Young Blood
"I often check out the young and up-and-coming bands because I believe that there’s something that gets lost in the older bands; the energy and the excitement."
hough they only got together in 2010, Melbourne's Kromosom have risen to the top of Australia's hardcore scene. With members who paid dues playing in bands like Pisschrist, Schifosi and Nuclear Death Terror, their ascent to the position was all but assured, but the group's fantastic output still speaks, screams, for itself. Case in point, Live Forever, the CD where the band's back catalogue compiled on one release from revered American underground label, the brainchild of the Sunn O))) dudes, Southern Lord. Yeap explains how Live Forever came together.
“We always put out our records on independent labels, smaller, underground labels, then Southern Lord saw us when we played in LA when we played two years ago, and they approached us and wanted to release a record and though we didn't have any new material they were keen to reissue those recorded tracks on CD, and because we never had our stuff on CD format we thought it would be good. So we decided why not.”
While Live Forever offers fans an easy way to get caught up on Kromosom's back catalogue, Yeap explains that there's more music on the way from the four-piece. Copies of their next release, an eight-track mini-LP called Nuclear Reich, are currently in the pressing plant, and the vocalist says that the new stuff will see Kromosom broaden their sound.
“[The new record is] louder, noisier, faster, more chaotic I guess… I guess more condensed or more well thought of… We spent a bit more time writing the songs, we had a bit more time to do it. And I think we're all really happy with what we came up with. The places we draw influence on [are] a bit wider on this record… I mainly listen to '80s European hardcore, and I guess Kromosom has always been influenced by Scandinavian hardcore and Japanese hardcore, but there's a lot of other influences.”
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But before Brisbane fans get their hands on copies of Kromosom's next record, they will get a chance to preview some of the new material when the band comes back up here to play a slot on the third annual celebration of underground punk and hardcore, the Total Attack festival. “We've been practising heaps, and people at Total Attack will definitely get a taste of the new stuff. They won't know it, but they will.”
Discussing the upcoming three-day Total Attack, which will see various venues around the city and Valley transformed by ripping punk line-ups, Yeap is stoked on the idea behind the festival. As well as the odd international act, the line-up showcases plenty of young bands. As a veteran of the Australian hardcore community, Yeap reckons there's something that Kromosom and some of the older acts on the bill can learn from watching bands who are just finding their feet in the scene.
“I often check out the young and up-and-coming bands because I believe that there's something that gets lost in the older bands; the energy and the excitement.”
It's that energy that comes so naturally to the young bands that Kromosom so adroitly capture in their own set. But what makes the band able to perform the kind of no-stops, blink-and-you'd-miss-it sets for which they're renowned?
“We're really big fans, and we're really excited about the music in general. I guess all of us are fanboys in a way; we love the stuff we listen to and when we watch bands who play the kind of stuff we listen to, we go crazy. So when we do our own band, we do the same thing, except we're playing the music.”
Kromosom will be playing the following dates:
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