Adam sat down with Cursed Earth guitarist Kieran Molloy before their show in Leeds to ask some questions about Australia’s hottest band
Hi Kieran! So how are things going?
Doing great yeah
Are you enjoying the tour so far?
Yeah, its been excellent. Really good.
Nice one. So how has the tour been so far?
Yeah, the response has been excellent so far. The first show that we played four nights ago was London, and that was the first sold-out show of the tour and it completely exceeded our expectations. Kids moshing, kid up the front dressed as Shrek (laughs), people knew the words and there were a few mic grabs and stage dives and stuff, it was really good.
Sounds good. You’ve released two e.p’s this year, what was the decision for the split release?
We kinda felt that we could present the record more efficiently by not sticking to the LP format. The way that a lot of people listen to music these days is different from what it once was, and the way that people especially listen to our music with our songs being quite short and standing on their own. A lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people won’t listen to a record in full and if they do, they’ll pick the songs they like and just go back to them. As a format, the LP and EP format worked for a long time as it was being pressed into a physical medium, but now a lot of people listen online, and I wonder whether its the best way to capture peoples attention. On top of that, we had a record with a narrative that broke down into two pretty clear parts, so it just seemed to make sense creatively to do the split.
What would you say the main influences were for the two releases?
For these E.P’s we really put a lot of effort into trying to not be overtly influenced by anything, and we stopped listening to a lot of new music and especially not when we were writing process. If you’re in the middle of the creative process and someone goes “I’ve got an idea, let’s do a part that sounds like this song or this band” that would immediately have been binned. As we have signed to a larger label and with this being our first record being distributed overseas we wanted it to have our own sound, and we didn’t want to have any comparisons with what other people where doing.
Off the back of these releases you’ve been getting a lot more exposure over here, with magazines like Kerrang and Metal Hammer writing articles about you. How have you found the increased attention from the mainstream?
It’s completely exceeded our expectations how those guys have jumped onboard, its been pretty flattering really. We all grew up reading Metal Hammer in high school, and to have a two-page spread in that is pretty surreal. I haven’t actually got my copy yet, but its something you take back to show your Mum.
With bands like Code Orange making the front page of Kerrang, do you think there’s opportunity for bands of a more underground sound to make it into the mainstream?
Absolutely. I think Code Orange are really moving the genre forward in a massive way when it comes to breaking the ceiling that always existed when it comes to a successful band and a successful hardcore band. The way that they conduct themselves for the most part is something that we can really look up to, and if more bands have a similar drive and work ethic that they have then we could eliminate that glass roof entirely.
What are your ambitions as a band and how far do you want to take it? Do you feel like you’ve left the underground?
We definitely feel like that ship has sailed for us. We have more fun when we play with the bands from the underground and do that kinda stuff, but I think there is no limit to our ambitions that we have with this band. We think that we can have the duality of doing stuff that is creatively satisfying and can also gain success on a mainstream level.
Whats the scene like in Perth?
Excellent yeah. I think the isolation makes it stand out from a lot of other scenes from around the world, in a sense that theres not much else to do and consume things from around the world. What we’ve ended up with is a scene of a small amount of bands that are all excellent, and the interesting thing is that they’re are all different to each other and no two bands follow the same sound. We’ve got one great melodic hardcore band called Break Even, we’ve got one great up and coming death metal band called Unravel and one of the best power violence bands in Australia called Extortion came out of Perth. People take time to really find their niche and they really make it work.
So what are your plans for this future after this release cycle?
We’ve only just started the cycle at this point, but we have got music written, we are writing, we just havn’t figured out what the next release is going to be at this point. There are a lot of songs written and we have a lot of touring planned for the next year, so we are just taking it as it comes. This is our first international tour as well, so its hard to tell what you’ll be able to handle, and how much time you’ll have to write and stuff like that.
Okay cool. Thanks for taking the time to speak to us!
No worries.
Check out our review of the show here: https://hardbeat.co.uk/2017/11/01/live-review-make-them-suffer-novelists-and-cursed-earth/
You can pick up Cycles of Grief Vol one and two from here: http://www.unfdcentral.com/music/cursed-earth/