Ecca VandalPunk rebel Ecca Vandal is not sure where to call home. The musician has long resided in Naarm/Melbourne, but she's spent the past 18 months in transit or in a temporary abode in Los Angeles.
Indeed, Vandal has gigged extensively – the colourfully-attired rocker supporting US nu metal band Limp Bizkit on their global Loserville Tour in addition to strutting the stage at mega-festivals like Fuji Rock, Tyler, The Creator's Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival and Coachella. And it's all been synchronised with her international takeover.
"We haven't settled anywhere right now, because we left Melbourne in February last year for a tour with Limp Bizkit in the UK and Europe and, just from there, it was a snowball effect," Vandal says.
Eventually the in-demand performer grasped that she wasn't returning to Naarm/Melbourne. "We thought 'Oh, we actually need to come and probably pack up our apartment.'" Vandal managed to do that over two weeks in winter.
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"So everything is in boxes still in Melbourne – Melbourne will always be our home. But we don't have a physical home at the moment. It's just suitcases."
Vandal and her band have since lived on the road, closing 2025 with the South American instalment of Limp Bizkit's run. She is back in Australia to play arenas with Sacramento alt-rock legends Deftones (plus Interpol), previously appearing at their annual Dia De Los Deftones fest in San Diego. "So we've been on this never-ending kind of trip."
The mythic star – 'Ecca Vandal' is an alias – has just checked into a Naarm/Melbourne hotel room after flying in from Meanjin/Brisbane, squeezing in some promotion for her much-anticipated second album, LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW, the day prior to Deftones' first sold-out show at Rod Laver Arena.
Vandal exudes a metalhead glamour over Zoom, with her chameleonic blue hair in a geometric style, long sleeve Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles graphic T-shirt and manicured nails.
"It's been amazing, amazing – and it feels like an honour to be a part of this tour with such icons." It transpires that she recently hosted an intimate set-cum-listening party for her LP in Eora/Sydney in tandem with Great Southern Nights.
Vandal wasn't always so visible. She last ventured forth with her acclaimed self-titled debut album via Dew Process/Island Records in late 2017, gracing the cover of The Music (for context, it was the year following Rihanna's ANTI).
But Vandal gradually vanished from the music industry to recalibrate, cultivating more mystique. In fact, that hiatus ultimately determined the empowering – and evolutionary – concept of LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW. "This is the kind of music we came up with by just being out of the game."
Ending her break, and reactivating Instagram, Vandal started rolling out singles as far back as August 2024, the first the raucous mosh banger BLEED BUT NEVER DIE, exploding on social media (and even securing video game syncs).
She officially launched a comeback with her inaugural Coachella (the day Justin Bieber headlined) to rapturous reviews. "It was a 'pinch me' moment, really. I've been watching sets of Coachella online for years and years.
“So it was just an honour to be there – and to be invited to play it so early on, before the album's come out, was really special. The crowds were just incredible – just music lovers from all around the world that turn up for such an amazing bill. The best of the best are there."
Vandal was born in South Africa to minority Sri Lankan Tamil parents – displacement a reoccurring theme in her narrative. She was a child when, ironically as apartheid was finally dismantled, the family migrated to Australia, settling in Naarm/Melbourne's eastern suburbs.
Vandal studied the violin. Enamoured of jazz improv, she defied traditional family expectations to enrol in the Victorian College Of The Arts. During that phase, Vandal discovered the subcultural hardcore punk. Versatile, she never abandoned any musical passions, rather expanding them.
Still, as a woman of colour, Vandal often felt self-conscious in predominantly white alternative scenes. And this sense of peripherality is central to her hyphenated identity.
In 2014 Vandal premiered with the ferocious White Flag, working DIY alongside studio and creative partner Richie "Kidnot" Buxton, succeeded by the EP End Of Time. But she established herself domestically with her eponymous debut.
From the get-go, Vandal was all-encompassing with elements of mathcore, hip hop and Prodigy-esque rave. Her authentic music pivoting on dichotomy and tension, Vandal demonstrated, too, that punk is both personal and political – but without shunning pop (she dedicated the album to "the misfits").
The slamming single Future Heroine especially generated heat – Vandal penning it with US super-producer Mike Elizondo (Eminem, Fiona Apple) at APRA AMCOS SongHubs.
Notably, Vandal protested Australia's detention of asylum seekers in Price Of Living, featuring Refused lead vocalist Dennis Lyxzén and letlive.'s Jason Aalon Butler, and solicited Sampa The Great for the hip hop joint Your Orbit. She subsequently hit the UK for the first time, supporting Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, and the next year played the Reading and Leeds Festivals.
Initially, Vandal stayed active. She collaborated widely – lending her surprisingly soulful voice to Hilltop Hoods' multi-platinum smash Exit Sign with Illy off 2019's The Great Expanse. But Vandal admits that she purposefully disengaged. Vandal needed to recharge, feeling burnt out from industry pressures.
She weathered the COVID-19 pandemic – although it derailed plans to relocate to London – and parted Island for Loma Vista Recordings, with Iggy Pop, Korn, and Denzel Curry on its roster.
"I just went into a bit of a reassessment mode in everything that I was doing, everything in my life – musically, creatively, health-wise, mentally – and I took some time to figure out what I actually wanted to do," Vandal confides.
"I just saw everybody around me trying to release things online and do [virtual] live performances and stuff like that online and I really didn't think I wanted to participate in that. I just had to take a moment to figure out, if I was to do music again, what would it sound like and what would it feel like? I had a lot of voices in my head, and a lot of external voices, telling me that I should do a particular style or stick to a particular lane.
"I had to sort of take a moment to ignore that and to kind of really go internally and dial out their noise and their voices, but turn up my own internal voice and see 'What do I actually wanna follow here – like what are the musical styles? What do I wanna sound like? How do I wanna put out this music? Where do I fit in the scenes – all the different scenes? And, yeah, what slice of the industry was gonna help me with that?' It was a process – it took time.
"But, actually, through that time, I realised that there was no rush. No one was actually really waiting for me or desperate to know what was happening. I also found some liberation in that – that I didn't have to try to stay relevant or try to put it all on social media to make sure I didn't lose anybody or that kind of thing.
“I just really enjoyed the silence offline. I went offline for four years. I didn't post a single thing on my social media – and it was great, the best thing I ever did! The time and space allowed me to go deeper on the art. You know, I wasn't worried or distracted by what everybody else was doing or what the trends were at the time. I really honestly couldn't care about what was happening at the time online."
The industry's hyper-focus on 'data' in the pandemic, with the ensuing contentification of music, accelerated Vandal's ambivalence about social media and artificial connection. "Everyone was obsessed with 15 second TikTok snippets and watered-down music because everyone's attention spans were getting smaller and smaller and smaller – and that really just bored me to tears. It was very uninspiring."
The quizzical title LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW was prompted by her questioning algorithms and specifically the role of the influencer. Yet, lyrically, Vandal's preoccupations are psychosocial wellbeing, feeling present and personal growth – topics rarely immediately associated with heavy music.
Vandal would undertake "a bit of a self-edit on everything in my life, including the online world." Moreover, it was a thorough digital detox. "I was quite literally unfollowing people in my network or people that I was following on social media and going through that process of going 'Why am I following this and what is it exactly that I'm looking at and what am I gaining from this?'
"So I did that, not only in the online world, but actually with everything else in my life and things that I was influenced by around me – relationships that might not have had the depth that I was hoping for or might not have been reciprocated, all sorts of things that I think most people were doing around that time. But I really went quite extreme on it."
Essentially, Vandal was "searching for meaning and depth," as she avoided screens and digital devices. "I think that's something that I'm still looking for in terms of online communication, [but] in real life communication.
“I'm just about building community and building real relationships – and that's best done through art and people being drawn to art and like-minded musicians and creatives being drawn to the one thing. And that happens in the live space and it happens through music."
Though those earlier collabs came out of grassroots affiliations, Vandal laboured on LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW solely with Buxton – her cohort coincidentally causing a stir himself. Aside from performing in Vandal's band, Buxton lately stepped in as Limp Bizkit's tour bassist in the wake of Sam Rivers' passing.
At any rate, the pair hunkered down in Buxton's childhood bedroom in bayside Naarm/Melbourne. "It was just the two of us writing it together and playing all of the instruments ourselves – even the drums were programmed by Richie. So, this album, it was really quite insular."
Vandal developed her international profile with a formidable stage presence – and that energy radiates from the visceral LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW. Nonetheless, she's maintained her experimental impulse.
The atmospheric prelude AIRPLANE MODE plunges into the thrash metal EYES SHUT. Vandal's current single, SORRY! CRASH!, is a collision between hardcore and melodic emo. MOLLY, which SZA co-signed on Instagram with fire emojis, has a cinematic piano outro.
On THEN THERE'S ONE, Vandal dives into dub and raps – and she further explores sound system riddims with LEVITATE PART 1&2. DID A LITTLE MORE TO FORGET is low-slung hip hop. Lastly, Vandal pulls off an epic beat switch for the climax CAME HERE FOR THE LOOT – half trap, half neo-soul.
Unconventionally, Vandal has previewed album material live. "It was quite fascinating that people were responding in the live space to these songs that they've never heard before – and that was just more energising than ever for us. So it was a bit of a different approach that way. But I'm glad we did it. I wouldn't change a thing."
It's tricky to define Vandal's sonic hybrid – describing it requires adjectives over tags. And on LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW she continues to break rules.
"You can so easily fall into these lanes that people wanna just fit you neatly within," Vandal sighs.
For her, the album is Ecca Vandal maximised. "I feel like I was able to express everything fully – just kind of go deeper on the songwriting. I think there's just been a lot of growth. I've worked really hard on digging deeper and trying to say something that's meaningful to me and hopefully to other people but, really, first and foremost, what meant something to me and to my story – and also just to be expressive musically in all the different things that I'm inspired by and not only punk rock."
Vandal channels the many facets of herself. "In every day I go through all the gamut of emotions and feelings and moods – and [I] wanna express all of them. So I thought, in order to be my truest self, I had to express all of those shades of myself."
Likewise, Vandal considers LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW to be a "journey" and no mere collection of songs or a playlist. "I really wanted to celebrate long-form again."
That her fresh music is "resonating with" audiences is validating – proving that "avid punk rock lovers" in general are diverse in their sensibilities. "I mean, maybe playlist culture helped with that – that people are cherry-picking what they listen to."
Vandal's identity has been shaped by diaspora, transnationalism and acculturation – her art cross-cultural, heterogenous and inherently restless. "If I look back on my life, there have been many times where I've had to adapt and adapt very fast – and that's just to the environments that I'm in, the rooms that I find myself in – and go 'OK, well, where do I fit in?'"
Vandal might be a Third Culture Kid in how she relates to others – and, even in adulthood, wonders who she is and where she belongs in Australia. "If I'm honest, I'm still searching for that."
In recording LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW, Vandal reflected more on the phenomenon of cultural homelessness. But she recognises an affinity with her global fanbase.
"I've found sort of a new acceptance, home, welcoming overseas and in the US, where that's my biggest listenership right now – it's overtaking Australia, if I'm honest. And that's really eye-opening for me, 'cause I felt like I spent 10 years, or [the] most part of 10 years, trying to fit in here and to fit into the different sub-genres and scenes.
"[But] I realised through the making of this album that 'scenes' is actually what separates us. I don't really like the 'scene' kind of culture – that kind of energy and bravado and, I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for? The gatekeeper kind of vibe that can happen here in those scenes, particularly in punk rock and hardcore.
"I just have spent a lot of time through my musical life working out which scene, genre, clique do I belong in and do I feel like I can actually have a voice in and be accepted in.
“To be honest, the more I decided to just let all that go and create my own thing and do things that I love and release the album in the way that I've done it is because I actually just wanted the right kind of people to be drawn to it themselves – not because a label told them to or not because a particular scene or the cool kid in a group told them that this was good, you know?"
The album is itself a statement of representation. "It's helped me find my own identity and strength in my uniqueness and my difference.
“And I think that's kind of coming from my culture being so varied and my upbringing being so diverse in terms of where we were raised, how we were raised, the kind of music we were listening to and not allowed to listen to and all that kind of stuff. It just allowed me to tap into embracing myself first and foremost."
Vandal has several famous fans – Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst among her most steady champions. Touring Europe with the Americans in 2025, Vandal was joined one evening by Durst on the viral grunge skater anthem CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE.
Today Vandal is protective of her rapport with the nu metallers. In contrast, the sk8er girl chats freely about meeting trailblazing US skateboarder Tony Hawk, aka The Birdman, who also declared himself "a massive fan of CRUISING TO SELF SOOTHE."
"He was skating to the song and it really helped him go through a bit of a challenging part of when he was trying to learn a new trick. You know, Tony Hawk can do every trick, but he was still challenging himself to learn something new. He said this song got him through that period of frustration and just trying to keep going."
However, Garbage's Shirley Manson imparted the best counsel – the Only Happy When It Rains singer sharing a snap of herself with Vandal. "Shirley said to me just to not change a thing," Vandal recalls. "I was like 'Thank you for saying that' – cause there's always something you can tweak or improve on or get advice [on] to learn about a particular direction that you're going in.
“But she just said 'Don't change a thing' and that helped me again to tune into my own intuition and gut feeling on things. From such a smart woman like her, it meant a lot."
Vandal won't be leaving the spotlight anytime soon. Next, she's destined for the European summer festival circuit and Lollapalooza. But Vandal hints at an imminent Australian homecoming tour behind LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW.
"We're just about to announce our first headline run after this album [drops], so that's gonna be all through the year – [I'm] looking forward to going back to the States, Europe and then Australia, of course, [I] can't wait to do my first shows in six years or so… And we've got some great shows.
“We're doing some more with Limp Bizkit, we're doing some more with Deftones again in Europe. So we are very excited for that."
Ecca Vandal’s LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO UNFOLLOW releases on Friday, May 22nd via Loma Vista Recordings.
