DAYSEND

TARTAREAN DESIRE WEBZINE

This live interview with Michael Kordek of the Australian alternative metal band Daysend was done by Shane Wall on September 22, 2004, shortly before their show supporting In Flames in Sydney, Australia.

The alternative metal band Daysend is one of the fastest rising newcomer acts from Australia. After some local success they have been picked up by Metal Blade Records for worldwide marketing. Shane Wall discusses various issues with the band member Michael Kordek. [The Editor]

How did it feel to have Severance voted as the best metal album on Triple J (Australia’s national youth radio broadcaster)?
We never imagined we would ever get something like that; we’re all sort of meek, mild, humble… So for people to actually like our stuff like that is pretty cool. What can I say; it’s the icing on the cake.

Who has been your favourite overseas act to support?
I’m hoping In Flames. In Flames have been the one band I’ve been hanging to see for ten years. All the other ones were awesome. I wasn’t that into The Haunted just because I’d never heard their stuff before we played with them, and then after hearing them I thought, ah shit, I’ve missed out on a lot here. And you know, Strapping (Young Lad) and Skinlab as well. But I’m definitely hanging for In Flames. I wanna play fast, finish and hurry up for it to start.

In the short space of time since Daysend’s inception, you’ve become one of the most important acts in the Australian metal scene, why do you think this is?
Important? (laughs) It’s hard to tell, we’ve gigged a lot so we’ve been around, and most metal bands, even if they are good bands, don’t seem to get as far and as wide as they can. I’ll admit we’ve only been in Australia, we’ve never left Australia, but we’ve pretty much played every pub and club and gutter (laughs) and anywhere you can even think of in the place. I think that’s probably got a lot to do with it, the fact that we’ve been pretty active. And as far as the band goes I think it’s just music that people like. We all had other bands before this with different styles, we had death metal, thrash, and all sorts of stuff, I think because this mixes a lot of things, people find something to get happy about.

You’ve got a lot of different audiences covered I suppose?
Yeah, and that’s what we think. Coming from a death metal band, I’m just used to long hair all around and you come to a Daysend gig and half of them have got short hair, and half long hair. And it’s like, what’s going on, what is this crowd?

Daysend are quite a different band to most bands who are on Metal Blade do you have any reservations about that, and if so, what convinced you to go with Metal Blade?
They were the only people that wanted us (laughs). No, just kidding. As far as Metal Blade goes, I know that they’ve got a lot of death and the full-on heavy kind of stuff, so in that sense it’s kind of like, what do we expect, are we gonna get eaten alive by goats and shit? I mean I don’t know (laughs). Coming from a death background, I’m pretty in tune with the death mentality, it’s like brutal and there’s nothing else. It’s like if it’s not brutal, die! I mean some of the stuff we do I guess you’d class as heavy, but being aware of that it can get a lot heavier still, I just hope they don’t think we’re a bunch of pansies or something ‘cause we’re not grrr (laughs). Nah, it should be cool, Americans like Aussies apparently.

What direction do you see the band moving musically for the next release?
I think it’ll just get more weird. Severance was very methodical, the song structures are very structured and we’re trying to pull the rod out of our asses a bit and try and just let go and just say to hell with it, even if it sounds shit just go with it if you feel, whereas before it was sort of analysed and all that kind of thing. I think the songs will get heavier; they will get a bit more dynamic as well. I guess in that sense not heavier as in vocals or blastbeats, black metal kind of style, just more dynamics in it, just bigger.

The current wave of Australian bands seems to have a greater level of professionalism than perhaps in the past, any thoughts on why all of a sudden, there’s this push?
I think people are just getting sick of not doing anything. You’ve got to realise at a point that if you just play in your bedroom, that even if you’re the best in the world and you’re a god, no-one will care - they won’t. So you have to push yourself just to get yourself out there, I think bands are just realising that. I know ten years back bands rarely left their own town, their own city, whereas these days people are driving all over the shop. So there’s a lot more sore asses out there from sitting on van seats.

How does playing with Daysend compare to your time with your old bands, Automation for example?
It’s weird because Automation was an extreme band. It’s a different vibe altogether. With that kind of stuff it’s just heads down, play ‘til you die, there’s no rest (laughs). Whereas with Daysend it ebbs and flows, there’s light bits and all that kind of stuff. In that respect it’s good ‘cause I’m bit older now, and I don’t have as much bounce as when I was 16 and playing in Automation, you know? (laughs) But saying that, basically, different vibes. Even in this band now I’m doing backing vocals and singing. Three years ago, I would’ve went ‘piss off, I’m not gonna sing’, I might do a ‘grrr’ or a ‘urrr’ but an ‘ahh’? (laughs) It’ll be funny how it goes tonight, because my throat’s just absolutely fucked, so it sounds like shit.

You didn’t sound too bad just then. (at soundcheck)
I only had about two goes at it and it pretty much wrote it off. So I might crack a few Strepsils (laughs). I’ll just piss it off, what the hell.

What was it like working in the studio with dw Norton? (highly respected Australian producer and ex-Superheist guitarist)
Awesome. Yeah, Richie’s awesome, and speaking of Automation, he did our EP as well. So it was good, because I knew what the guy was like when we went in, but none of the other guys had ever worked with him, so I tried to explain to them how he’d do things and all that kind of stuff. And it worked out good, Richie’s very passionate when he likes something, if you doesn’t like it then you know, well, obviously. When he heard it, he got into it. That was his kind of thing, you could see he was buzzing.

I noticed the album’s got that sound, you can tell that he’s been involved with the production.
Yeah, it’s got the Richie stamp on it. He was good in the sense, like, we had no backing vocals before we went to the studio and then he was sort of throwing all these ideas around, and we just went ‘cool’ and then we thought, ‘oh well, who gets stuck with it’. I got the short straw (laughs). Yeah, I can’t rave enough about Richie.

How does the songwriting generally work within the band?
Well, Aaron pretty much writes the lot, so the rest of us don’t have to do much (laughs). He’s the one that slaves over his guitar 20 hours a day, while we’re just sitting back watching telly (laughs). Nah, so he’ll basically write everything, then show Meredith and myself and, you know, we’ll sort of play along with it, we might garnish it with a few little different things, but the basic structure, he’ll do the lot, and then he’ll show Wayne, and then they’ll work things out with the drums and guitars as well. Then once we’ve got a whole song together, then Simon will come in too… he doesn’t like the piecing together process, he just likes the finished product. And there he is, speaking of Simon.

Simon Calabrese (Daysend vocalist) - Did I just hear you?

Nah. It’s alright. It’s all bad, don’t worry (laughs).

There is quite a melting pot of musical influences in Daysend’s sound, what do you find most inspirational?
I think we get a lot of that Swedish kind of sound going on in there. Probably not so much In Flames these days, maybe even a little bit, but more so a lot of the older kind of stuff, more riffier kind of.

Like Whoracle or Colony?
Yeah, that kind of thing, you know? But saying that, basically, Swedish bands have sort of been our thing for the moment, and what we’re going to throw in with the next bunch of the songs is, like I said before, just get a bit more experimental and lose the Swedish influence if we can. Bring back an Aussie influence, mate! Maybe we’ll throw a few more of those in there.

You could have a VB (Victoria Bitter, a popular Australian beer) can on the cover of your next album.
Yeah, yeah, just go ‘ktch’ (sound of opening a beer), ‘I’m going through all this fucking pain, mate’. (In drunken Australian accent)

That’d be the perfect opening to an Aussie album! Just go ‘ktch’.
Yeah, then just go ‘oh shit, fuck’ and then just rip into it. I think you’re onto it. Actually, you’ve got that recorded too, so we can throw that straight on. Richie will know what to do.

Non-musical influences on your sound?
That’s a tough one. I’ve never even thought about being influenced… I mean I’m sure we all are, but like, I’m not into art. I mean it’s all right, but I don’t sort of buy it or look at it intensely or anything like that. As boring as it sounds it’s just music. I find it’s the only thing that really gets me to that feeling of elation. That and, you know, VB, that helps too (laughs). Nah, just kidding. Yeah, sorry for being boring. That’s it mate.

No, that’s an honest answer, that’s what we’re looking for.
Yeah, I don’t want to piss in your pocket and tell you that I like painting daisies and shit, you know. (laughs)

Oh, yeah. I’m influenced by 13th Century gothic architecture from Europe…
Actually, no, speaking of that, I can appreciate architecture, like construction. Construction just gets me going too. Lucky you mentioned that. They’ve got the M7 being built, ‘the orbital’ out of Sydney, and every time I drive past it, I just fully bar up! I just love this construction and shit, I think it’s fucking rad! So I’m boring AND sad.

In past interviews, band members have said how comfortable you are in general as a band. How important do you think that is in finding what you want from a band?
Totally. We had the luxury that three of us, Aaron, Wayne and myself had known each other for ten years or so. You know, we were mates. So there was no real ‘getting to know you’ process. But, Meredith and Simon, I met them just two years ago and they’re cool, so you just sort of gel with them straight away. Everyone’s pretty chilled out, we all have our moments, but generally everything’s cool.

Assuming world domination is your next plan, when do the forays overseas commence?
Well, the album is getting put out in the States and Europe next month. So that’s our next step for total global annihilation (laughs). That sounds SO shit. There’s a lot of unknowns there. We’ve never been there. I assume no-one’s heard of us there, so we just don’t know how it’s gonna go down. Yeah, we’ve just gotta keep our fingers crossed.

I think you guys have got every chance.
Oh, cheers, mate. I hope so. It’s like soccer, they always say because Aussie soccer teams don’t get too much of a chance to play the overseas ones, you can’t expect the standards to be as good, and I guess it’s kind of the same in music, just in the sense of performing. But it’s been good in the last year, because so many international bands have come out, and we’ve been so lucky to be able to play with some of them, so, we’re just learning. Just sitting back and observing how the big boys do it, and just try and do better than them. Fuck ‘em! In a nice way.

You had an unusual beginning as an instrumental band, what do you think that you got out of that in the long term?
A lot of nerves (laughs). There were two gigs we did instrumental. I tell a lie, I didn’t really feel nervous doing that, because the stuff we do is pretty musical, really guitar-y, that can carry it a bit. If we were just doing Nirvana kind of riffs, people would just be bored shitless. So, in that sense it was good, Aaron was just soloing his tits off the whole time, so there’s something there to keep the interest through the whole thing. It was surprising because a lot of people turned up, I think a lot of people just didn’t know what the hell they were going to get with the new band, like the people who knew our old bands. It was kind of cool to see all these familiar faces. A few of them drifted off, and we never saw them again (laughs), a few of them stuck around, we got a few new ones, so it’s all good.

Finally, any advice to young bands starting up?
Just go off your guts. Everyone says it, just don’t take ‘no’, and keep carrying on. I can’t really add much to that. What can I say, metal is either something where you’re really into it or you’re not. Metalheads are passionate people, so as long as you’re still passionate about doing it, then fuck it. You can’t fail. So, you just can’t be shit. Basically.

That’s pretty much it, thanks for your time.
Groovy, thanks for that.

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