Rolling With It

The band's also looking forward to introducing Aussie fans to their third full-length record, last year's Astraea. But, with the album being as complex, fast and challenging as it is, how does it translate live? “The most obvious difference is how much faster everything ends up being played. It's fairly natural when you're playing things nightly that it ends up being faster and as a result more energetic and intense. [Also], the word 'fun' isn't something you'd usually associate with music like ours but we have a really, really, good time playing and I think that definitely comes across live.”

Spence is also looking forward to introducing Australian fans to guitarist Chris Cayford and bassist Nathan Fairweather, who both joined the band last year and marked Rolo Tomassi's first line-up change since 2005. “I can barely remember what it was like without them. I've never felt as comfortable onstage as I do with them playing with us. The initial transition was a bit weird but that's probably only because we've never had to change members before and we were playing mainly older material but now we're playing a set of songs that the five of us wrote together, it's the best it's been as far as I'm concerned. Before they joined they'd played in a few different bands together which certainly helped in terms of onstage chemistry. Without wanting to be too cheesy with it, I definitely feel there's a lot more unity with our performance as a five-piece and that's largely down to those guys. Everyone is pulling in the same direction.”

It's because of that unity in the band that Rolo Tomassi are looking to get back into the studio. “We get home from this tour and it's all stations go on album number four. Hoping to have it early in the second quarter of next year but we won't be rushing. We've come this far and we need to make sure it's something we feel is worth releasing that's better than the previous record and builds on what we're doing.”