Destruction For Creation

Blood Duster have never pandered to public opinion. The Melburnians titled one of their albums Cunt and parodied the then burgeoning rap/metal scene by donning tracksuits on-stage, after all. It was this sensibility which partially led to the creation and swift destruction of new record KVLT. When deciding how to release their new album, many options arose for the grindcore/death metal/rock nutters. Make it a digital only? Use Radiohead's 'pay what you want' model? Give it away for free?

“We were just bored with the same old thing,” bassist/founding member Jason PC Fuller explains. “We're 20-plus years old as a band. Even if we made the fucking album of our lives, which I think we did… Even though we know it's fucking good, we put it out and we're not gonna generate the hype of a young band. The most we can hope for is people going, 'Oh, sick, Blood Duster – good record'. So it's like, how do we make this release exciting for us? For us, it's more amusing to just not release it. The fun part for us is over.”

Due to a loathing of the marketing and sales process, the band decided to take the DIY punk ethos one step further; they came up with their own manta, Do It Yourself, For Yourself (or DIYFY) and released the album on limited edition vinyl. The catch is it's virtually unplayable. You can buy the record but it has the album's title scratched into the grooves, rendering it useless. The band even took the extreme step of destroying the masters (video of which is available online) so there is no chance of it ever mysteriously appearing on the web. The record literally no longer exists. The band are releasing a five-track download EP SVCK to promote the LP, but that's it.

At the time of speaking to Fuller, details of their new venture had just broken and was receiving coverage in mainstream dailies alongside the usual metal media. “I kind of expected there'd be a little of, 'Oh, they're fucking stupid'. I didn't expect this much, 'Oh, they're fucking stupid',” he laughs. “I was initially going to print 100 copies and I've already got 100 pre-orders. I don't know what to do. This is supposed to be a fucking joke. You're not supposed to actually want the record. We only really pressed them because we wanted to show people, 'We did actually make a record and we've chosen not to give it to you'.

“I'm getting tons of emails from bands saying, 'I think you guys are fucking mental, but I am 100% behind what you're doing'. Bands that are really against illegal downloading – bands I didn't expect would be. But we're not really against illegal downloading as such, we're more against the idea that people think something that someone else creates is worthless. And you no longer have the right to choose whether your stuff has a value – someone else is going to tell you. Which they could do by buying it, but they don't. They actually choose to steal it and then say bullshit comments like, 'I downloaded your back catalogue, but I'll buy a T-shirt'. I'm for music and all for free music. If a band today brings out an album, they can choose to give it to you for free if they want. But I'm against stealing someone's music if they don't want you to steal it.”

The response unsurprisingly hasn't been entirely positive. “It's funny, some of the reactions, because there's a lot of angry people out there that can't wrap their heads around the idea that they're not getting something, like it's deserved. They're just blinded by the fact they wanted a record, and because we haven't given them one they're acting like we've broken into their house and took their favourite record. They're serious about something they've never heard. I haven't stolen from you, I just didn't give you something,” Fuller laughs. “So they're furious, yet people have been taking from bands forever and they're supposed to not be angry at all. Is the world upside down?” he laughs again. “People say they'll buy a T-shirt, but that's only because they can't download one. If someone figures out a way you can download a T-shirt for free, T-shirt sales will plummet.

“As much as people hate Metallica – I hate Metallica, but mainly for making bad records. But it's got to this point where bands are scared to stand up and say, 'Hey, I do want to be paid for what I'm putting out'. Radiohead? It's not gonna matter because they're fucking massive; they can market the record to the right people. But for small bands, especially bands even smaller than us, that pump all of their money into a CD… Sure it gets around, but that band isn't going to be touring, they're not going to be making that money back. That band probably doesn't have enough money left over to make a T-shirt, let alone to sell it to you. And what do they get? They just get fucking shafted. The only people that make money are fucking Google and these people that allow people to steal another person's copyright. They're making money by selling ads to put on things they didn't create and don't own the copyrights for. My main problem is with taking the rights away from the artist, the right to choose. I don't really want to be on YouTube with ads for fucking animal products. I like to have that choice. Google don't give a fuck about me, they're just gonna put my copyright on there and generate cash from it.”

On the copyright violation front, Blood Duster will air KVLT material during the Bastardfest tour, which Fuller co-organises. The bassist is aware that despite objections to his music being used for profit by multinational corporations, live versions of the new songs will likely wind up online anyway, thus indirectly fuelling the machine he despises.

“I'm sure it will end up on YouTube and all that stuff. All I know is no one will ever hear the album as it was done and recorded. I've actually had heaps of phone calls from friends going, 'Dude, you have to make me a copy'. There are no copies. It's fucking pressed scratched. There is no master, the record is gone,” he chuckles. “Even we can't hear it. As soon as I scratched it I had this pain of regret, like, 'Fuck, I'm never going to hear that again'. But I also have the joy of, I heard it; I know the songs in my head and what it sounds like. To me, that's worth a lot, because there's not much you get to create that you get to keep for yourself in an artistic kind of way. I feel fully elite and KVLT that I've heard it.”