Get To Ridin'

Headwound The Pony vocalist Ewen Macmillan has had about a day to get some rest in after the death metal outfit pulled a mammoth 24-hour drive from Adelaide back up to Brisbane. “We had an absolute blast – we played great shows and it was really good to get down south. Prior to the tour, I think the furthest we'd gotten was northern New South Wales so it was great to get down to places like Sydney and Melbourne, and also Canberra and Adelaide.”

The band's maiden east coast run was the long-overdue introduction for the southern states to Merchant Of Misery the band's auspicious debut album of hack'n'slash gore set to a soundtrack of equally punishing death metal. “People were coming up to us after the shows and saying 'I'd never heard of you guys before, but I thought you were fantastic'. That was really great to hear, especially in places we'd never been.”

With every tour there's always some hilarious malfeasance or comedy of errors, and with his memories of their run still fresh, Ewen is asked what the trek's schadenfreude highlight?

“There was a misunderstanding in Sydney,” he smiles. “Our guitarist decided to go for a sleepwalk in the middle of the night, and he ended up outside the hotel's front door in the rain, in his underwear and a T-shirt. And then he tried to get back into the hotel, but they didn't think he was staying there, so they kicked him out. And we had to go out and get to him to bring him back to bed.”

But that minor incident hasn't dampened Ewen's enthusiasm about the tour, with the band relishing the opportunity to get down into the incredibly healthy Sydney and Melbourne metal scenes.

“We've been around for about three years at this point, and we'd played Queensland so many times that we really wanted to take our music to some other people, and also we released the CD last September. So waiting nine months meant we were all rearing to tour it.”

In fact, the band waited so long to tour the record that before they've even finished the shows – there are, after all, three upcoming dates in Brisbane and Toowoomba, which Ewen seems stoked for, especially the 'black mass' themed show at Snitch – the vocalist is already talking about what's coming next for the band. There's a video clip he hopes to have ready by Halloween, and new material that's already filtering through the pipeline.

“I've gotten to the point where I'm already writing the material for the next LP,” he discloses. “I've got lyrics written for eleven songs and the guys have come up with a fair few songs. It's going to be a concept album – by the time I wrote the fourth or fifth song I realised there was this pattern in what I was writing, and I love when bands put out concept records. The next one's going to be called Exhibitions Of Atrocity and it's basically going to be about real atrocities that have happened in the past, or atrocities that could happen in the future.”