Jake and the band have some pretty high expectations of our country, having never been here before in their lives in any capacity, and more specifically, Aussie fans of heavy music have a lot to live up to. “People have told me that Australian crowds can get pretty rowdy!” he laughs, “so I’m going to be looking out to make sure that people are totally losing their minds and having a good time.
“Besides that,” he goes on, “I’m just really looking forward to hanging out with a bunch of my favourite bands on Soundwave. It’s a great festival, and hopefully I’ll get to get beaten up by a kangaroo while I’m there!”
The self-originated genre classification of ‘lifecore’ is a reaction to the far better known ‘deathcore’ genre, in that they feel that they are inspired by life rather than death, their band tends to see the lighter side of life and music. And Aussie Soundwave punters can expect this vibe to come across in the band’s stage show.
“We like to have fun,” he states plainly. “We’re a metal band, but we do not take ourselves too seriously. We have the uncanny ability of always making something go wrong when we play. If I’m playing with a microphone that has a cord, I will trip over it, if there’s anything flammable on the guitar amp, it will explode. And we take those type of opportunities to try and make fun of ourselves, and have fun with the crowd and be really interactive.
“So, it’s just going to be fun,” he says in conclusion. “It’s just going to be a lot of fun!”
The band has only been around for three to four years, and they are about to break a whole heap of new ground for themselves as a band. Starting with their first trip Down Under, but it doesn’t end there. “We’ve played some big shows in the past, but I can’t say we’ve ever played any places like the RNA Showgrounds (in Brisbane), or big stadiums like that,” he says. “We’ve never played anything like that. So this is going to be a shot in the dark.
“We’re also going to be playing two brand new songs that we’ve never played before,” he reveals, “so it’s going to be new all round. Playing new songs in front of new crowds that have a whole bunch of people there, so if I end up passing out onstage from being too nervous, this is just a fore-warning,” he laughs again.
Jake also feels that the sheer diversity present on the bill is one of the festival’s strengths, and may open up an even bigger audience to the band than if they’d just come out and played for their existing Australian fans. And he also feels that the variety inherent in the lineup is a real positive for the heavy music scene.
“It is, but I think that’s good,” he states, “because it maximises the potential of the different crowds it’ll bring. That’s one thing that I’d really like to thank AJ (festival organiser AJ Maddah) for, the ability to bring as many people from different backgrounds as possible together. That’s what music should be about man, it should just be about love and unity and things like that. But unfortunately these days there’s all that stigma about genre separation and all that crap, I think it’s really cool that they have so many different types of bands playing on the same day.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
