Spring Loaded

"You can sort of open up your mind to different types of music, and you can enjoy those, but nothing else gives you that feeling of adrenaline that's only really offered by metal, hardcore and punk,” says High Tension's Karina Utomo. “I know that sounds really corny, but for me I just need that physical release in music. All other types of music are important for some kind of balance, but the adrenaline I get from heavy music has made me feel like there's more of a need for me to actually do it.”

It's a cliché as old as Ozzy Osbourne himself; teenage metalheads/punks/hardcore kids spend their frustrated adolescence head-banging and slam-dancing away their angst. So much so that by the time they hit their early-20s they're convinced that they're in it for life and they believe that right up until their mid-20s, where relationships and work and real world-type shit starts to atrophy one's desire to get brutal.

When she hatched the idea for High Tension, ex-Young & Restless vocalist Utomo found out that while she wanted to make heavy, fast, crazy music, the people around her had lost that desire. “There were a lot of people in my circle of acquaintances who were making music, but High Tension was always going to be very specific. And I think a lot of the people who we all knew had kind of gotten over their brutal music stage. But all of us in the band, we probably won't ever get over that.”

Even though Utomo had locked in High Tension's guitarist in Y&R bandmate, guitarist Ash Pegram, there was still an uphill battle to round out the band's rhythm section. “Ash and I have been friends for a long time and were in Young & Restless together,” Utomo continues. “And after that band broke up we kept writing music and hanging out, so then it was just a matter of finding good pals who we could get along with and had some of the same ideas as us… On paper that seems easy, but it was really, really difficult to find people who really wanted to make heavy music anymore.”

Finding their members in The Nation Blue's Matt Weston on bass and Heirs' drummer Damian Coward over the course of 2012, High Tension started to begin writing and recording the material for what would become their self-titled EP/7”. Even if the band members' other commitments made their approach to High Tension a bit different than most bands. “We started this as a band of leisure, because everybody has their day jobs, projects and life. So we never wanted this band to be a burden and how we went about doing that was not being super-strict on practising and songwriting. So the EP kind of happened at its own pace. We wrote about eight songs and picked the best four. It was pretty simple looking back, there were no long days in the studio or anything like that… Now we're looking forward to playing these shows and pushing fans out of their comfort zones. We want to get in the faces of the people who have come to see us and try to push them, so they really can feel the adrenaline of the music.”

Though Utomo says that High Tension's initial plans were for the band to take things at a leisurely pace, the vocalist's evident excitement about the new musical endeavour has led her to concede that that initial plan could be superseded, depending on how the EP and upcoming run of shows go. “We were like 'let's take it easy and just play some shows with our friends' bands and whatever,' but who doesn't want to spend their life touring and playing shows? So of course we would scrap that initial idea to play more shows. If we have exciting opportunities in front of us, we're going to take them. Why not?... YOLO,” the singer says laughing.

High Tension will be playing the following dates:

Friday 1 March - X&Y Bar, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 2 March - TYMS Guitars Instore, Brisbane QLD
Friday 8 March - Old Bar, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 9 March - Blackwire Records, Sydney NSW
Monday 11 March - Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne VIC