Doom Misfits

Rewind to the mid-1980s. Hardcore pioneers Black Flag were busily undertaking a musical apostasy by growing their hair out and writing slow dirgy jams while every band around them was playing faster and faster. As part of this shift, Flag guitarist Greg Ginn not only signs '70s-styled doom metal band Saint Vitus to his label, he also takes them on tour with his band. The Agnostic Front worshipping skinheads must have loved that.

“Yeah those early gigs in front of hardcore and punk audiences were an experience, I'll say that,” laughs Chandler. “Black Flag took us on tour with them to intentionally get in people's faces and challenge their expectations. It was very intense and very violent. There were people at the shows spitting on us and throwing everything imaginable at the stage. I remember that our original singer Scotty got hit with a full pint of piss that some girl at a show threw at him – it was incredible.

Despite all the grief they copped, Chandler still wouldn't trade those formative years for an easier ride.

“Those experiences with those crowds were actually really great for our band,” he explains. “Without getting on SST and doing those shows we may have never got outside our own area – we were nothing more [than] kids when we started out and the exposure we got helped us launch our career.”

As well as learning their chops on the volatile punk rock live circuit of the 1980s, Saint Vitus also managed to lay down a series of seminal doom classics including genre-defining Born Too Late.

Saint Vitus weren't only hated by punk audiences in the 1980s; they were also ignored by metal audiences during the '90s. Too slow for the death metal heads, too traditional for the growing waves of nu-metal fans, and not melodic enough for those who got their kicks from the 'stay true' power metal scene of western Europe, Saint Vitus plodded on until disbanding in 1996. But then a strange thing happened. Around the turn of the century Saint Vitus began to be named checked with alarming frequency by a new wave of sludge metal outfits hailing primarily from the American south. Add to that a slowly unfolding rise in the number of bands playing slow Sabbath styled jams and Saint Vitus, long the most unhip kid in the room, somehow became cool. It's this interest that led to the band reforming for selected gigs in 2009 before committing to once again being a full-time proposition.

“Of course we're, I wouldn't say proud, but we're definitely flattered that other bands cite us as an influence,” explains Chandler. “It makes us feel that we have achieved something.” Chandler promises that the band's upcoming Australian tour, their first ever, will deliver the songs that long-suffering Saint Vitus fans have been waiting for.

“I'm not going to give too much away except to say that people won't be disappointed,”