Dead Letter: Spreading The Fire That Will Bring Down Banks

"We will be not be not guided/Held apart and counted/Kept within our spaces/Alone /Some of us have broken free/And we have chosen/Bleeding but we're conscious/Awake”.

The above lyrical excerpt from Alone Awake is representative of the greater vision expressed by Dead Letter Circus' second full-length. Sat at a table in Gregory Park, Milton, it's a remarkably sunny winter's day in Brisbane. Raised in Perth but having lived in the Sunshine State for the last fifteen years, Benzie is casual all over, completely relaxed, and begins enthusiastically speaking of music, and not just his own band, well before the seated destination is reached and recorder switched on.

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“It's like we're all archaeologists in a way, all moving towards the same mountain, carving a little piece or finding the overall shape of music. I think we just got to the stage where all those points had met, and people were looking for the same thing,” he says of the band's rising popularity amongst the more extreme end of heavy music fans – a fact quantified by their relationship with US metal label Sumerian Records, as well as their previous and forthcoming overseas touring with such metal acts as Animals As Leaders and Monuments, with their style having subtly influenced their latest effort through sheer subconscious proximity.

“You can say that a lot of alternative rock and a lot of metal has been done now, so the quest for that thing that will stimulate your mind is a little bit harder,” he adds.

It's clear that the scope that Benzie's consciousness embodies extends much further beyond the self. His world view is holistic, having transcended far beyond a “cellular” existence and “invisible walls” people typically build around themselves. Humanity is one, yet we do not have to follow the hive mind. He retains a polite acknowledgement of rules and borders, and despite a lack of overt preachiness his presence alone seems encouraging of respectfully usurping the status quo.

“Everyone in the world right now, it's pretty hard to not be awake to the mechanics of the way the world is, and the problems of the world, being the reserve bank, an unfair system which might have seemed fair when they conceived it years ago,” he explains, pausing momentarily to take a sip of coffee. “The big companies hold [power] over the world, and that kind of thing. The Catalyst Fire is about that yearning for change that's within everyone. It's about an idea spreading like a fire – that spreading of change. Over the last couple of years, everyone's become a little more aware of how the world actually works, and the mechanics of it all.”

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