Band: Dead Mall
From: Newcastle, Australia
Their formation story:
(Joe Willis, guitarist): "Darcy (guitar) and I were playing around writing pop-punk tunes for a bit, it’s what we were used to doing at the time, but we seemed to transition to a heavier sound as we went on. We’re from a coastal town called Newcastle in Australia, and the music scene is quite tight knit so all of us were already friends and had either played in bands together or played shows together in the past.
"We were all keen to give something a shot and try something we’d never really done before so we were super excited to just make some heavy stuff behind roles we were all comfortable with."
Their sound in their own words:
"We’ve been describing our sound to everyone as hardcore but at the end of the day it doesn’t quite fall under the tropes of traditional hardcore. Our new material especially incorporates more post hardcore elements and we’re all suckers for pop-punk melodies—we don’t even really know what to describe it as but we’re all proud of it and love to play it.
"We’re big fans of Every Time I Die, Turnstile, Drug Church, Ocean Grove… basically any band that likes to blur the lines between the different sub-genres."
Latest release info:
"'Chris Martian' has the heaviest section we’ve written so far—we almost made it that heavy as a joke but we actually fell in love with it and decided to run with it. We’re also super into writing tunes that don’t take themselves too seriously and I think this one is a perfect example of that.
"For whatever reason we usually like to write from the perspective of a really low-life sort of character, and this ones no different. It’s essentially about feeling like you’re an outcast from the rest of the world; like everyones out to get you, and using that as an excuse to act like a scumbag."
Future plans:
"What are the immediate future plans for the band? We’ve got a few shows up and down the East coast lined up, and we’re currently 75% into recording our first album. We went away to Durham Recording Studios in Hunter Valley NSW, which is about 40 mins inland from where we live in Newcastle.
"The studio was pretty remote so we could be as loud as we wanted for as long as we wanted, it was a great experience. We’ve all been obsessed with it lately, we can’t wait to finish it off and get it out in the world."
What other bands from their region should we check out?
"Even though they’re not from Newcastle, we definitely have to shout out a band called Major Arcana who absolutely rip live. Also have to give shout outs to our pals in Open House, Dead Crow, Resident, Lamphead, Jacob, Route Promenade, and Spat Out."
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Hit the Dead Mall Linktree to find all of their social media pages.
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