Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / The Gentle Art Of Killing With LEENO DEE From DEPARTMENT OF GLOOM
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I'm lean Ad from Department of Gloom and
- 0:04Speaker 1: we've got this new release, kill Someone, which is an
- 0:07Speaker 1: album track which is coming out as a video, which
- 0:10Speaker 1: comes out on the twenty fourth of January, and we
- 0:13Speaker 1: can't wait for everyone to see it because we're really
- 0:15Speaker 1: proud of what we've come up with.
- 0:17Speaker 2: Yetfuleno, thanks for joining us today.
- 0:18Speaker 3: Brother, my pleasure.
- 0:22Speaker 4: As you say, Ray, Department of Gloom release your new
- 0:24Speaker 4: single kill Someone in this Friday, January the twenty four
- 0:27Speaker 4: So how you feel about it, maybe you'll letting your
- 0:29Speaker 4: baby out there into the world.
- 0:31Speaker 5: Isn't an album track now since the release last year,
- 0:35Speaker 5: but play it live like people really seem to get
- 0:37Speaker 5: off on it, and it's funny like Charles Silly and
- 0:40Speaker 5: my old my guitar.
- 0:42Speaker 3: Play from Jerk. It's got a kid.
- 0:44Speaker 1: It's his kid's favorite track off the album, and it's
- 0:47Speaker 1: like some of the heavier contingent we get at the gigs.
- 0:49Speaker 3: It's their favorite track off the album and it's.
- 0:52Speaker 1: Probably one of our favorite tracks on the album too,
- 0:55Speaker 1: So we thought the'd big good one to do a
- 0:56Speaker 1: VID for give us some life.
- 0:59Speaker 4: Definitely, like you said, Roy, she's an absolute bowder of
- 1:02Speaker 4: a song that doesn't really sort of get to one
- 1:05Speaker 4: style of music, so you tell us about it more
- 1:07Speaker 4: from a musical point of view and what you were
- 1:09Speaker 4: going for with it.
- 1:12Speaker 3: With that one, well, you have to go back to
- 1:16Speaker 3: like how we started the band.
- 1:17Speaker 1: Like everybody comes from really varied backgrounds, but we all
- 1:20Speaker 1: have a like a middle spot that we meet in,
- 1:22Speaker 1: you know, Like Biers was in the Gena Torturers and
- 1:25Speaker 1: he did some time in Our Last Enemy as well,
- 1:27Speaker 1: which was.
- 1:28Speaker 3: Really a really cool side of what he's capable of.
- 1:31Speaker 1: On the other hand, he's also a huge fan of
- 1:33Speaker 1: bands like The Cars Me I've grew up. I was
- 1:38Speaker 1: in The Queen and The Suite and Kiss and then
- 1:40Speaker 1: I discovered you know, White Zombie and Nine Inch Nails
- 1:44Speaker 1: in the early nineties. And Phil's kind of the same,
- 1:48Speaker 1: you know. He started off with the classic rock stuff
- 1:50Speaker 1: with Purple and Van Halen, and he discovered right about
- 1:53Speaker 1: the same time as me because we were playing in
- 1:55Speaker 1: a band together. He discovered the same stuff I did.
- 1:58Speaker 1: And then James comes from that kind of school as well,
- 2:00Speaker 1: you know. So it's a pretty wide if you want
- 2:04Speaker 1: gene pool of music. You know, lots of different little
- 2:06Speaker 1: DNA's in there. So if you listen to the album,
- 2:11Speaker 1: there's a real variation of stuff on there, Like it's
- 2:13Speaker 1: goes from more poppier stuff to the heavier stuff. As
- 2:17Speaker 1: we've played together more and we're writing more and we're
- 2:19Speaker 1: becoming more of a band that works together, the stuff
- 2:23Speaker 1: starting to take more of a definite direction. There's a
- 2:25Speaker 1: little more downtunes and gender tortures, and there's still that
- 2:29Speaker 1: pop on it though it's something like maybe in Wednesday thirteen.
- 2:33Speaker 1: So with this song, I think that kind of encapsulates
- 2:36Speaker 1: all of that together.
- 2:38Speaker 4: It's definitely bro Like gotta ask, did you have anyone
- 2:41Speaker 4: in mind, particularly when you wrote the song with its
- 2:44Speaker 4: ty to like kill someone?
- 2:45Speaker 1: Okay, no, we didn't have any I didn't have anybody
- 2:47Speaker 1: in mind necessarily. I just was having one of those
- 2:50Speaker 1: days when you know you want to kick the shit
- 2:52Speaker 1: out of something or you want to you know, you fuck,
- 2:54Speaker 1: I could just kill someone today. You know you don't
- 2:57Speaker 1: physically really want to kill anybody, but you need to
- 2:59Speaker 1: get that frustration out, Like like I said, like with say,
- 3:04Speaker 1: you know, Limp Giscuit one of the break stuff to
- 3:06Speaker 1: get them all out of the.
- 3:06Speaker 4: System, right and you're also going to be dropping a
- 3:09Speaker 4: music video, Mate, which the press release describes as the
- 3:13Speaker 4: most ambitious and exciting video ever done by the band.
- 3:16Speaker 2: Like that sounds intriguing, Mate gives us more details.
- 3:20Speaker 3: Well, it is.
- 3:20Speaker 1: We've done videos before and we were fairly happy with them,
- 3:23Speaker 1: but they weren't right in tune with what the song
- 3:26Speaker 1: was kind of about, you know, like sometimes you just
- 3:29Speaker 1: end up with a video and you don't have much control.
- 3:31Speaker 1: Videos were good, but this is the first one where
- 3:34Speaker 1: we've actually been like ninety percent hands on.
- 3:38Speaker 3: We had we had.
- 3:39Speaker 1: A professional cruise shoot it, really high quality shoot, and
- 3:43Speaker 1: then I did all the editing, and then Bizz did
- 3:46Speaker 1: all of the after effects and the further editing and
- 3:48Speaker 1: all the digital editing and all the animation, and he's
- 3:51Speaker 1: just a fucking weapon with that stuff. So we've ended
- 3:54Speaker 1: up with something that's one hundred percent what we wanted,
- 3:58Speaker 1: you know, exactly what we wanted to present the song,
- 4:00Speaker 1: and it's pretty fun to watch.
- 4:02Speaker 3: It's a pretty cool bit.
- 4:03Speaker 2: Oh, you're going to give us a bit of a
- 4:05Speaker 2: bit of a teaser about it, so.
- 4:08Speaker 1: Well, it's got a zombie vibe about it, which is,
- 4:11Speaker 1: you know, not something unusual in the kind of music
- 4:13Speaker 1: that bands like us play. You know, we all tend
- 4:15Speaker 1: to go that way. But but it's pretty cool. I
- 4:17Speaker 1: think people just see it. It's got some really great animation.
- 4:20Speaker 1: It's it's a pretty pretty cool bear. Yeah, just just
- 4:24Speaker 1: check it out. And we look wonderful in it. Of
- 4:28Speaker 1: course we're an incredibly attractive bunch of gentlemen.
- 4:32Speaker 4: You know, am I to say that you're not made?
- 4:35Speaker 4: Look at you? You're an old.
- 4:39Speaker 3: I just got out of bed, you know, this is
- 4:40Speaker 3: how I look.
- 4:43Speaker 2: No excuse my ignorance, you mate.
- 4:45Speaker 4: But it's killed someone part of a new album, cyclaw
- 4:48Speaker 4: Is it still taken from your debut.
- 4:50Speaker 3: This is from the debut which has been out that long.
- 4:53Speaker 3: We do well.
- 4:53Speaker 1: We'll be doing a gig on February seventh at the
- 4:56Speaker 1: Duke in Sydney. It's like a video launched for it,
- 4:59Speaker 1: but we'll actually be playing I think five songs that
- 5:03Speaker 1: are brand new that are not on the record, So
- 5:06Speaker 1: half the set's going to be new material that we've
- 5:08Speaker 1: been working on since then, which we're pretty excited about.
- 5:11Speaker 1: So we're already we've already got demos done for about
- 5:14Speaker 1: I think five or six tracks for the next record,
- 5:17Speaker 1: so we're really excited about going in and doing that.
- 5:19Speaker 1: The first album we're really happy was, but it was
- 5:23Speaker 1: kind of done. We started it before COVID kicked in,
- 5:27Speaker 1: and we hit that spot where we had to stop
- 5:30Speaker 1: doing everything and we had to leave it in the
- 5:32Speaker 1: can for a while and then come back to it,
- 5:34Speaker 1: and you know, it wasn't a really good flow that way,
- 5:37Speaker 1: and the material changed a little bit from when we
- 5:39Speaker 1: first went in and we kind of developed things a
- 5:42Speaker 1: little more. So we're really happy with the way came out,
- 5:45Speaker 1: but I think the next one might be a little
- 5:46Speaker 1: more focused. That's why we've been demoing. We're looking forward
- 5:51Speaker 1: to going in and doing the next one.
- 5:53Speaker 2: Well.
- 5:53Speaker 4: On that matter, like the pressure Lease does say that
- 5:56Speaker 4: Phil someone points to the direction in new music is taking,
- 6:00Speaker 4: So tell us more about that, Like it's going to
- 6:03Speaker 4: be radical new direction or just some subtle changes.
- 6:06Speaker 3: No, no, no, not radical. We are what we are.
- 6:07Speaker 1: We do what we do when we're not not Everyone
- 6:11Speaker 1: in this band's been doing it for so long, you know,
- 6:12Speaker 1: we're not eighteen year old kids that are starting for
- 6:15Speaker 1: the first time and finding out what it's all about.
- 6:18Speaker 3: We've all got pretty good careers.
- 6:20Speaker 1: Behind us, and we do this because we really want to,
- 6:24Speaker 1: you know, like we just we really enjoy what we do.
- 6:26Speaker 1: There could be twenty people in the crowd, or there
- 6:28Speaker 1: could be two thousand in the crowd.
- 6:30Speaker 3: It really doesn't matter. We just really get off and
- 6:32Speaker 3: playing the music that we make.
- 6:34Speaker 1: So when I say, when you say, is it going
- 6:37Speaker 1: to be rad equal departure, No, it's going to be
- 6:39Speaker 1: what comes out of us, and it's going to be
- 6:42Speaker 1: a like a further how do you hold up put it?
- 6:46Speaker 1: If you take something like Kill Someone and you go
- 6:48Speaker 1: a little further down the road with it, the stuff's
- 6:51Speaker 1: going back to having a little bit more of a
- 6:53Speaker 1: heavy vibe, but at the same time more of a
- 6:55Speaker 1: kind of a punky attack. You know, if you if
- 7:00Speaker 1: you imagine maybe Psycho from the album Cross with Kill Someone,
- 7:05Speaker 1: that kind of thing, you know, melodic when you say melodic,
- 7:08Speaker 1: not like melodic metal bands, classic rock bands, but something
- 7:12Speaker 1: like maybe that you would get from a Wednesday thirteen
- 7:15Speaker 1: or a Malon Nansen, or if I had to put
- 7:17Speaker 1: it that way, or even a Ramstone. You know, the
- 7:20Speaker 1: stuff chuggy and heavy, but it's still got that melodic
- 7:23Speaker 1: thing that we can't kick because that's what our backgrounds are.
- 7:26Speaker 2: It's actually an interesting point because you gabbro. Yeah.
- 7:35Speaker 4: Yeah, it's an interesting point because your music is very
- 7:41Speaker 4: difficult to pigeonhole, which I love because I hate the
- 7:44Speaker 4: whole fucking this is what music is.
- 7:46Speaker 2: It's got to fit in the label.
- 7:47Speaker 4: But you guys have been called everything from being called
- 7:51Speaker 4: death rock, you've been called goth core plenty more there.
- 7:55Speaker 4: But there is so much going on, like how would
- 7:58Speaker 4: you describe it to somebody never heard of the band before?
- 8:01Speaker 2: How would you describe it?
- 8:02Speaker 4: Because whichever way you go, you're not really given a
- 8:05Speaker 4: true representation.
- 8:09Speaker 3: It's hard, you know.
- 8:11Speaker 1: I'm kind of happy with that because the best A
- 8:14Speaker 1: lot of those descriptions are things that we've got from people,
- 8:17Speaker 1: or that we've picked up from the odd review here
- 8:19Speaker 1: and there. It's not stuff that, you know, we don't
- 8:21Speaker 1: sit around coming up with terms to describe ourselves.
- 8:24Speaker 3: I really don't know.
- 8:25Speaker 1: I think, you know, someone said Goscor and I can
- 8:29Speaker 1: see that, but then someone who's really Goscre also they're
- 8:32Speaker 1: not Goscor, you know what I mean? And someone else
- 8:34Speaker 1: said death rock, and then I think, okay, I listen
- 8:37Speaker 1: to death rock stuff I've been listening to Christian death
- 8:39Speaker 1: and stuff like that for decades, and I know that
- 8:41Speaker 1: we're not like that, but I also know that a
- 8:44Speaker 1: lot of people that are into that are into us.
- 8:46Speaker 1: And oddly with the best reactions we've got have been
- 8:50Speaker 1: from places like the UK and Germany in particular. I mean,
- 8:54Speaker 1: I've already done press and interviews and Arabian interview with
- 8:58Speaker 1: Germany with people in Germany, which I haven't really done
- 9:02Speaker 1: much of here, you know, So we're getting nervous from
- 9:05Speaker 1: people over there contacting us and saying, hey, we heard
- 9:07Speaker 1: your stuff online, can we talk about it? And then
- 9:11Speaker 1: I've had people in the UK contact us that want
- 9:14Speaker 1: to help us out.
- 9:15Speaker 3: Over there, you know, like pr people and.
- 9:18Speaker 1: Even a couple of label ideas over there, which you know,
- 9:22Speaker 1: it's not the sort of thing I'm going to yack about,
- 9:23Speaker 1: because until something solid I know how this business works,
- 9:27Speaker 1: I won't to talk about. But the interest is there,
- 9:30Speaker 1: and it's most more from overseason. It is from Australia,
- 9:33Speaker 1: so they're getting something that we're putting across which I'm
- 9:37Speaker 1: not sure how to describe. You know that our music's dark,
- 9:41Speaker 1: it is heavy, but it's also pretty poppy, so I
- 9:44Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what I've described us as,
- 9:48Speaker 1: go punk, goth metal. I say goth because obviously we've
- 9:51Speaker 1: got a kind of look which you know, leans in
- 9:54Speaker 1: that direction. And that wasn't a believe it or not,
- 9:58Speaker 1: It wasn't a conscious effort. You know, I've been doing
- 10:02Speaker 1: that look for years. That's me, you know, since I
- 10:06Speaker 1: can't remember when, you know, like black veil, polish and
- 10:08Speaker 1: eye learner was ingrained on my face when I was
- 10:10Speaker 1: in high school. You know, I was the weird kid.
- 10:13Speaker 1: Beers comes from Florida in the US, and he's exactly
- 10:16Speaker 1: the same. Phil became that way the whole Candy Hartlet's
- 10:20Speaker 1: thing when we were doing that and we moved on
- 10:22Speaker 1: from that into melody black and everything.
- 10:23Speaker 3: He was like that. So it's just in us to
- 10:26Speaker 3: be what we are. It's not a put on, you know.
- 10:29Speaker 3: So I don't know if you define it by look
- 10:32Speaker 3: or if you define it by sound. It's just difficult
- 10:34Speaker 3: to pigeonhole. If someone can tell us, and obviously there's
- 10:37Speaker 3: going to be detractors. You know, someone's going to say,
- 10:39Speaker 3: I reckon your shit. That's okay because we like it,
- 10:42Speaker 3: you know, I'll tell you what we did open.
- 10:47Speaker 1: We opened for something like Wednesday thirteen, and we've got
- 10:50Speaker 1: a lot of mileage out of that show. We won
- 10:52Speaker 1: a lot of people and we've still got our followers
- 10:55Speaker 1: increased overnight on particularly on Instagram, which is a crowd
- 11:00Speaker 1: you know than Facebook, which was great, and those people
- 11:03Speaker 1: are coming to gigs now, which is really good. Then
- 11:05Speaker 1: we played Lambfest, which is a completely different.
- 11:09Speaker 3: Box of fish right, and.
- 11:11Speaker 1: We went over really well there as well. So I
- 11:14Speaker 1: don't know, you told me, I really don't know. We
- 11:18Speaker 1: don't waste a lot of time thinking about it either.
- 11:20Speaker 1: We just do it and if you like it, you
- 11:21Speaker 1: like it. If you don't like it, we're having a
- 11:23Speaker 1: good time doing it.
- 11:25Speaker 2: I wish found.
- 11:26Speaker 1: Arragon or anything either. It's not meant to be Captain
- 11:29Speaker 1: Arrogan's here either. It's just I'm just trying to be honest.
- 11:32Speaker 2: Completely, mate, completely.
- 11:34Speaker 4: Now, you mentioned the single launch party before, which will
- 11:37Speaker 4: be at the Duke in Sydney on February seventh, So
- 11:40Speaker 4: tell us where you got planned for that. You've got
- 11:42Speaker 4: a couple other bands playing too, I believe.
- 11:44Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got a couple of really good bands that
- 11:46Speaker 1: we've played with before. We've got Tomorrow's New Format who
- 11:49Speaker 1: are opening, and we've done shows with them before and
- 11:51Speaker 1: they're very cool. And then we were lucky enough to
- 11:53Speaker 1: have Niveau want to jump on board as well because
- 11:56Speaker 1: they don't do a lot of shows, but when they
- 11:58Speaker 1: do it's always a killer, so it's really great to
- 12:01Speaker 1: get them on board for it as well.
- 12:02Speaker 3: So it's three band bill, it'll be pretty heavy, pretty
- 12:05Speaker 3: intense and a lot of fun.
- 12:08Speaker 4: I hope I'm righty if my memory serves me correctly.
- 12:11Speaker 4: The Duke is a free entry venue as well.
- 12:14Speaker 3: It is probably my favorite venue in Sydney. It's always
- 12:18Speaker 3: free entry.
- 12:20Speaker 1: They're one of those venues that actually take the time
- 12:22Speaker 1: to make the place good for a band.
- 12:25Speaker 3: You know, they're great.
- 12:27Speaker 1: They pay, They have a great live room with a
- 12:30Speaker 1: stage and lighting, and they have great production and they
- 12:33Speaker 1: really look after the band. So we're really happy to
- 12:36Speaker 1: play there.