Pegazus: Horse Play.

Pegazus play the Waterloo Hotel on Friday.

In ten years, Pegazus have made their mark on the international metal community. They’re three albums into a deal with widely respected European label Nuclear Blast, toured extensively through Europe and abroad including a slot of the prestigious Wacken Festival and enjoyed success on the German charts. Yet this Melbourne based traditional heavy metal quartet are still to make their first appearance in Brisbane. While most Australian bands lap the continent before setting out to conquer the world, Pegazus have done just the opposite. Finally, however, their Headless Horseman album finds them heading north, and fans of classic metal sounds should be well pleased.

“This will be our first time in Queensland,” confirms guitarist and founding member Johnny Stoj. “The distances in Australia and the expenses are a real factor; it’s what holds a lot of bands back from doing things at home, I think. Even Melbourne to Sydney is a good eight or nine hundred kilometres away. In Europe, you only have to travel a couple of hundred kilometres and you’re in another country.”

Is it an issue for the band that you can tour extensively and gain recognition overseas, and still find it hard to put together a home country tour?

“It is, you know. You can’t play too often here or it’s regarded as overkill, you know. There’s five major cities we can play, but even then it’s a hike. It’s just such a huge continent we live on. It keeps us apart.”

How much time have the band spent overseas recently?

“We haven’t really done much in the last two years. The last time was when I went over to Germany to assist with mixing and production for Breaking The Chains (1999). We’ve got a few places to get to this year, but we’ve got to get it in order. We’ve got offers to go to Japan and do some more obscure places like South Africa, places a lot of bands don’t tour. Places like Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary; places like that. We’re prepared to go wherever the metal fans are, and apparently there are quite a few Pegazus fans in those territories, so if we do make the trip over, we’ll get a good reaction. All we want to do is get out there and play. We don’t care where. Even if it’s Afghanistan,” he chuckles. “If they can get fans to turn up, we’ll do it.”