True Stories

"This one came out a lot heavier than the last one,” is how Brothers Grim & The Blue Murders frontman James Grim sees the evolution from the band's 2011 debut album, A Year To Forget, to their latest collection of self-styled “Sex-Voodoo-Delta-Blues-A-Billy”, in new EP, Roll It On. “Obviously, the first one was a lot more blues-inspired whereas this one… I mean, the blues is in there but, I dunno, it's delivered with a healthy fist behind it. We just really enjoyed, I guess, breaking the shackles of our blues-rock label. We love being a blues band but we've always kind of struggled with the title because at our essence we're a rock'n'roll band – our performance is rock'n'roll, our unhealthy lifestyle is rock'n'roll,” he laughs. “Everything we do is rock'n'roll. The blues is what we love – it's at the heart of what we do – and then, I dunno, it just started getting heavier and heavier as the live shows get crazier and crazier, and we've just been enjoying letting it become the monster that it is.”

Forming five years ago, James and guitarist brother Matt, with Hellbent Revelators' drummer Stephen Devlin and double bassist Dominic Lindus, found themselves working in a particular bar in Melbourne that has essentially spawned or nurtured the majority of the hybridised blues/rockabilly-infused bands that have emerged in recent years, like Graveyard Train and Sydney's Snowdroppers, bands that, as Grim tells it, “We actually identified with or at least shared a common background in old-style music.” As they discovered each other, they helped each other out and a scene evolved that continues to grow – “a weird hybridised scene that I'm proud to be a part of.”

Whatever it is they and their ilk was creating obviously struck a chord and the fans of the music have ensured Brothers Grim & The Blue Murders are constantly gigging.

“We spend a lot of time on the road, so [the songs are] really just all snapshots of our broken psyches after all the horrible things we put ourselves through. I'd to say those characters in the songs weren't me,” he chuckles, “but they are. I mean [the] only stretch on the EP is Baby Girl. I love old pulp and noir and there was this great title of one of them, I Killed The Only Man My Daughter Ever Loved, and I thought wow, what a powerful statement – and the cover was this shackled woman – and I thought how could I put that into the context of a song, it's just begging to be a song, and I thought well, if I did have a daughter and she was the victim of domestic violence, perhaps I would kill the man my daughter loved.

“Each song is put together from probably three different snapshots of my life over the last year. I try not to write about one specific thing; I'll take a couple of events or a couple of feelings I got out of those events and put them into one concise story. But essentially it's just me,” he laughs, “in various scenarios probably beyond that 3am mark of an evening where nothing ends up exactly how you planned it.

“We are obviously emotion-driven and the songs have to be a complete story from the emotions that the music brings out in the listener, and we really try to match that together with the lyrics. Whether I'm singing about love and then ripping out metal riffs, we're singing about emotional stuff and it's backed up with emotional music, and then the live show really drives that home. And our audiences are probably ten times more emotive than we are!”

Brothers Grim & The Blue Murders will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 9 May - The Steyne, Manly NSW
Friday 10 May - The Annandale, Sydney NSW
Friday 17 May - Mojo's, Perth WA
Saturday 18 May - Indi Bar, Perth WA
Friday 31 May & Saturday 1 June - The Joynt, Brisbane QLD