“We’ve been fucking around to try and get this new album finished for the last three years now,” he laughs. “We’re just finishing off the lyrics now, which is kind of hard after 20 years: I feel like we’ve said everything.
“Everyone accused us of doing short albums so with our last album we did a three-CD-long epic thing, which some people loved and others hated it. One record was all purely death-rock, one was a grind record with political and anti-political-correctness lyrics, and the third was instrumental doom… So we covered all the bases.
“With this new one,” he continues, “it’s going to be everything all at once, though probably shorter. Like, really short,” he emphasises. “Anyway, the songs are about us getting fatter, getting off meth, the usual kind of stuff…” Fuller laughs.
“Some of the song titles are Laxatives Are My Drug Of Choice and Bangkok To Bangkok, which is about a guy we know who slept with a lady-boy… Stuff like that.”
Not that we’ve come to expect anything less from Blood Duster after 20 years of brutal noise and crude jokes. With album titles like Cunt (2001) and Fisting The Dead…Again (2005), most have learned to take this bunch of lads with a grain of salt. Key word: most.
“You’d think playing with Slayer would be the best experience as far as metal bands go,” says Fuller, “but they’re fucking dickheads,” he opines. “Playing with Slayer was the worst treatment we’ve had by anyone. They suck my cock. Nobody, not even their road-crew, wanted to give us power to the stage, then we get a letter from their management saying ‘we want Blood Duster off the bill – comedy doesn’t work with Slayer’. It was disgusting behavior by a bunch of fat, bloated old guys.
“Mastodon were fucking awesome dudes,” he adds, “but Slayer left me so shitty. The worst thing was that prior to the gig, I’d done some writing about Slayer saying how they were my favourite band and Reign In Blood was untouchable – I totally praised them. I went out of my way to say how much I liked them, then we play with them and they’re cocks.”
Oh it was disappointing, alright, as Fuller laments, but there’s been plenty of highlights over the last two decades too. Sure, the Slayer experience was a massive let-down, but playing with Autopsy at the Maryland Deathfest in 2009 certainly made up for it.
“Even playing the Big Day Out crowds has been pretty good,” he adds. “But playing with Autopsy at the Maryland Deathfest was fucking awesome. The best part was to have them come up to us and tell us we’re fucking awesome; all that shit was even better. It was mind-blowing because I remember being like 15 years old, sitting in my bedroom in country Victoria and listening to those dudes – then all of a sudden, you grow up, you’re in a band and you’re hanging out with them!”
Yes, it’s a massive dose of praise, considering you’d be hard-pressed to find a band Fuller actually likes. When it comes to the local scene, the bassist admits Melbourne’s has the best bands by far in terms of Australia as a whole – not that it necessarily means that he is a fan of all of them.
“It’s because people have poor taste,” Fuller states. “I reckon anyone that’s in a band shouldn’t really like most other bands around them anyway. Melbourne’s got the biggest metal fanbase in Australia, though. You’d think it would be Perth because the Soundworks guys (metal promoters Soundworks Touring) are there, but it’s not. Sydney is so behind the times that they’re just getting the thrash thing now… I think Melbourne’s had the best live scene purely because of the venues and stuff.”
Like The Prague, of course, as Fuller adds. With Blood Duster headlining the venue’s upcoming first birthday celebrations alongside the likes of Internal Nightmare, Broozer, King Parrot and Before Dawn, Fuller says it’s the only time the band’s hometown fanbase will get to see Blood Duster for a while.
“Yeah, we’re going to be touring Bastardfest in September, but we won’t do Melbourne,” he explains. “There’s just no room for us on the bill, one band had to be taken off, so I figured I’d take my own.
“Bastardfest basically started with me and the Soundworks guys wanting to give people all the things that [other festivals] were missing – which is local heavy bands. Last year was really good, even though we only did Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne. This year we’re adding Darwin, Adelaide, Sydney and everywhere. There are still a couple of additions to the lineup that we can’t give away yet, but last year was so close to selling out it was ridiculous. We wanna do it forever.”
