"We've been put into a bit of a spin by our drummer who thinks that he can fly, but it turns out that he can't," explains frontman Jay Whalley. "His arm's on the mend but it might take a while, it was quite an awful break. We were in Perth and he decided that he'd teach the crowd how to stage-dive and crowd-surf — because he thought it was being done wrongly somehow — but it turns out that he's not a good teacher. He went down between the barrier and the stage and completely snapped his arm above the elbow — he gave himself a new elbow. It was brutal, and I felt bad for the guy for a few minutes before I realised that the rest of my year was fucked, because it's all about me. 

"He was in horrendous amounts of pain just outside the doors listening to all these different drummers fucking up all his parts."

"There was instant karma because the ambulance came and we assumed that they'd take him straight to hospital, but once he got outside they didn't want to move him so he had to spend the entire set listening to us fucking up all our songs from start to finish; he was in horrendous amounts of pain just outside the doors listening to all these different drummers fucking up all his parts. Now we've got a guy from Newcastle called Kye Smith filling in, and I'm not 100% convinced he's not a robot."

To make matters worse they were due to record a follow-up to Smoko At The Pet Food Factory (2011), once again with punk icon Bill Stevenson in the producer's chair.

"We're actually supposed to be in the States right now recording," Whalley sighs. "We'd just finished all the demos and were pretty much ready to go; flights were booked and I had my underpants packed. It's a bit of a bummer but not the worst thing in the world that could happen, it's not like the bigwigs at Sony and Universal are breathing down our necks going, 'Where's the next Frenzal record!?' We'll just hang tough until Gordy's better and go smash it out."

Fortunately in the interim they're pumped to be heading north for Red Deer Festival to take their mind off things.  

"I love these sort of festivals where it's not just about someone making large amounts of money, it seems like a really great idea," Whalley enthuses. "We're super-excited to play that, and hopefully Gordy can come up too and give some new stage-diving lessons in a controlled environment. Do people strap couches to the top of cars and bring them along? Maybe people can put all the couches in front of the stage so he'll have something soft to land on."