When the average Aussie music fan thinks of big musical exports, all the standard names come to mind – Amyl And The Sniffers, Troye Sivan, Tame Impala, etc. But there's a fair chance that mind is rarely paid to one of the more deserving quiet achievers; Naarm/Melbourne's own CIVIC.

Officially formed in 2017, the quartet wasted hardly any time in making sure they were seizing their opportunities. By early 2018, they'd released their New Vietnam EP, with Those Who No following just five months later. 

Support slots for the likes of The Mark Of Cain followed, as did a European tour, and though COVID undoubtedly hampered their momentum, they forged ahead, releasing debut album Future Forecast in early 2021. 

By 2023, the band were back in the swing of things, releasing Taken By Force and even hitting up the lucrative North American market by way of a trip over to Texas for the SXSW conference and festival. 

However, things went a little bit quiet after that. Sure, they released their Hourglass single a few months later, but it wasn't until 2025 that CIVIC kicked back into gear with new music and a solid plan of live outings.

In fact, 2025 appears to be one of the biggest years in the history of CIVIC. As Jim McCullough speaks over Zoom, it's just weeks after the group ticked off a bucket-list item by supporting none other than the Sex Pistols, complete with Frank Carter on vocals. "We got the call up and, well, you can't really say no to that, can you?" he notes.

Indeed, it's another massive achievement for the humble group who today release their third album, Chrome Dipped. Fittingly, they're not even on home ground to celebrate, instead finding themselves in America's Pacific Northwest as part of an extensive run of shows.

"We're doing all these things and we're recording at MONA, and I just think to myself, 'When we first started this band back in 2017, we just wanted to do an EP," McCullough recalls. "That's all we really thought. 

"Then you get to this point, a few records in, and you're traveling around and you're getting these crazy opportunities… I'm stoked on how far we've come and I'm just grateful that we get to do it, that I get to keep doing it with my mates, and just have fun and make cool shit."

Initially, the band had formed with a decidedly old school punk and rock sound present within their work, with their sound intended to be as explosive and ferocious as their formative influences might have inferred.

"We'd all come from kind of the hardcore scene, so we were already in that wheelhouse of having a pretty intense live show," McCullough remembers. "Plus, Lewis [Hodgson], as a guitarist, he's just so good at making shit sound really big. So it was definitely our intention to be as abrasive as we could while also still sounding like our influences.

"But I think those early hardcore bands that we were doing in our early 20s, I don't think we lost that. I think that's still there now."

After all, the energy and intensity that those in the hardcore scene portray, that's not exactly something that dies easily – if at all. "Not if it makes sense to you," McCullough agrees.

For those who have already had the distinct pleasure of listening to Chrome Dipped, one of the biggest differences between CIVIC's previous work is their sonic focus. Hodgson himself noted in a press release that while the band's previous work was deeply rooted in a "'70s Australian punk sound," this latest recording session saw them wanting to set sail for new horizons.

This decision came about, as McCullough explains from their traditional time spent within the rehearsal room. Typically, they would rehearse and demo their songs before hitting up the studio, but this time – after recording demos on five iPhones in different areas of the rehearsal room – they found themselves wondering, "How far can we push this?"

"We were saying, 'We're gonna push these songs as far down the rabbit hole as we can," McCullough remembers. "But what in fact ended up happening was is we actually ended up taking things away from a lot of the songs. That made them, for us, more interesting, and it opened up this playing field where instead of adding and making it bigger, let's take things out of it and see what happens. 

"That just opened this whole other world that we just stepped into. Sort of just keeping the important parts and getting rid of some of the add-ons, if you will. There were moments where it was a bit of a hard pill to swallow, whether it's the drums or vocals or whatever.

"When somebody says to you, 'We're going to take something away,' you automatically have this knee-jerk reaction where you think that it's going to lose something or there's going to be a lack of something," he adds. "But that's not what happened at all."

For outside observers, the question of why CIVIC would want to take things away from their sound is probably a big one. After all, it's this huge, confronting wall of noise that makes them such a force to be reckoned with. 

However, while Hodgson noted there was a sense of staleness at play within the band's sound, it's this sort of feeling that helped the group keep things fresh once again.

"When we first started CIVIC, I feel like there weren't too many bands doing that kind of throwback, Saints or Radio Birdman style," he muses. "So we were like, 'Okay, let's fill that void, fill that pocket.' 

"Then we got a few years in and it was interesting that we kind of entered this space where we were thinking, 'How can we be contemporary? Where do we stand on the contemporary stage of the world's music?'

"I think we were slowly entering that or trying to kind of enter that anyway, but this time around I think it was really a conscious effort to do that. And I personally think that we have done that," he adds. "Obviously there's still notions and nods – you're never going to be able to get away from it sounding like punk or those influences, but for us it was a very conscious effort to make a contemporary-sounding record."

Indeed, it's impossible to get away from that for CIVIC on Chrome Dipped. It's still rooted in their punk-leaning ethos, yet polished with moments of reflection that allow the listener a chance to breathe. But that's not to say they've taken their foot off the accelerator. Rather, they're leaning into the titular concept with these songs.

"I won't jump too crazy into the concepts and all that kind of stuff, but the underlying theme throughout the record is the hard and soft and the jarring contrast," McCullough explains. "If you listen to Gulls Away and it's this kind of transient, beautiful song, and then it goes into The Hogg or Poison. 

"It's this whole kind of recurring theme throughout the whole album and this idea of Chrome Dipped – the hard and soft, and being wrapped up in it all."

For CIVIC, this new approach to their craft – of removing rather than adding – would undoubtedly be a lofty undertaking, and one that could be daunting for a band such as them. While it's one thing to enter a new record feeling uncomfortable, it's this fertile new ground that allows for greater experimentation and sonic focus.

"You've got to trust in the process," McCullough explains. "There's a beauty in working out how to do it or being out of your kind of comfort zone. "You have to be down to make mistakes, to push through it and see what comes out the other end.

"At the end of the day, you have to be open to change. There might be three members that are down and one's still a bit unsure, but here's this moment where it comes together. I think it was during recording for The Fool where we were jamming it and I thought, 'God, this is pretty out of our realm,' but then Lewis did this guitar part and we all kind of looked up and were like, 'That's the direction that we need to go.

"When those little moments happen, that's where there's this kind of unspoken thing where you realise you need to lean more into that," he adds. "Going with the flow and going down that hole together is really scary, but it's also super fun."

It's those moments of realising what needs to be done where CIVIC appear to be thriving. Previously, one could posit they were following the manual of what their sound should be. Though ferocious and progressive, there was still a strong sense of their influences apparent throughout. Now, however, it appears as though they've knocked down the tower and rebuilt without instructions – acting on instinct instead of any preconceived notions of where they should go.

"Based on these rules, you've learned all this stuff along the way and built this sound," so it's like, 'What can we expunge from this that's going to leave the most pure sound of us?'" McCullough says. "You've done your fucking EP, you've done your demo, you've done all your songs that sound like The Stooges and all this shit, and then it's like, 'At the end of it, what's left? With these four people, how can we make this record as true to our sound as possible?'

"I feel like we did that and what ended up coming out was actually a completely different sound, not wholeheartedly, but it's quite different to the early stuff.

"I had a friend say to me – Alex Macfarlane from The Stevens – 'You guys should have been doing this the whole time, it makes so much sense,'" he adds. "And I was like, 'Yeah, but there's the beauty in the fact that you might have to do three records until you get to that spot.'"

This desire to find their feet and get to that sweet spot saw CIVIC – somewhat ironically – turning away from that '70s pub rock sound by recruiting Kirin J. Callinan to aid in the recording, with Callinan himself the son of Brendan Callinan, a former member of Sydney pub rockers  The Radiators.

The younger Callinan has, of course, a far different vibe that his pedigree may suggest, so what was it that he brought to the table when CIVIC recorded at Tasmania's Museum Of Old And New Art? Having met Callinan through friends, and with a desire to record with a new producer, the group figured it was best to get a producer who would help move them toward brave new ground.

"We thought, 'If we're going into this thing and starting from scratch, who do we take in there with us that's going to push us to the point of almost breaking? And who's going to bend this thing in a way where it might be something that's almost to the point of being almost absurd?'" McCullough remembers. 

Recalling how some rock acts have chosen instead to work with hip hop producers, McCullough noted such a move wouldn't make sense for them, but the variation between their work and Callinan's work made sense in the context of the record's underlying theme.

"It goes into that idea of a stark contrast of hard and soft, and his music can be so gentle and beautiful and ours has traditionally been quite abrasive and in your face," McCullough remembers. "I thought, 'Let's just mash those two things together, like pushing two atoms together or something, and just see what comes out and it was beautiful.'

"The irony is that it didn't make sense off the bat for him to do it, which is why we did it."

The result is, of course, an album that is indeed different to what fans may have expected from CIVIC on their third outing. However, this is more of a feature than a bug. After all, as Hodgson himself noted in a press release alongside the album, he hoped that when hearing the record, "I hope people feel a little confused at first. Then a bit angry, and then feel good, and then interested, and then they feel like, ‘Oh, this is sick.’ That process exactly. I hope it’s a bit challenging."

However, any good marketer would tell you that it's not exactly a wise move to be subversive towards your key demographic. Why would you attempt to alienate them when you've accrued so much goodwill? Again, this comes down to the idea of ripping it up and starting over that CIVIC have employed on the album. So of course, any mixed reactions that fans might have are just part of trusting the process.

"At the end of the day,  a lot of music these days is quite digestible and easy to swallow," McCullough says. "I think that's fine, but there's also an importance and a beauty in showing a bit of restraint or asking a question like, 'Oh wow, is this actually good? Do I like this? Is this where it's going now?'

"These questions are super important I think in the contemporary wave of punk or whatever it is we're in now."

Ultimately though, Chrome Dipped is a stellar representation of where CIVIC find themselves in 2025, and a taste of where the future may – or may not – take them as they continue to rise as viable musical exports in the Australian music scene.

"Chrome Dipped is this statement of how we feel like we should have been doing all this from day one," McCullough admits. Though that might be true, it's the journey that's half the fun.

CIVIC’s Chrome Dipped is out now.