Mélancolia – 'Identity, Evolution, and Touring'

Australia's heavy // alternative pot is overflowing with talent just waiting to take on the world; and with each release they put into the ether, world domination etches closer.

Prior to the release of Mélancolia’s sophomore album random.access.misery, Wall Of Sound had a chat with Joshua Taafe and Alex Hill about the band’s sonic and visual identity, evolution of sound, and their debut headline tour.

Watch the chat or read of for the best bits..

With a 10 out of 10 debut album alongside tours overseas and across Australia, Mélancolia’s momentum feels unstoppable right now. We're on the verge of their debut headline tour and close to the release of their sophomore album random.access.misery. I'm absolutely stoked to have Josh and Alex here with us at Wall of Sound. Thanks for joining us fellas.

Alex: Thanks for having us, brother. Stoked to be talking to you.

Last year’s HissThroughRottenTeeth left a mark on the deathcore scene with the band's gothic dread-filled horror signature sound. random.access.misery retains this signature noise but expands it to create a unique collection of music that is absolutely unlike anything else out there. As musicians, what drives you guys to keep evolving and how the fuck do you come up with this stuff?

Alex: I think we get bored of playing the same old stale sort of stuff. I think that's what it comes down to.

Speaking on behalf of everyone we're all a bit over it, the deathcore thing is starting to wear us out a bit. It's just everywhere you look, everyone's doing it.

It's not to say that's a reason for the change. Change was quite natural, the expansion at least. It was just going back to our roots. All of us have come from like nu-metal backgrounds. That was always a bit of flavour in the last album. I think it was more just getting a bit tired of the same old deathcore tropes and trying to move into a territory that we're familiar with and love but felt that we could expand upon and be true to us still.

Josh: Instead of just playing the same – not regurgitated, but it feels regurgitated – deathcore death metal stuff why don't we just do something that’s way more natural? I wouldn't say the deathcore thing was forced but why try when we can just do this thing like a hundred times easier.

Alex: It feels more like us. I think it comes more naturally from us. We've all come from a deathcore, death metal background. It's been years of us doing it. I think all of our beginnings on our respective instruments were probably more rooted in nu-metal and that side of things. It just felt like coming home to that rather than forcing riffs out of us that we didn't particularly strive to want to do.

I'm relatively new into the deathcore scene. I've kind of dipped my toes into this big surge that's been happening since the start of COVID and stuff. It was really, really interesting to me to hear that there's you guys making your unique stuff, but that's also got the flavours of your inspirations and nu-metal. It really left a mark on the scene, obviously it's led to you guys getting some crazy opportunities overseas and nationally. I'm glad that you guys are able to see the value in it and push forward to create something new. There's a lot of factors that diversify your sound in random.access.misery. Inclusion of clean vocals was a big one that I remember the comments on, the jump scare clean vocals as an example. I really like how the album blurs the lines between metalcore, deathcore, nu-metal, and a lot of blackened influence. Genre has its place, but with labels, sometimes there are limitations. How do you guys manage to create your own fresh and unique sound in a scene that really can be oversaturated?

Alex: I think it is a blending of everything we love. The reason specifically for me that I write music is I write music I want to hear.

You'll never catch me or us releasing music that we don't enjoy listening to.

There's a lot of times where I might be listening to a band, it's like “this part was sick, but God I wish it did this next.” It just comes out naturally, it's not often that we're going, “oh we need to write this kind of song.” It just sort of comes out.

I really appreciate it when artists, when they write shit that they like, it's like 'oh we have to have a token breakdown song or we have to have a token song with, I don't know, the horny riff or whatever, like, oh, we need to have this song about this.' It's just, you write what you want to hear and what you want to play, which if you guys are going to play it for the length of an album cycle, you've got to love it.

Alex: A good way to put it is sometime last year when I put out my album of the year list and I said guesses for next year were going to be, I just straight up said it's our new album. It's not coming from a place of ego or arrogance. It's genuinely the kind of stuff I want to hear in music. I'm going to put that onto recording.

I can't imagine us just regurgitating “HissThroughRottenTeeth 2” and enjoying it, because I sure as hell wouldn't. I know Josh wouldn't. I guess I won't say that it all naturally comes out. Sometimes I'm feeling like I want to write this kind of a feeling, or I really like this song by this band. What do I like about it? And what would I do to expand upon that kind of a vibe? That's probably as close as it comes to it being an actual mental thought that isn't just whatever came out, came out.

Yeah, sick. Anything to add onto that one, Josh?

Josh: With the whole thing about genres and labels and stuff, we're lucky that we work with cool labels. No one tells us what to do pretty much. They just back us as us. And if it's not good, then too bad, because we're doing it basically. No one from either label like Greyscale or Nuclear Blast have ever been like 'oh, you should probably do this.' No one has ever done that. So it's really easy for us to just be ourselves because we have the backing to be ourselves.

That's such an important thing in making good music, not just music that's fun to play or listen to, but music that people gel with.

Josh: Yeah, 100%.

You've got a very evolutionary visual identity going on. The all-white attire contrasts with the dark imagery and identity of Mélancolia. But you still have all the body paint and everything going on, it feels like a reflection of the direction you're going. You've still got your signature sound, but you've got this new tone visually and audibly coming through. Was that intentional, that kind of visual aspect of your shows and your performances? And if so, where did that come from?

Josh: It's quite a crisis being in white.

Alex: Yeah it is such a crisis. One show on that Thy Art Tour and we're all like 'fuck, so much black paint.' I probably only just started writing the album and I would have said to Josh the next album cycle is white and blue. That's the vibe. If HissThroughRottenTeeth was black with tones of red and greys and stuff, this was going to be white, blue and chrome.

We took so much influence from Nu-Metal, like the Iowa cycle of Slipknot visually that sort of gave me that vibe of those colours. I do often associate sound with colours.

Look at our video for ‘ALL_IS_RUST’, it's directly influenced by Spineshank ‘Synthetic’ and there's a lot of silver and blue in that. Static X did a lot of silver and blue vibe. I would say it was calculated right from the start before I really knew how much shape it was taking, but it also helped shape the sound we sort of took on. The black body paint thing is just always going to be a part of the staple as unfortunate as it is when we're getting ready for show 17 on a tour and we're all just like, 'fuck I don't want to put the body paint on.'

Josh: I was smart and I got long sleeves.

Alex: Yeah, big brain time. The fit I wear in the ‘ALL_IS_RUST’ video, I do my entire torso fully painted black. It looks cool as but in hindsight, it's going to kill me if I do that fit on the tour. Visually it felt like that was where we were going. It felt very Y2K. It felt very cyber. It felt very MTV. There's so much to a full white fit, and I've said it before in interviews that all white is as goth as all black. I actually think Dimmu Borgir's live performance of ‘Forces in the Northern Light’, they did the full white fits. That was probably the initial catalyst for planting the idea in my head. It was definitely intentional and it definitely helped shape the sound/the sound sort of brought that on.

All the other bands you see, they're always in the black shirt and the black jeans or they've just got the full black get up or sometimes they're just comfy, whatever. But when you've got the stark white outfit that you guys have on, it adds to that flair.

Josh: It's pretty abrasive to see, really. When you think about it, everyone is always wearing black and it's just really abrasive. Here's five dudes in all white.

Alex: With the blue light as well.

The blue light looks so good. You go from this emo goth look with the big long coat, the fishnet top and then these white long sleeves and the paint just sticking out from the neck. It's awesome stuff.

Alex: Thanks bro. I appreciate it.

Touching on you guys live, the songs from the album – from what we've heard so far – they hit just right in a live setting. I was pretty lucky to see all the current singles in Albury on the Thy Art Is Murder Tour and I'm curious to how effective you find the process of creating music that's catered specifically to a live show. I understand that you try and write music that caters to mosh pits and stage dives and stuff like that.

Alex: We've spent so much time touring since we started. We would sort of figure out what songs were hitting hard live and what were more fun for us to play. It was sort of a combination of that. Going into writing, even as far as not even just instruments, vocally I was trying to write stuff that I knew would be more fun to play live. A lot less taxing because writing HissThroughRottenTeeth, doing the vocals for that, we hadn't performed yet. I wasn't really sure what my limitations were going to be once I was on stage and adrenaline was hitting. I went into this a lot more conscious of that and I think we just have more fun when the crowd's going nuts. We have more fun when it's groove orientated instead of playing these crazy technical riffs with bullshit fast drums underneath them. It's just like we're having so much more fun just grooving out. It was a lot of the playing and testing, which songs were being received well live on the HissThroughRottenTeeth cycle as far as going to Europe.

We premiered ‘ALL_IS_RUST’ over there two months before it came out and the difference in crowd reaction for that song versus all the songs off Hiss was unbelievably different. The crowd was way more into it.

I love ‘Horror_Ethereal’, that's a debut track, all-time banger. ‘ALL_IS_RUST’ and ‘SP!T’ and ‘Picking Scabs’, they fucking go off.

Josh: Sometimes less is more. We're not playing less stuff, but we're playing less stuff. It's more digestible. It still hits, but it hits different. I don't know how to explain it. It hits a different part of the brain than being like, 'holy fuck what is that?'

Alex: It hits the caveman part more than it hits the metal nerd part.

I'm a caveman at heart. Give me a sick breakdown any day of the fucking week not something super technical. When ‘ALL_IS_RUST’ comes on, as soon as I heard those opening notes, I'm like 'oh fuck here we fucking go'.

Alex: Glad it hits.

‍Speaking of touring, you've toured in Europe and the UK with Suffocation, Ingested. You've shown Australia plenty of love with the likes of To The Grave, Cattle Decapitation, and most recently, Thy Art Is Murder. You're finally heading out on a headline run of Australia. What can we expect from you guys in this tour, in addition to sick merch runs, Toby Thomas on bass, and more of random.access.misery than ever before?

Alex: Josh, do you want to handle this one?

Josh: More songs that are new?

Alex: We're playing the longest set we've ever done.

Josh: I played it today and I was like, 'wow I'm sitting down, and this is pretty hard.'

Alex: We'd get these show offers to headline, or we'd get asked to headline tour, and we just always knocked it back because we were waiting for the right timing. So, this whole time we've been grinding the axe, preparing to eventually do a headline tour that felt worthy of a headline.

It wasn't just a local band going out and playing last at the end of a run of shows. This is how we've evolved. This is what we are now.

I think what we've sort of got in store feels a lot more like a level up. I think that's probably the best way to put it. Even on the Thy Art tour, it's pretty on that direction of what to expect. But there's still so much more to come. It's establishing us as that next level.

The level up is so clear. I remember the first time I saw you guys was at the once-off Gravemind show at Stay Gold.

Alex: That was our second show ever. I remember that.

The level up from there to where you guys are now is awesome to see. I'm really excited to catch you guys on the headline tour and see where you guys are at with that long-ass set that you're probably dreading.

Josh: Nah, it's gotta be mad. I'm complaining, but I'm just a loser.

Alex: I think this is the thing. It's a long set, but we're playing songs that we all love. And there's new songs in there that all of us are fucking pumped to debut. I think that's the most exciting part. Plus we're going out with the full lineup with Toby on bass, the energy is so different now in a good way. He just brings this crazy energy to the stage. We've always had Sean our photographer/videographer with us. And now we've got Seamus our front of house who's just joined the team. It just feels like this is the right time.

The impact we're going to leave is with this team of people. We couldn't have a better group surrounding this run.

It’s gonna be such a cohesive unit. Toby wasn't on the Thy Art tour, but I'm so freaking keen to see what he brings to the stage in September.

Alex: We had a situation where we had to “in and out” Toby and Billy. Toby was away for two weeks right in the middle, and Billy was away for the first and the last. We only played on that run, two shows as a full lineup.

Josh: It was wild.

Alex: Me, Mase and Josh were in the trenches, but Toby and Billy come in fresh as.

Josh: I just had a week off and I'm like, 'shut up.'

Alex: I've been sleeping in an RV next to Sean for three weeks bro. The energy on stage with all of us is sort of undeniable. I think that's the main point, and I think that's going to be a big talking point after this headline run.

Fuck yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. So I gotta ask, what are your favourite songs, or can you nail it down to one or two favourite songs from random.access.misery? I absolutely love the title track, and both the 'Cold...' tracks on the end. They all just hit hard.

Alex: I go through modes of which ones I like. It's definitely the last three; ‘random.access.misery’, ‘Cold Now…’, ‘…Colder Still’. I just feel like there's so much in those three songs. They all feel pretty cohesive. It feels like a big journey. But it changes. There's some songs I'll vibe more than others some days. Some days and even the singles; originally, I probably would have told you they were my favourite but just because we've been playing them the longest and we did all the music videos for them and all that sort of stuff they move to the back. But yeah the last three for me probably. 

Josh: It's probably the same for me. ‘RoseBloomWrist’ is a sick song that's fun. It's the hardest song to play by a mile but it's sick.

Alex: ‘RoseBloomWrist’ is kind of hectic.

Josh: It's really sick though.

Even that title just goes hard as shit.

Josh: How beast is it?

Alex: I think I got that from – Nick Cave maybe had a song and he had he had a reference saying that a rose placing a rose somewhere was someone bleeding so that's sort of where that that's come from yeah; ‘RoseBloomWrist’ so like a rose blooming from the wrist it's sort of what that means. We have some cool shit around that song too so there's some real cool shit coming out around that song specifically.

I'm keen for the rest of the world to get their ears on it because it's gonna be freaking nuts. Love them or hate them you're gonna fucking remember Mélancolia. Make sure you get your ears on random.access.misery come and see a show on this tour, it's gonna be historic. Thanks so much guys for joining us at Wall of Sound.

Josh: Thank you, lovely to see you again.

Alex: Yeah good to see you again bro.

Interview by Tyler Lubke.

random.access.misery is out now - stream it here.

Mélancolia - RANDOM.ACCESS.MISERY tracklisting

1. ALL_IS_RUST
2. icanseethroughtheholesinmyhands
3. Picking Scabs
4. boiler.room
5. Lithia feat. Hunter Young
6. RoseBloomWrist
7. SPIT! feat. Christopher Mackertich
8. random.access.misery
9. Cold Now...
10. ...Colder Still