“I was very jealous and I sulked,” says Frenzal singer Jay Whalley. “I just went into Young Henrys and would mope in the background and occasionally mention that I had a band. I made them feel bad, I guess.”
Frenzal Rhomb are responsible for a stack of memorably peculiar album titles, such as A Man’s Not a Camel, Forever Malcolm Young and Smoko at the Pet Food Factory. So, how did this knack for penning an absurd album title transfer to naming the beer?
“After everyone tossing back and forth all these names,” Whalley explains, “I’m like, ‘Why don’t we call it ‘Frenzal Rhomb: The Beer?’ Kind of like ‘Frenzal Rhomb: The Musical’, but beer.” Then Gordy’s like, ‘That should be the whole name!’ So now the whole name is ‘Frenzal Rhomb: The Beer, kind of like Frenzal Rhomb: The Musical, but beer’.”
This Saturday, as part of Good Beer Week, Frenzal Rhomb are filling the Corner Hotel’s taps with their clumsily-branded concoction. This is a slight compromise on Whalley’s original distribution plan. “I had imagined that it would come in huge vats that we could put in the middle of the floor at shows and people could just dump their heads in it,” he laughs. “It’s going to be on tap at our Corner Hotel show and we are going bottle it and you can get it at the brewery.”
Frenzal Rhomb: The Beer is a Belgian pale ale, which is both vegan friendly and wheat free. Whalley professes the band members are essentially brewing philistines, so they let the experts take care of the design. “If it was up to us it would have been completely disgusting,” he says. “I got to pour some hops into it – that was exciting.”
Young Henrys’ tasty core range of beers, and the successful seasonal brews made for You Am I and Front End Loader, guarantees it will be another delicious drop. However, there was one suggestion that had to be vetoed. “Initially the guys at Young Henrys wanted to use one of my dreadlocks, instead of yeast, to start the fermentation process,” Whalley reveals. “No one would have drunk it – not even me. It did have its appeal but we also want someone to drink it, not just someone on a bucks night on a dare.”
Front End Loader are actually joining Frenzal on Saturday night. The two loudmouthed Sydney luminaries have been playing together since the mid-‘90s and Whalley’s reasonably astounded that both bands can still draw a sizeable audience. “It’s stupid and I feel very grateful that we still get to do it and that people are still interested in coming and having a look. It’s a good excuse to make a bit of a racket.”
Beer brewing isn’t the only thing happening on planet-Frenzal at present. Even though guitarist Lindsay ‘The Doctor’ McDougall devotes most of his time to triple j, drummer Gordy Forman hits the skins for hardcore act Mindsnare and Whalley runs the Pet Food Factory studios in Sydney’s Redfern, they’re making progress with the follow up to 2011’s Smoko at the Pet Food Factory.
“We’re a bit over halfway through the demo process,” Whalley reveals. “We went, ‘Let’s be absolutely ruthless with songs that we think will be OK, but just chuck everything out there.’ It makes it take a lot longer but I feel like the record’s much better as a result. Once the record’s good then everything else goes from there. People want to come to shows and people buy t-shirts, I can feed my child, go to the casino.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
