“Well, that was pretty intentional; starting to play that long ago and just keeping it as a live thing. It took me a long time to come around to doing the idea of an album. It was just fully intended to be a live thing, and a rare live thing at that. It’s pretty good now, I’m glad we’ve done it.
“It’s been going for five years, so eventually Bradford from Cool Death came to me and spoke about wanting to do an album. He just wanted to do it because he wanted to have an album, you know? He wanted to have it at home. I just figured I should fuckin’ pull my head out my arse. If someone wants the songs and they’ve been around for that long, it probably means a bit more to other people than it does to me now, or to the band. So why deprive somebody of that?”
Tyrannamen write songs that crescendo with booming choruses. Whether taking aim at jolting, melodically-entwined punk (Retain A Man), or immersed in the immediacy of boisterous rock (My Concrete), there always exists a pay-off; a ‘fuck yes’ moment that endears the shouting of lyrics and a requisite first pump. “I really like when you’re watching a band and you’re really digging a song, and then it goes in the exact direction that you want it to – I really wanted to do that. ‘Cause it sucks the other way round, if you listen to a song and you’re diggin’ it and then they stick in some stinkin’ chord and it fuckin’ sucks. So I wanted to do the opposite of that. I wanted people to know it.”
A month after the album’s release, Tyrannamen were back doing what they do best – punching out a pulsating live set, led by their buoyant frontman. This time around however, they performed to thousands of people at Golden Plains. “It was awesome man. I’ve never been there before. I’d never really seen what the whole thing looks like. That’s kind of what I was most excited about, just sort of seein’ it,” raves Imfeld. “But it was wild to play there, and we had some good friends with us and our drummer’s dad was there backstage with us, getting us all g’d up, givin’ us massages and shit. It was so fun man. And there’s just good vibes there. It was a pretty decent lineup as well, so that obviously didn’t suck either. Got to see some great bands.”
BY CHRIS SCOTT
