As far as rock bands go, The Ugly Kings are a multi-cultural bunch. “All four members of the band come from different countries,” says Dumont. “I’m from France, I joined last. The singer’s from New Zealand, the guitarist is from Greece and the drummer’s from Australia. It’s become a real bar joke thing. It’s like, a Kiwi, an Aussie, a Greek and a Frenchman walk into a bar…”
Unsurprisingly, the band members’ diverse backgrounds make for an interesting creative dynamic. “I think it does, because there’s always something new going on,” says Dumont. “In terms of upbringing as well, that can take the mood in different ways as well. So whatever’s going to come out of anyone’s mouth or anyone’s mind, and how they were brought up and the differences between us in that way, it just creates something very interesting and very different every time.”
The Ugly Kings have an important show this weekend at local rock’n’roll haven, Cherry Bar. They’re doing their darndest to make it a night to remember. “We’ve been punching the promo really hard for the past month and a half, so hopefully we’ll get it sold out,” Dumont says. “That’s the goal for this one.”
The band are using this show to unveil the vinyl version of their recently released mini album, Of Sins. “We had the digital release recently, but this is our first vinyl, so we thought we’d launch it properly. It’s a mini album of eight tracks, and the vinyl just came out last week.”
Despite being too young to have been brought up on vinyl, the band members are all big fans of the format. They’ve taken the opportunity to do something rather special with the Of Sins vinyl release.
“We’re all about 25 to 30 years old, so we’ve all grown up on CDs, but what we’ve done on this one is we’ve got a full booklet of artwork from Rachel Davies. It’s five pages, the album’s called Of Sins, and we’ve based the artwork and the aesthetic of it around Sin City/Frank Miller type drawings.”
Dumont is justifiably proud of the way the release has turned out. “It comes with five full artwork pieces, and it comes together based around the lyrics of the songs, it’s a little short story. It looks phenomenal. That’s why having the option to do the vinyl was amazing. It came out really beautiful, it’s great, she did an amazing job on it.”
The launch will be the band’s last show for the year, so fans are advised to get down to Cherry Bar for an almighty party. A full tour of the country is on the cards for early 2016, and then The Ugly Kings will set their sights on the international market.
“We’ve started booking a tour for February-March, for around Australia. We’re probably going to release a clip before that, then head off around the country. That’s the plan. Then hopefully we can tour overseas.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
