Dreadnaught story / interview
Forming in late 1992, Dreadnaught emanated from Tasmania, moving to the busier city of Melbourne & gathering momentum from there with little difficulty, owing largely to the fact that they were presenting music to their ever growing audiences that others in the hard rock / metal scene seemed unwilling or unable to give them.
Drawing up to the release of the band's album, I caught up with 'Suds', drummer for the band, who is a very interesting conversationalist & who had some interesting things to say about what the band have experienced & of course what the band are hoping for.
To start off, I mentioned that I'd only heard the promo single off the album, called The Game & wondered what I could expect to find on the album.
"I'm
glad you like that song. We've tried pretty hard to get a good sound
on this album. We've got a range of diverse styles, but more than
anything else, we've given our listeners some great riffs & just
generally good rock to listen to. That song is not representative of
the whole album, but there's certainly other songs there that people
will be able to identify with.
Something that was easy to notice after even a few minutes of discussion was the fact that the band consider themselves rock rather than metal & I asked why that was.
"Well, really, metal's gone about as heavy as it can, with bands like Sepultura & Pantera, so it's not really challenging to us to write songs that are just heavy. We're trying to write songs that sound great & that people want to listen to again & again & we find that when we play, our audiences really get into that."
The day I spoke with the band was a day of media promotion for them, organised by the band's label. I asked how other interviews had gone.
"Well, one thing's for sure, a lot of people don't seem to know where to put us. I spoke with one lady who said, 'you're not like anything else I've listened to & I don't know what to call your music'. I'm not knocking her, but there are other bands like AC/DC who have a sound that's a bit like ours, so surely you'd make that comparison."
With the subject of the hallowed name of AC/DC coming up, the band actually recorded their first album Body.Blood.Skin.Mind on the same desk AC/DC had used for their Dirt Deeds album & I wondered how that had influenced their work.
"That album certainly sounded great, at least we think so & a lot of our fans do too. AC/DC are just gods. They're one of the few bands who can keep bringing out the same sort of sound & keep selling. I reckon if they tried changing their sound that the fans would riot. They're like some monument or something."
So what does the future hold for Dreadnaught. Suds was forthcoming about what the band have in store & he seems genuinely interested in the possibilities that the band's website have offered.
"Well, in the next couple of months I think, we're doing the Dark Carnival tour, which is the label we're on. We're playing with Segression, so that'll be great. We want to tour overseas too. I think that's probably where we'll pick up even more fans, but we like it in Australia too. We haven't done the Big Day Out, but we're hoping to get on next year & I'd love to play Livid too. As far as our website goes, we're getting some good feedback, a lot of that's coming from how we changed the site to tell people about the new album & there's news & other stuff on there. It's such a great way for us to keep in closer touch with our fans. Of course, we'll also be looking at another album down the track, but that's another story."
Check out Dreadnaught's new album Down To Zero out now through Roadrunner.
