“It’s about the world powers towards the end of time; there’s always been a king of the south and a king of the north. And at the revelation times – the end of the world – the king of the south would be the present world power and the king of the north would be an unknown enemy that rises up. When they come to do battle, it brings about the apocalypse.” How fitting that Higgs and bandmate Danny Leo were playing to support The Datsuns at The Espy last week on the very night of the world’s supposed doom. “And we were playing when it was supposed to be happening,” Higgs shouts incredulously. “Someone said 10.17pm, someone else said 10.20pm – I was looking at the clock above the front of the stage – 10.16pm, then I look up, 10.17pm, then I looked up again and it was 10.19pm, and I was like, ‘Fuck, it could still be 10.20pm.’ But I was pretty optimistic.”
As we all know the world didn’t end but King Of The North were instrumental in rocking the living shit out of the venue that night. “I was saying to [band booker] Gavin when we were watching The Datsuns from the top of the stairs, ‘Look at that mate, it’s like the ‘90s down there. It should look like that a lot more in here,’” he recounts. The crowd were certainly a mess of wheeling limbs, which is just how King Of The North like it.
Adelaide-born Higgs teamed up with drummer Danny Leo after the two experimented with the guitarist’s innovative triple-split-rig guitar set-up, and what began as a side project quickly became the real deal. “We’ve done really well man, I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished; this is our first real year as a band,” he says. Higgs organised an east coast tour in November of last year and then things began heating up. “We scored a residency in January for The Retreat and one at The Espy in February straight off the bat, and that’s when Danny went, ‘Fuck it, I’m moving. This is it,’” he says. “I was playing my solo shit, Danny was in like 10 bands back in Adelaide and he was living quite comfortably off being a sessional drummer. Then we just got together and he got to do what he wanted, which was to bash out some friggin’ solos, and I got to play some massive riffs. We just went, this is fun. Why can’t we do this seriously?”
Higgs’ clever home-cooked guitar set-up meshes perfectly with Leo’s incredible drumming talent, a talent honed through rigorous practise during his formative years. “Danny’s come from a very disciplined sort of background,” Higgs explains. “He wasn’t so much into his rock when I met him, he was into prog. He’s a very technical player. He’s been playing drums since he was nine and he’s been one of those dudes who’d practise like four to seven hours a day.” Higgs met the drummer at music college in Adelaide, but the guitarist’s electronics knowledge has been autodidactic. “I have built a lot of the stuff myself, just sort of stuffing around. You’d be amazed what you can do with a soldering iron, YouTube and a few friends.”
Through feedback from audiences and others, Higgs has learned that it’s the enormous sound that the two guys manage to produce which crowds are responding to. Chuck in the guitarist’s vocals – which don’t get as much attention as his gear but sound something like a more passionate Josh Homme – and Leo on backup vox and you’ve got a bloody force to be reckoned with. It’s not all fire and brimstone, though; Higgs knows the importance of bringing people together.
Allow me to leave you with this bit of wisdom which he apologised for delivering off-topic, but which fits in nicely with the religion/doomsday theme of this article;
“This is my definition of religion. Everyone’s looking at a painting, like a canvas. And you’re going ‘I see yellow’, and then I’m going ‘No, I see green’, and someone else says ‘No, I see blue’, and someone else goes ‘I like that but I might throw a bit of yellow in there’ and they’re all killing each other over what fucking colour they think they can see. I think the next step in our evolution is eradicating religion. It will happen eventually because it’s prehistoric, man. I mean you go to Arab countries, and they’re still stoning chicks. They’re doing shit that they did two thousand years ago and it’s like dude, it’s time to start running with the times. And that doesn’t mean, you know, making Facebook events about stoning chicks.” Word.
BY ZOË RADAS
