The Boys Are Back

“I've gone off and had my experience with two other bands that I've joined, and this is my band that I started, fresh out of high school,” Jona Weinhofen explains. “So it's always been a bit more of a sentimental kind of band to me. I've always been kind of steering the ship, and it's a good opportunity for us to see if we've still got it,” he laughs. “'Cause it has been a long time since the last release, and granted I've been busy in the interim with my other bands. But it still is a different kettle of fish coming back to I Killed the Prom Queen. And we've had a couple of line-up changes recently, so really I think we're most interested to just see how this record is received. We don't really have any sort of expectations, we just have hopes I guess.”

The new album he references, Beloved, is the Australian metalcore crew's first studio LP in eight years, following 2006's wildly popular sophomore effort Music For The Recently Deceased. It again bristles with the seismic-shifting beatdowns and Swedish melodic death metal-inspired hooks which endeared the band the first time around. Since reconvening in 2011, progress with new material has been gradual, as their latest incarnation, featuring new vocalist Jamie Hope (of defunct death-metallers The Red Shore) was required to accommodate the principal songwriter's hectic itineraries. During their hiatus, the guitarist moonlighted with American heavy-hitters Bleeding Through and later Brit superstars Bring Me The Horizon. An initially bitter split from the latter (Weinhofen since revealing that he's settled any differences with former bandmates) enabled him to focus energies entirely on his passion project.

“One thing I have kept saying about this record is we didn't want to just write and release Music For The Recently Deceased Version 2. We wanted to do something so that people would identify the difference and the fact that it has been time passed in between the two records. And there are new members, and that we have grown and evolved as a band. But we still want to hang on to the core Prom Queen sound. I feel that with Beloved that we've managed to do that quite well. There's all the Prom Queen traits in there, but then we've added these little bits of icing in the cake that just make it a bit cooler and current. For anyone that hasn't heard of the band, or maybe listened to us back in the day and hasn't kept up with what we're doing, please keep an open mind.”

Meanwhile, co-founding member, drummer and the axeman's best friend JJ Peters established hardcore/hip hop party-starters Deez Nuts throughout Prom Queen's downtime. The tub-thumper ultimately proved unable to permanently straddle two bands, a notion Weinhofen respects.

“JJ left [in 2013] on a good note. He's been committed to Deez Nuts ever since he's started the band, and they're doing phenomenally well, especially over in Europe. So when he told us that he was going to leave the band to focus on Deez Nuts and just couldn't commit full-time to both bands, none of us were surprised. We didn't go, 'Oh, what?' We knew that it was heading in that direction. Plus going from a drummer, being at the back of the stage, having to set up the most intricate, annoying instrument every night, to being the frontman who doesn't have to do anything, gets all the glory and has an awesome time, I cannot blame him for not wanting to demote himself back behind the drum kit,” he laughs.

Peters' legacy remains a lasting one, as his writing contributions to two tracks stayed essentially intact on Beloved, which is again produced by Swedish metal maestro Fredrik Nordström. It's also their inaugural release on a new label, Epitaph. Boasting fresh recruits Shane O'Brien (drums) and Ben Coyte (bass), the guitarist is enthused for the future. Appearances at this year's Soundwave Festival, plus US and European tours are scheduled. An Australian headlining run for later this year is being discussed. They also recently signed with US management company, Fly South.

At the time of the band's (ahem) breakdown, they appeared on the verge of gaining considerable traction overseas. An inability to secure an appropriate new vocalist following growler Ed Butcher's (who performed on Music For The Recently Deceased after predecessor Michael Crafter was dismissed) acrimonious departure ultimately led to their momentum being halted. The Music poses the question - if Hope had been a viable option back then, would matters not have fizzled out, or were all parties simply in dire need of respite regardless?

“Well, I think it's a bit of both. The interesting part is we actually auditioned Jamie back in 2007, right before the tour we went on, which is the one we split up on. So we did audition a couple of vocalists right after Ed left, and Jamie was probably our top pick at that time, but he was committed to The Red Shore at the time, and he also had a holiday with his girlfriend booked, which he couldn't get out of, so that ran over the top of the tour we wanted to bring him on. So we ended up bringing a different guy in, and it was just sort of… Everything on that European tour kind of began to point towards the fact that maybe we did need a rest. Even the long-time members of the band were getting a bit tired, and sick of struggling. And we didn't mesh super well with the guy that we did take over there, even though he was kind of a fill-in. But we were hoping he might have the potential to join the band, and that just kind of didn't work out.

“I got the offer to join Bleeding Through during that tour, and that was around the time when the guys were getting a little bit over it, and I just said, 'What do you think about this?' And we all just decided to have a rest. But maybe if Jamie had been available and we did take him on that tour, maybe things would have been completely different, we would have been stoked, and gone ahead with it from then on. But you can't play the 'what if?' game; we've all learnt from the experiences that we've had since then. We're hoping now to be able to apply that to I Killed the Prom Queen and hopefully it'll give us a bit more longevity. We're a bit smarter and wiser on how to go about things now.”

Perhaps the quintet can utilise some of the aforementioned knowledge when attempting to broaden their appeal within the heavy music spectrum. During their initial run The Music witnessed firsthand the band being treated with utter hostility and contempt by purist metal audiences, such as during a stint opening for The Haunted and Exodus in 2006, or their slot at the much-missed Metal For The Brain festival. They were clearly viewed as interlopers. Weinhofen suggests that in the current climate, the new record could be more palatable to those who formerly proudly afforded them the middle finger salute.

“The last time we released an album was eight years ago now. We were a very young band, and back then it was very easy for more traditional metal fans to kind of boo and stick their thumbs down at bands like I Killed the Prom Queen. Whereas fast-forward eight years, the metalcore genre is far more popular; hardcore and all the kind of subgenres of metal and hardcore are more popular and more accepted. I do think that times have changed a fair bit, and maybe we could do a tour with Killswitch Engage or Lamb Of God, and not get booed because we wear tight jeans. Metalcore in general, the fashion, the look, the sound, everything overall, is a far bigger thing these days. So I think people who didn't like it once upon a time, I would hope are a bit more open and accepting to it nowadays.”

As for whether they could actively seek to expand their following by performing alongside more traditional metal acts, that's not being ruled out. “We would honestly take any tour we think is good, that is a good opportunity for the band. We do have our work cut out for us in getting back out on the road and pushing Beloved, because although we've had a fantastic fanbase who has kept up with us over the break, and through our other bands, we've got a whole world of new and young fans out there that we have to try and win over all over again. So if we got offered a tour with Slayer and we thought it was going to be beneficial for us, of course we'd do it.

“We're also quite interested in touring some places that we've never been before in our history as a band. You can be a band and do Europe, UK, US and Australia over and over and over in a record cycle. But we are now at the age where we've played those places so many times, we'd love to start playing places like South Africa or Israel or South-East Asia, just for the experience as well as being able to gain new fans there.”