Progressive metallers Chaos Divine, soon to hit these Melbourne shores, are yet another Swan-side band coming to our collective rescue. And this time they’re bringing Melbourne genre-benders AlithiA with them – well, sort of.
The upcoming show at The Evelyn will be part of a double-billing tour, not unlike the Queens of the Stone Age/Nine Inch Nails runaround last year. Chaos Divine will headline in Sydney, before swapping roles when they come down to AlithiA’s hometown a night later. Headtorch and Sons of Abraham will also be joining for the Melbourne leg.
Why the partnership with AlithiA, though? “They’re a really interesting band,” says Ryan Felton, full-time guitarist and part-time keyboardist of Chaos Divine. “We actually had them over [in Perth] for our Soldiers single launch in 2014, and so they came over and we hit it off from there, really. They’re really cool guys, and they’re a very interesting band and very, very different from anyone we’ve played with before.
“They’ve a very hard genre – you know, what they’re playing is a sort of a space-prog-rock combination. So yeah, they came over, we had a bunch of really good shows and we really dig them.”
What’s more, this won’t be just a regular old show. AlithiA have a rather conspicuous trick up their sleeve: they have made a short film, and intend to screen it on the night. Sacrifice, described by the band as “part-mockumentary, part-art film”, will be given an advanced screening at both dates. Felton can’t really give us any more information than that; he’s only seen the trailer, but has been assured it’s almost Spinal Tap-esque.
For Chaos Divine, meanwhile, 2015 has seen the release of their second album, Colliding Skies, back in March, followed by an autumn tour of Australia. On paper, this year also marks the band’s tenth anniversary, but when quizzed about it, Felton palms it off.
“You could probably say this is our ten-year anniversary, but we didn’t really consider ourselves serious probably until 2006, because that’s when we released our first EP.”
Since then, other than Colliding Skies, the lads have released another EP (Avalon, 2008) and the debut album (The Human Connection, 2011). Just as strikingly, they recorded their own version of Toto’s classic, Africa. In a manner not too far from something you’d see in the movies, an idea they originally pursued on a whim turned into an almost overnight sensation, even gaining applause from Toto guitarist Steve Lukather. “He ended up tweeting that this was the best cover version he’d ever heard,” Felton says.
Beyond this mini-tour, Chaos Divine plan to fit in more shows on the eastern seaboard. Their appearance at Brisbane’s Bigsound, taking place in early September, was recently announced, and they plan to use that gig as a platform for more shows. The last time the lads were in Europe, Soldiers was winning the West Australian Music award for Best Heavy/Metal Song of 2014 (“We had to have a friend go pick it up for us,” says Felton). By mid-2016, Chaos Divine will be in the Northern Hemisphere once more. May fortune smile upon them.
BY NICHOLAS HARTMAN
