Featus: This Means War.

Featus play the B Lounge on Thursday.

Local rockers Featus have been busy making their mark both at home and overseas, all from the comfort of the living rooms. Through their website (www.featus.net) they’ve managed not only to make their presence felt, but get themselves released through a Canadian company before their debut disc is even available in Australia. Bassist Elliot Burton gives the inside line on the band’s past, present and future.

How did the band come together? What got you into music?

"Marz (guitar) and I had been jamming in different bands since we were about 12 or 13. We met Rob (vox) and Pete (drums) at school in year 11, formed Featus and haven't looked back since! I played Trombone from Primary school all the way up to high school, and then we saw a really good arts council band cutting sick on guitars and I was like ‘I wanna do that’!"

The band got off to a flying start by making the finals of the High School Rock battle of the bands a couple of years back. Since them the sound of the band has been constantly evolving.

“Our music has definitely changed over the years; it seems to be more refined now. Our early music was much sloppier back then, but now it seems to be more refined and less predictable as we have progressed as musicians. We all have our input in the writing process and we are happy with the music that we churn out. If one of us doesn't like the direction it's going, chances are none of us will. We either scrap or change the song and move on. We always surprise ourselves with what we think sounds good!”

The band’s debut recording has been in the works for some time now, and should see the light of day in the later part of the year.

“We have finished all the tracking for the EP, which was recorded at Nasty Studios Brisbane (www.nastystudios.com) with Mark Outteridge. Then Marz and I head back in there this week to finish the mix down, and some mastering. The EP cover design and artwork is being compiled by a guy called Salty from Art House Mountain (www.arthousemountain.com). He's a really talented artist, and its looking tops at the moment, so hopefully once that's completed, we are looking at a release date sometime in the next two months, which will be sweet! We have many ideas for an album release, and we already have plenty of songs that didn't make onto the EP, which we plan to record for the album. We are always writing new material and most of them we think are worthy to be on an album.

What is the story with the War Against The Teenyboppers album project that’s mentioned on your website?

“Our Manager is the Deputy-Director of Operations for Invin-Kor (www.invinkor.com), which is a Canadian based organization inviting independent artists from around the world, to become members of the alliance. Members can then showcase and promote their music through their website and perform at IK Events. They seemed to really appreciate our music and as a result, offered us the opportunity to include our track Everything Is You on the latest release, which we are all stoked about. Those Canadians sure love their rock!”

What's next for you guys?

“We plan to have a huge party for the EP release, as that will begin a new era of our lives as musicians. We just want to work hard, hit the road, get our music out there. This is what we want to do for the rest of our lives, so we are going to take it as far as we can and give it all we've got.”