Prog Safari

While we were doing some stuff in the studio and writing some new songs, I guess we just had an idea to tackle it and we tried to record it fairly quickly, just to kind of put something out before we obviously got too heavily involved in the writing our next CD. So yeah, I guess it was a bit of an off-the-cuff thing to do, but Toto are a band we all listen to heaps and the album that song's on is really a cool album. I guess doing an old '80s song would be a good way to put our own spin on it, rather than trying to do something more recent.”

The song Ryan Felton, one of the two guitarists who power Perth prog metal five-piece Chaos Divine, is talking about is the FM radio Hits & Memories staple, Africa, originally released on the album, Toto IV, in 1982, which makes their tribute something of a celebration of its 30th anniversary. Back in the day, Toto were renowned not so much for their commercial success as the fact that they were a collective of some of the finest American session musicians of their day, who originally got together to make the kind of music they personally enjoy. And in a very real sense, that's what's always driven Chaos Divine, which is why they're happy to roll with the expected consternation their choice of an interim cover between albums might create within certain parts of their fanbase.

“We don't really mind if people that only want to hear heavy stuff don't really like what we're doing. We'll let them go and listen to their own music. We just wanted to give the people that are into us a bit of insight into what sort of music we like, and the way that we can take songs and make them our own I guess, whether that's a heavy song or we've just released an acoustic version of one of our songs as well. It's just giving people a good insight into the fact that we're not just a metal band.”

The point, for Felton and the rest of the band, is the song, and that's how they approach writing and recording anything. It's a stand that has paid off over their seven years together, from picking up the Song Of The Year gong in the Heavy Rock/Metal category at 2008's West Australian Music Industry Awards to touring Europe the following year to getting their second album, last year's The Human Connection, mixed and mastered by Swedish metal guru Jens Bogren, whose credits include albums for Opeth and Katatonia.

“I guess we're the sort of band that takes a while to write songs,” Felton admits. “We put a bit more emphasis on quality than quantity so if we've got an idea and it's taking a long time we'll keep working at it before we're ready to move on and write something new. When we get into the studio, it's the same thing. You know, we revisit the song before we record it, and we might record a few different versions of a verse or a chorus, just so that we're not sort of settling on something for the sake of it. So it does take a while to get them to a finished point but that's sort of the way, I think, the sound comes out in the end; that very sort of produced sound. We try to bring a lot of different song styles into writing for a CD now. I guess after [2008 debut album] Avalon, we really found our stride in terms of getting that epic kind of sound, which is what we were going for.”