“We want to push the new album a lot, because we’re really proud of it,” he states, “and it has so many good songs on it that we want to play. But at the same time, we will always be playing all the classics from every record. Eleven albums later it’s really hard to pick songs for a perfect setlist. We always play the songs people want to hear, but always like to bring in a few ‘oddballs’ every tour from older records, that people won’t expect us to play, so there’ll be a few surprises.”
And no doubt they’ll be doing exactly that on their upcoming Australian tour, which will be only their second Aussie jaunt in the aforementioned twenty years plus career. A strange twist of fate, and the vagaries of applying for work visas in the US, saw the band wind up in Australia rather than across the US with Sepultura. But America’s loss is Australia’s gain, and JF can’t wait to get here. They intend to make the most of it.
“Australia has become the first part of the world tour,” he informs us, “we were supposed to be out on the road with Sepultura in the United States right now, but they had to cancel because they couldn’t get their work visas, so the whole thing fell through. Now we’re just sitting at home and waiting for the first leg of this world tour to start, which is going to be Australia for us.
“The exciting thing for us is that we’re starting now in Australia as a headline band, so we’re coming in with a full set, a lot of new songs and a lot of old songs as well,” he says, “so we’re really stoked to be coming back to Australia. We’re bringing full production, lights and sound and so on, so it should be good.”
Whilst the band have released a raft of albums at very regular intervals over the course of their lengthy career, JF feels that Waiting For the End to Come contains some of the absolute best art they’ve ever created. And that vibe is also coming across in some of the early reactions that they are getting from fans and critics.
“When all is said and done, I’m really proud of the album,” he enthuses, “the way songs came together, the recording sessions, went really well, and the mixing. Everyone gave 200% and I’m really proud of my guys on this one, the drumming is great, the guitars, the bass player, and Maurizio’s performance on vocals is outstanding, I think it’s the best work he’s done from all our albums. So I’m very proud of everybody.
“I’m really happy about the way our fans and the media are perceiving the album so far,” he continues, “we’re getting good comments left and right, the sales are going really well, so all in all I’m absolutely stoked about this new record.”
The other thing JF is very happy about is that the band continue to break new ground and open up new markets for themselves all over the world, so far into their career. This will only be the band’s second visit to Australia, and first in six years, and from here they also head to Japan for the first time ever.
“Oh, it’s amazing,” he gushes, “we feel very privileged just to be able to do this as a career, it’s an amazing feeling. We’re really happy to be able to do this, and to still feel relevant after 20 years is just amazing. You never want to be that band that just gets old and tired!”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
