Back And Forth

With the departure of founding drummer Kyle Profeta earlier this year and the ever-revolving line-up of Comeback Kid, it seems more and more like a beast solely driven by frontman Andrew Neufeld. When the band formed in 2002, it was Scott Wade who fronted the band, but, when Wade threw in the towel in 2006, Neufeld ditched his guitar and grabbed a mic. It makes sense; he writes a majority of the songs, and in the studio often plays bass, and most guitar parts. Thus the transition into producing other acts is another natural progression for the hardcore legend.

“Producing for me is a newer thing. I’ve done a couple of things; I did a band called Devil In Me, and this is the third record that I’m producing,” Neufeld begins, tucked away in the midst of producing a yet-to-be-named Norway outfit in their homeland. “I’m going to work on Deez Nuts later on in the year, so I’m just starting to get into it… I have some time off between this and coming to Australia, so I’m a boy going rogue for a little while. I was going to go back to Canada, but I’m just going to chill around Europe and then I’ll be in Australia a bit earlier.”

Comeback Kid’s last tour of Australia was in 2013, for the Boys Of Summer tour, which also happened to feature Deez Nuts. It was in 2013 that they toned back their extensive touring schedule to pen album number five, Die Knowing. As to be expected with members scattered across the US, it came together a bit disjointed. “Our drummer at the time, Kyle, he was living in California, so I would go down there for like one or two weeks every once a while. We all live in different cities, so it was like, Jeremy [Hiebert, guitar] would have a song and record it on GarageBand, then we’d figure it out when we got together. It was very much my songs, and Jeremy’s songs. There was a little bit of a disconnected writing process, but it turned out pretty cool… we’ll write songs over and over, like five times, and we’ll think a song’s done, and I’ll get stoned and come back and be like, ‘No! We can’t put the breakdown there, we have to put it there’,” he laughs.

Die Knowing was also the last to feature founding drummer Profeta. One of Profeta’s final tours with the band was shortly after the record came out, in South Africa, where he now lives and owns/operates his own vegan catering company. “He actually finished his drums on that record and then the night he finished his drum trucks, he was like, ‘Okay, guys, I’m leaving the band’, and he’s been with us since the very beginning.

“He wanted to pursue his other passions, and I mean if you give ten years of your life to a band, kudos to you, that’s more than most other people can say… We ended up getting the drummer from my favourite hardcore band, No Warning, and it’s been going fucking awesome.”