Harmonious Resurrection

There was a point in the mid 2000s when you couldn't blink without New Zealand's Die! Die! Die! gracing an Australian stage, spitting vitriol and angular noise at all and sundry. The trio's relentless touring and anarchic live presence meant that the band built up a reputable and rabid fanbase, aided and abetted by three favourably received LPs (2005's eponymous debut, 2008's Promises Promises and 2010's Form) and a brace of smaller releases.

Yet despite the frenetic nature of the band's aesthetic and the burnout such energy often leads to, it always seemed unlikely that the band – Andrew Wilson on guitar and vocals, Michael Prain on drums and Lachlan Anderson on bass – would ever temper their vision or ease up their fevered drive. Yet, it seems, even they are not impervious to the dreaded drain of endless touring, so much so that the fact that their fourth album, ironically titled Harmony, didn't seem a likely proposition.

“We had a few road bumps last year,” Prain acknowledges. “We were on a large European tour that was on the back end of releasing Form, as a record label distributed it over there, and in between all the shows we got some recording time where we did most of what is Harmony, and it all became a bit too much. We all realised that we needed a small break from each other, which in a lot of ways has been really good for us for it's allowed us to think back over the past year and what we had achieved, and to see how much we loved this record that we had made. The break allowed us to be excited about things again, about playing and releasing new material.”

It's clear that Die! Die! Die! are alive and raring to fight another day, yet Prain admits that it was a close call. “Once you have been touring with the same three people, sharing space all the time, it can become too much. You need to have some sort of separation from all that. So when we came back last year we all agreed we needed time apart, and it was one of the best things for us. I never wanted to be in a band that becomes something that isn't exciting, that becomes more like work, and your band are your work mates. It needs to be this really exciting and creative thing that you are doing alongside your friends. It's what our band has always wanted to be, an extension of our friendship. So to turn around and say 'Hey, I don't want to see you for the next couple of months' showed us how things were, and led us to becoming hungry for the band once again.”

Cancelling tours and unofficially going on hiatus didn't however prevent Anderson opting to bid them adieu to return to Melbourne. As luck would have it, Wilson and Prain were able to find the perfect replacement in a likeminded soul. “We asked Michael Logie, who used to be in The Mint Chicks, and he immediately jumped on board. He jumped on bass and it came together really easily. In most ways nothing has changed in that regard, which was really surprising. When you're in a three-piece band it is quite skeletal in how much each member influences the sound. However with Michael it instantly clicked. It's proven to be a natural progression.”

Harmony itself doesn't show any of the stresses that lay behind the scenes. If anything the band's fourth longplayer is their most consistent and adventurous yet, tempering the aggression with some fuller, shoegaze elements that amplify Wilson's songwriting without letting the inherent tensions of the band's aesthetic to taper off. “We recorded it all at Blackbox Studios in France, then got it all together and did some overdubs here in Auckland at the end of last year,” Prain explains. “We had Chris (Townend – Portishead, Tim Finn) producing and engineering it, and we travelled to his home studio in Tasmania to polish it off. So it was put together in three locations, which made it seem like a jumble and at one stage we weren't even sure if it could come together, but the end result has proven to be beneficial.”

The name Harmony came in retrospect, and couldn't be more apt. “It's funny because when we left things it all felt a little strained,” Prain concedes. “But after the break we listened to these songs that we had recorded and it all fits together so well. There was nothing forced there, it all felt so natural. When looking at our albums in the past, people have often shied away from one of the quintessential Die! Die! Die! sounds, which is the quite extreme feedback-drenched guitar. Chris was the opposite; he would push the sound further, which has made the songs really urgent, learning to not be afraid to push the tempo past what feels comfortable. We felt excited about playing these songs - everything was in its right place once again.”

Because of this extrapolation of tension and claustrophobia, Harmony tends to be a feverish grower of an album, burrowing under the skin rather than bludgeoning the ears – for every nihilistic moment such as No One Owns A View, there are moments like the title track where the boundaries within which the band can explore shift markedly. “The best thing about albums from my favourite bands is that they have that initial hook, but the rest of the album stays with you,” Prain admits. “We have always hoped to be able to provide something that is a little more than an immediate fix; that holds a deeper meaning. And it also came from taking a step back, being forced to sit on these songs for a few months and not revisit them for a period of time. We could come back with a clearer objective of what we wanted to achieve, could cut songs that didn't fit that mould, and it's made something altogether stronger than it might have otherwise ended up as.”

It is clear that Prain is re-energised, and the favourable response to Harmony has him ready to hit the stage once more. “We have been playing these New Zealand shows and they have been electric, so we are ready to grab all this energy and push forth with it. We have a realisation that we have to all be on the same page for things to work, something that seems simple but unless you are aware of it it can wear you down. We made our own record label for this release (Records Etcetera) to make sure that we are the ones in control of our own destiny. We know what we want from this and what we don't want, and what we want most is for it to be fun, for it to be a party. Only good things can come from that.”