: Slash fan, and P one's a big big Steve I fan.
- 4:00Speaker 2: We all love Van Hale, and we all love Kerry King,
- 4:03Speaker 2: we all love you know, you know, Stevie.
- 4:07Speaker 1: Ray Vaughn even going back that far kind of thing.
- 4:09Speaker 2: So there's all these different mixtures of different influences, but yeah,
- 4:15Speaker 2: it's all it's all about the guitars. Both the guys
- 4:18Speaker 2: play solos different styles and they take turns on different songs.
- 4:23Speaker 1: It's a couple of songs on there, like Alien Nation the.
- 4:25Speaker 2: Title cut where they both have a crack at the
- 4:27Speaker 2: solo and they take turns on it. But yeah, it's
- 4:32Speaker 2: all it's all about good old seventy slash eighties face
- 4:37Speaker 2: melting guitar solos.
- 4:39Speaker 3: You get trying to tell me that you've got two
- 4:41Speaker 3: guitarists with no egos in the band. That's got to
- 4:43Speaker 3: be a first.
- 4:46Speaker 1: We've we've been really lucky.
- 4:47Speaker 2: I mean, the whole thing with the with the band is, yeah,
- 4:52Speaker 2: it's musicians. This might come as a surprise to some people.
- 4:56Speaker 2: Musicians can be funny, funny people.
- 4:59Speaker 1: And ego get in the way a lot of times.
- 5:01Speaker 2: We're one of the reasons that we've that we've we've
- 5:04Speaker 2: just stuck together so well is that we all everybody
- 5:07Speaker 2: gets on and we just we all love the same music.
- 5:11Speaker 2: And I'm really fortunate to be playing with a bunch
- 5:15Speaker 2: of very talented guys. It's both both the piets Mick.
- 5:19Speaker 2: We've actually got two drummers at the moment. So we've
- 5:21Speaker 2: got Mick, the drummer who played on most of the tracks.
- 5:23Speaker 2: Now we've got Thiago as well. They're both coming in
- 5:26Speaker 2: and taking turns playing because Thiago Thago plays as.
- 5:30Speaker 1: Drummers do play in a couple of other bands.
- 5:32Speaker 2: But Mix Mix always happy to jump in if if
- 5:36Speaker 2: Thiago can't make it but they're all incredibly talented, and
- 5:40Speaker 2: there's all this amazing, huge amount of respect for for
- 5:43Speaker 2: everybody's everybody's abilities, and everybody brings something different musically to
- 5:49Speaker 2: the to the mix. So writing is writing. Writing is
- 5:53Speaker 2: a lot of fun. It's it's probably part of the
- 5:56Speaker 2: process that getting a song from a concept and turning
- 6:00Speaker 2: it into something that's that's a fully blown songs. It's
- 6:03Speaker 2: my favorite part of the process. And we're back to
- 6:06Speaker 2: doing that now. So we've got this album out of
- 6:08Speaker 2: the way. So we just at the last rehearsal we
- 6:10Speaker 2: started working on new stuff and that's fun.
- 6:13Speaker 1: But that that's that's for next year. So is happening now.
- 6:17Speaker 1: But there's no no egos. We're lucky.
- 6:20Speaker 2: We've just got a bunch of really really good guys
- 6:22Speaker 2: who we we just get along and which is important
- 6:25Speaker 2: because spend a lot of time in cars and in
- 6:27Speaker 2: rehearsal studios with each other and we're just all good
- 6:31Speaker 2: mates and we all love the same music and we
- 6:33Speaker 2: all love making making making loud noise, which is which
- 6:36Speaker 2: is what it's all about.
- 6:38Speaker 3: Damn straight Brother. Now, to date, you've released a single,
- 6:40Speaker 3: Secret Agent Man, and the title track Alien Nations, so
- 6:43Speaker 3: are they good solid representation of what to expect from
- 6:46Speaker 3: now a Rule album.
- 6:48Speaker 2: It's they're both a bit different. There's a really there's
- 6:50Speaker 2: a real mix. Secret Agent Man's pretty funky. We've had
- 6:57Speaker 2: people dancing the macarina to it up and see that
- 7:01Speaker 2: in the Metal gig. I can tell you that was
- 7:02Speaker 2: a bit that's a bit funny, but now it's a
- 7:05Speaker 2: fun track. It's got a bit of a funky vibe
- 7:06Speaker 2: to it. Alien Nation is uh, that's a that's how
- 7:16Speaker 2: would you describe that? There's that that's both the peach
- 7:19Speaker 2: share share solos on that, uh and that that's a
- 7:23Speaker 2: lot of fun but not as not as funky, but
- 7:26Speaker 2: there's a bit of vocal harmonization going on that.
- 7:29Speaker 1: And then in the.
- 7:30Speaker 2: Other tracks with we do you know, we go through
- 7:34Speaker 2: some heavier and some some darker stuff, things like pain.
- 7:41Speaker 1: And Wall Street generals.
- 7:42Speaker 2: They tackle a few more serious kind of kind of concepts,
- 7:48Speaker 2: and then there's a bit more fun, kind of you know,
- 7:51Speaker 2: seventies based rock. We do Nightmare, which is more of
- 7:55Speaker 2: an Akadaka type type thing, and Leave It All Behind,
- 8:01Speaker 2: which is a little bit more Sunday Head, more into
- 8:04Speaker 2: the metal territory, and then you've got black Dog Blues,
- 8:06Speaker 2: which is a real kind of as the name implies,
- 8:13Speaker 2: a bluesy rock songs that's more like you Rose Tattoo
- 8:16Speaker 2: Slash the Poor kind of that that Aussie rock seventies
- 8:19Speaker 2: eighties ossie rock, pub rock vibe.
- 8:23Speaker 3: So yeah, I was speaking of concepts, mate, like, is
- 8:26Speaker 3: the album a look into the alien world through the
- 8:29Speaker 3: eyes of Goatzilla or is it just a cool name
- 8:31Speaker 3: the album?
- 8:32Speaker 1: It's the name, well, it's the it was.
- 8:34Speaker 2: It's the name of the track Alien Nation that we
- 8:36Speaker 2: came up with, and the the lyrics that that the
- 8:40Speaker 2: song went through. A couple of different incarnations had different
- 8:45Speaker 2: different lyrics to it, and this one I came up
- 8:47Speaker 2: with was it was all about just how much we
- 8:51Speaker 2: love playing there.
- 8:53Speaker 1: You know, were kind of because it.
- 8:55Speaker 2: Was around COVID and kind of all the venues are
- 8:57Speaker 2: starting to close down and all the all festivals and
- 9:00Speaker 2: everything and disappearing, and we're going, look, We're just thinking,
- 9:04Speaker 2: you know, what's happening to all this group of people.
- 9:06Speaker 1: We've got this like the tribe of.
- 9:08Speaker 2: People who love music that we used to go out
- 9:11Speaker 2: and spend weekends with, and you just see all these
- 9:13Speaker 2: different people and we're not seeing them anymore because all
- 9:17Speaker 2: the all the music disappeared because of COVID and and
- 9:21Speaker 2: the songs just about that those friendships that you make
- 9:25Speaker 2: in the music scene and just whether whether you're playing
- 9:27Speaker 2: in a band or just going out as part of
- 9:29Speaker 2: the crowd, you start seeing a lot of the same
- 9:32Speaker 2: people and you make really good friendships, your form bonds,
- 9:36Speaker 2: and it's and and and it's about that. It's about
- 9:41Speaker 2: music being something that we all love, and the and
- 9:45Speaker 2: the vibe being at a concept but it's bigger than.
- 9:47Speaker 1: The sum of its parts kind of thing.
- 9:50Speaker 2: And we're disappearing with COVID and so on, we're getting
- 9:54Speaker 2: alienated kind of things. So that was that was the
- 9:57Speaker 2: idea that that was the idea behind that that track,
- 10:00Speaker 2: and we just thought it was it was a cool,
- 10:05Speaker 2: cool name for the album, so we made it the
- 10:07Speaker 2: title cup That's Sweet.
- 10:09Speaker 3: Now it goes to a like musically, essentially, you're a punk,
- 10:14Speaker 3: thrash metal band sort of hybrid of all of those.
- 10:16Speaker 3: But and in the writing and recording process, like how
- 10:19Speaker 3: do you decide how much you have which started to
- 10:22Speaker 3: put into each song? Like is it if you've got
- 10:23Speaker 3: a method to sort of know when you're gone too
- 10:25Speaker 3: far or.
- 10:25Speaker 4: Not far enough.
- 10:28Speaker 1: We we just we just work on it. I mean
- 10:30Speaker 1: it's really person.
- 10:32Speaker 2: Who came up with the concept usually has that they've
- 10:35Speaker 2: got the call at the end of the day because
- 10:37Speaker 2: they've got You've got to have you've got to have
- 10:39Speaker 2: somebody who's kind of in artistic control.
- 10:41Speaker 1: It can't be like this total communal thing. At the
- 10:44Speaker 1: end of the day.
- 10:44Speaker 2: You've got to have some you've got to have it's
- 10:47Speaker 2: one person's vision because songwriting is a it's a very
- 10:51Speaker 2: personal thing, and you can share concepts and you can
- 10:54Speaker 2: share the idea about where a song's going to go.
- 10:57Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, you still need
- 10:59Speaker 2: one person to make the call. So we'll all throwing
- 11:01Speaker 2: ideas into the pot and all work than and give
- 11:04Speaker 2: all the ideas to read a hot crack and we
- 11:07Speaker 2: come up with some amazing stuff like that. But at
- 11:10Speaker 2: the end of the day, it's something I wrote, I
- 11:13Speaker 2: get the I get to save. It's something one he
- 11:16Speaker 2: gets at p. Two, right, he gets the end saying
- 11:20Speaker 2: in what happens.
- 11:21Speaker 1: But yeah, in the.
- 11:23Speaker 2: Main, it's a collaborative process. But yeah, it's a it's fun.
- 11:29Speaker 3: Now you mentioned before that alien Nation is quite different
- 11:32Speaker 3: to twenty nineties album Motherfucker Sauras, so how so, like,
- 11:36Speaker 3: how's it different?
- 11:37Speaker 2: Motherfucker Saurus was really punky because that was that was
- 11:42Speaker 2: that was the first incarnation of Goatzilla, and a lot
- 11:46Speaker 2: of that came out from we were we started off
- 11:49Speaker 2: playing a lot of the punk gigs. Johnny Chaos who
- 11:53Speaker 2: started the band with me, he was really into his
- 12:00Speaker 2: into zoi and street punk, and we'd play, you know,
- 12:04Speaker 2: we played a lot of gigs with you know, awesome,
- 12:07Speaker 2: awesome bands like Plan of Attack and and and Shandy
- 12:11Speaker 2: and and Rat Bastards and so on, and that was
- 12:13Speaker 2: that was. That was a lot of fun, and there's
- 12:15Speaker 2: just a there's a total that there's a real vibe
- 12:18Speaker 2: and an energy to that kind of music. And it
- 12:22Speaker 2: was it was it was just it was all about attitude.
- 12:26Speaker 2: There's there's like, you know, it's eighty twenty attitude kind
- 12:31Speaker 2: of then then music.
- 12:33Speaker 1: And this way. Now we've swapped it around a.
- 12:35Speaker 2: Bit, so it's we've we've we've still got very you know,
- 12:41Speaker 2: there's still a lot.
- 12:41Speaker 1: Of punk sensibilities in there in that.
- 12:44Speaker 2: We do what we do and we're not we're not
- 12:46Speaker 2: trying to fit a formula and trying to fit a
- 12:48Speaker 2: particular style. But because of the the backgrounds of both
- 12:55Speaker 2: the PiZZ and and Mick and more recently Thiago, there's
- 13:00Speaker 2: there's a lot more musical focus on musicianship and what
- 13:06Speaker 2: we're doing there. So it's it's kind of it's kind
- 13:09Speaker 2: of evolving and morphing, and we're just seeing where it
- 13:12Speaker 2: takes us and and we record it and go do
- 13:15Speaker 2: we like it?
- 13:16Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 13:16Speaker 1: We like it.
- 13:17Speaker 2: And we're taking the old, the old Malcolm Young approach.
- 13:20Speaker 2: We do what we do and we don't give a
- 13:21Speaker 2: fuck about what anybody else thinks. And we're just lucky
- 13:24Speaker 2: that that people seem to like it so and we'll
- 13:28Speaker 2: keep doing that.
- 13:29Speaker 3: I guess the big question is like, well, fans of
- 13:31Speaker 3: your earliest stuff on Motherfucker saw Us still like the
- 13:34Speaker 3: stuff on Alien Nation?
- 13:35Speaker 1: Yeah? They will.
- 13:36Speaker 2: We Actually we readed one of the tracks, so we
- 13:41Speaker 2: READI fight to Win. So if a fans have fight
- 13:43Speaker 2: to win, we've don't fight to win round two h
- 13:47Speaker 2: and we've got the we We've amped that up a bit.
- 13:50Speaker 1: And added added.
- 13:54Speaker 2: A few bits and pieces there, so you can, if
- 13:58Speaker 2: anybody is interested, you can compare the two different versions
- 14:01Speaker 2: and that's probably a good yardstick as to how we
- 14:04Speaker 2: do it. It's just a bit that song that we
- 14:06Speaker 2: always plays off our gigs with that one, and yeah,
- 14:11Speaker 2: we just thought it was a it was a good
- 14:12Speaker 2: little exercise to to put that intot the end of
- 14:15Speaker 2: the album.
- 14:16Speaker 3: We Don't Seller a part way through a tour that
- 14:19Speaker 3: started back on Dune to Sick the Newcastle picks up
- 14:22Speaker 3: again in Port Kembler on October to fifth before going
- 14:25Speaker 3: through Lismore and Melbourne, finishing an if switch on November
- 14:28Speaker 3: the sixteenth. Mate, So how's how the first round of
- 14:31Speaker 3: shows going?
- 14:31Speaker 2: They all right, Yeah, it was brilliant. So the run
- 14:35Speaker 2: to Sydney was really cool.
- 14:37Speaker 1: We had.
- 14:40Speaker 2: It was it was the first gig was it was
- 14:43Speaker 2: a little bit quieter than we'd hope simply because it
- 14:46Speaker 2: was absolutely it was pissing down raining Newcastle.
- 14:49Speaker 1: We still got people turning up, which was which was good.
- 14:52Speaker 2: But then the weather cleared up and people started coming
- 14:57Speaker 2: out after that, so I played some awesome van News
- 15:01Speaker 2: did the Cabin Collective in Maitland, which was absolutely brilliant.
- 15:05Speaker 1: That's fun.
- 15:06Speaker 2: That's like a it's a tattoo shop with a cafe
- 15:10Speaker 2: in now at the back of the cafe and tattoo shop.
- 15:13Speaker 2: They put on live bands, so that was cool. In
- 15:16Speaker 2: his recording studio upstairs as.
- 15:18Speaker 1: Well, so that was brilliant.
- 15:19Speaker 2: And then we played Elton Chong's in Penrith which was
- 15:24Speaker 2: once again really really cool, little small narrow dive bar
- 15:29Speaker 2: and had an absolute ball there. Played Bootleggers in Newtown
- 15:33Speaker 2: which was also really cool. They're trying to kind of
- 15:37Speaker 2: pick up the slack from Frank's kind of had to
- 15:40Speaker 2: fold in Sydney. But yeah, that that first one was
- 15:45Speaker 2: really was really cool. In a couple of weeks, we've
- 15:48Speaker 2: got to update the calendar. We've got we've got Paul
- 15:51Speaker 2: mcquarie on Friday the sixth and then the back room
- 15:55Speaker 2: at Coughs on Saturday the seventh, So Paul mcquarie's the
- 16:00Speaker 2: Planets Skate and that's that's shaping up to be quite
- 16:04Speaker 2: a quite.
- 16:04Speaker 1: A big one.
- 16:06Speaker 2: So the management there is looking about two hundred heads
- 16:10Speaker 2: through the door, which would be which is going to
- 16:11Speaker 2: be fantastic, and we're getting a lot of help with
- 16:15Speaker 2: a lot of really cool local bands as.
- 16:17Speaker 1: Well, so we're excited to be to be.
- 16:20Speaker 2: Playing with them and the back room we're just starting
- 16:23Speaker 2: to pump that at the moment, so we're we're hoping
- 16:27Speaker 2: to get a decent, decent turnout for that. But love loving,
- 16:31Speaker 2: loving the loving, the touring, touring, love playing Southeast Queensland
- 16:35Speaker 2: a home, but it's also great to get out into
- 16:38Speaker 2: the into the wild and meet new people and playing
- 16:41Speaker 2: new venues and play with new bands as well.
- 16:44Speaker 3: And where can people find out more inforational about those
- 16:47Speaker 3: shows and grab tickets if they're in those areas.
- 16:49Speaker 2: If you get on to go, if you go on
- 16:52Speaker 2: to Facebook Facebook page go Zilla dot rocks, and or
- 17:00Speaker 2: if you go link tree goat Zilla dot rocks, we've
- 17:03Speaker 2: got all the information.
- 17:04Speaker 3: There now for those who might not have seen Goatzilla
- 17:07Speaker 3: live before and they're unsure whether to go or not.
- 17:09Speaker 3: Run us through a typical goatsill A live shaw Ah.
- 17:14Speaker 2: It's fairly fast, fairly furious. We don't stop for a
- 17:17Speaker 2: lot of breaks. The guys don't get much of a
- 17:19Speaker 2: chance to reach you or anything. We kind of we
- 17:22Speaker 2: we start off hard and fast and keep the pace
- 17:25Speaker 2: up all the way through. So it's all about that
- 17:29Speaker 2: vibe of like live, small venue rock.
- 17:34Speaker 1: A little bit older school.
- 17:36Speaker 2: So if you're seventies, eighties, nineties fan that kind of style.
- 17:41Speaker 1: Yeah you know where you especially the kind of thrash
- 17:45Speaker 1: thrashier stuff as well. You'll you'll love it. It's a
- 17:50Speaker 1: it's an experience, yeah.
- 17:52Speaker 3: All bet all right, well thanks very much of your
- 17:54Speaker 3: time tonight. Alien Nation is out this Friday, August sixteenth,
- 17:57Speaker 3: and she is a fucking good album made. Like I say,
- 18:00Speaker 3: listening for him, she's a cracking luck with it. Love
- 18:03Speaker 3: to see you in the Prey show soon.
- 18:25Speaker 5: I have Jack Jet Let's go by, I said, Spike
- 18:30Speaker 5: sais out, got it, lay and shut out, Blood of
- 18:34Speaker 5: fun this stay there, shy your souls about ten bys,
- 18:40Speaker 5: rose pies, o Jas light and blood of Sun show
- 18:45Speaker 5: all right the bots like the side thing. God's the
- 18:48Speaker 5: sky of by your showers, watch the burning and so
- 18:52Speaker 5: so it's the sweet and jet stee one thousand lots
- 18:57Speaker 5: ten bas all stay not the out great day anything
- 19:02Speaker 5: gets fight. Yeah, that's when they get every one day
- 19:06Speaker 5: side vacation as shot the ancient at.
- 19:32Speaker 4: S five The next day sun they try that sho.
- 19:37Speaker 5: Destroy the beast like that tries day times. I glad
- 19:41Speaker 5: to see the lighting on the wall and that about
- 19:45Speaker 5: that charge.
- 19:46Speaker 4: All we take something that I just full life. They
- 19:49Speaker 4: to sleep the south. That light we felt a ruckshant
- 19:53Speaker 4: all the while.
- 19:54Speaker 5: That's a fine thing, not the ground. And we light
- 19:58Speaker 5: and bid why it makes something alive?
- 20:13Speaker 4: Is it sto to stop stools