Goldfinger: Golden Eye.

Open Your Eyes is in stores now.

Goldfinger seem to have a decent handle on both sides of the punk ethos. Musically their brash punk pop sensibilities embody the fun and attitude that punk has come to represent. But Goldfinger are also a thinking band, encouraging punters to take a look around and examine the realities of their world. The title of their new album, Open Your Eyes, hints at the more serious facets of their musical personality, and in particular the bands vegetarian stance. A stance which is echoed through the liner notes of the disc.

While the two ends of the spectrum may seem divergent, they come together quite nicely with the track FTN. Fuck Ted Nugent. Damn good fun, catchy as hell, and taking a mighty broadside against hunting, fashion and the consumption of meat.

“I saw this Behind The Music doco on Ted Nugent, it just kind of told the story of Ted Nugent and his life and how he goes hunting,” frontman John Feldmann explains. “I didn’t know anything about him, I didn’t listen to his music, you know. But me being an animal rights activist, his stance on guns and hunting really just… I wanted to write a song that wasn’t preachy, because I a vegan and I believe strongly in animal rights. I wanted to write a song about hot I feel about the animal rights movement without sounding preachy, and I thought, this is my guy. This I my target right here.”

“I know he makes all these arguments like he eats everything he kills, but in the end I’m sure not everything he shoots dies, and there was this footage of him just shooting squirrels with a BB gun just for fun. He’s got this camp where he tries to help troubled teenagers and get them off drugs by teaching them to hunt and kill animals. Give a kid a gun instead of a joint,” he laughs. “That’s the worst solution I’ve ever heard. Just let the kid smoke his pot… whatever.”

How did you first get involved in the animal rights movement?

“For my whole life I just decided I don’t have to eat meat any more. As ridiculous as it may seem, you know that movie Babe, with the talking pig… I’ve had pets and animals my whole life, and I would never think about eating my dog, but then an animal like a pig is smarter than a dog, and is as smart as a three year old child, why do I let it suffer so I can have a piece of bacon? From that point I started researching things I decided not to have a part of it at all. I became a vegan about three years ago now.”

Is it hard to maintain a vegan lifestyle while you are out on the road?

“Some countries are harder than others. I though Germany would be really hard, because the consider like sausages a vegetable, but there’s great vegetarian restaurants through Germany. England is just fucking easy. A lot of our fans a vegetarians too, and they bring me some great food.”

Ahh, gifts from fans. I have to enquire about the strangest fan offering…

“Umm, I don’t know. I can tell you the strangest thing we ever left for a fan… I took a poop on a plate once and left it outside the bus,” he laughs. “Before every show you get what we call the PSL – the pre show load. You just gotta get it out, and I had nowhere to go. It was the grossest thing every. They guys in the band thought it would be funny if we all signed the plate, and when we got back someone had taken it.”

Here in Australia, we’re lucky enough to score a couple of bonus tracks on Open Your Eyes. Do you get the same tracks everywhere?

“Every country actually has different things. Here in the states you get no bonus tracks. Germany gets a couple and you guys get a couple. It cool going to like Germany and England a couple of weeks ago and finding out what songs made the album.”

Do you throw 99 Red Ballons into the live set when you’re in Germany?

“We closed with that one everywhere. We recorded it because we owned our own studio, and I just said fuck it, let’s do a cover. We did it for a record of covers that we put out, and it didn’t make that record, so we used it on the one after. It became a top ten hit it Germany. I can sing most of it in German now, but it was really hard to learn because they got all these crazy noises you have to make with your mouth. We had no idea. All of a sudden it was a great live song to play, and no we close with it every night. It’s great.”