Claemus Tackle Puscifer Classic 'The Remedy' With Brand Spankin' New Cover Song

Unlike Australia, New Zealand isn’t exactly a teeming hotbed of progressive rock and metal. But, based in Hutt Valley, just outside Wellington, Claemus are bucking that trend. Pursuing the classic prog-rock three-piece aesthetic, this band’s history can be traced back almost a decade and a half. And as a strictly DIY concern, they have been quite prolific in the last nine or ten years, releasing a full album, two EPs and now they have a sophomore long-player set to be unleashed.

Lead-off single is a cover of Puscifer’s ‘The Remedy’. It’s a real epic, winding out to over six minutes, and achieving exactly what a good cover version should: retaining the essence of the original while not falling into the trap of being a cookie-cutter carbon copy. It handles the odd five-count time signature of the track with aplomb, and actually manages to inject a little more effervescent energy into the original’s somewhat melancholy vibe. The sound is crisp and vibrant, especially for a band that does it all themselves, and the tune veritably leaps out of the speakers at you. It’s obvious much time, care and attention has been put towards bringing this track to life. If this is the quality of the first single, we’re breathless with anticipation for the full album.

We chatted with them recently, discussing the single, the upcoming album and their short, medium and longer-term plans.

What is the meaning behind the band name?

Taylor: Funnily enough that's a question we get a fair bit. At first glance it may appear as something that you could derive meaning from, in reality it’s a nickname we had for a friend of ours who used to play guitar in the band. We eventually put in the letterform ‘Æ’ in there for a maximum silliness factor really, contrasting how unserious the name truly is!

It's a jokey name that stuck as we couldn't afford to really change it once the first lot of shirts were printed.

You guys have been around for approx. a decade (EP release in 2016), fill us in a little on your history.

Taylor: The band started out as a high school project with myself and our drummer Kit Jenkins. We were both in separate bands at the time that were pretty unsatisfying for us and also felt that the music we wanted to write was a bit of a rarity in the metal space. After our 2016 EP we had Dan Hayston join as a guitarist/keyboardist/all round shit-sorter in the band and have thrown out a slew of releases into the lexicon since then.

The new track is a real epic, tell us all about why you covered this track from Puscifer?

Dan: We have been toying with the idea of a cover for a long time, and everything we tried never quite fit right - cheesy, too similar to the original etc. We are all Puscifer fans, and especially their song ‘The Remedy’ which would get queued routinely in the playlist at gatherings between us. After some trial and error, our version of it just sort of… appeared. We’re really stoked with it and think it stays true to the original, but has enough in there that is uniquely us. We’re only a three piece band and the original has a lot of instrumentation and layers, so it was quite a challenge to try and condense or rephrase parts but I think the juice has been worth the squeeze!

Tell us about your musical inspirations, I can hear maybe bands like Porcupine Tree and Haken, and maybe some Aussie prog (Cog, Karnivool, Dead Letter Circus etc) in your sound, is that fairly accurate?

Taylor: Big 3 of this year for me are Thornhill, Deftones, Rivers of Nihil’s latest albums and it's great I get to listen to all those before I move solely onto Karnivool’s album when that comes out.

Kit: The Aussie prog scene is a huge source of inspiration for us. Cog, Karnivool and Dead Letter Circus are our primary influences from the band's inception until now. It was no coincidence that we opted to engage Forrester Savell to mix and master all of our music haha. Three albums that I have been listening to on repeat recently are: Boundaries- Your Receding Warmth, Fit For And Autopsy -The Sea Of Tragic Beasts’and Tauk- Somewhere Between Here and There.

Dan: Like Taylor mentioned, the new Rivers of Nihil is top of my list. There have been some awesome singles by Textures, COG and Karnivool that have been on repeat, as well as a heap of older Radiohead recently.

You have album number two on the way, tell us about it, its inspirations, themes, musical direction, and when should we expect it to drop?

Dan: I know it sounds trite, but in the musical direction sense, we are doing whatever we like and having fun. Orchestrally driven ‘epics’, heavy, more traditional riff based metal, synth fuelled upbeat and everything in between. Every song is extremely unique from one another, even down to their mixes. It’s super exciting. 

Kit: We explore the pursuit of maintaining a sense of personal sovereignty amidst a backdrop of AI and Big Tech which has become more pervasive and insidious in society. We have leaned into a slightly more experimental sound with this one and intentionally made each song distinct while still maintaining a good blend of catchy riffs and melody. 

We don’t hear of a huge number of prog rock/metal acts coming out of Kiwi-land, what’s the scene like over there?

Kit: There are some good bands here in the heavy/alternative scene but due to New Zealand's relatively small population there is a glass ceiling for this genre so most of us aspire to build an international following. 

Will there be a tour in support of the album and do you think it will get to Australia? As you may be aware, we have a solid prog scene here, although it probably peaked in the 2000s.

Dan: Oh believe me, we would love to get over to Australia and play to the wonderful scene there. We’ve played with a lot of Australian acts over the years and almost without exception, they encourage us to make the journey over. 2026 will be the year, for sure.

Your Facebook page has a lot of past dates, but all in New Zealand, have you ever made it beyond your shores?

Taylor: No but planning to change that very soon!

You do pretty much everything yourselves, what are the inspirations/motivations behind that?

Dan: I like to say, as a band we live by the song (sword) die by the song (sword) ha! We’re fairly driven to produce music that is totally us, and what we want to do. So by having total control over nearly all steps, I feel there’s a greater sense of connection to the songs as well as a deeper sense of pride. I’m also a bit of a production junkie, and really enjoy the process of recording our band.

Do you have a band philosophy, and if so, what is it?

Kit: Simply to write music that fulfils us creatively and also resonates with people. We all encourage each other to insert our own personality when collaborating on someone's idea so we can keep evolving our sound. 

Simply to write music that we all find fulfilling creatively and technically. 

Any longer-term plans/goals for the band?

Taylor: At this stage it will be album 2, we're really excited with what we're putting together and hope the punters get on board with something fresh and interesting.

Interview by Rod Whitfield

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Pre-save 'The Remedy' here