Sausages & Space Cuties: Sometimes The Best Bands Aren't Strictly Human

There are a lot of bands in the world. Some are good, some are bad, but it's rare that they're genuinely unique. Variety is the spice of life. Control the spice, control the universe. But extraterrestrial band Phantom Panda Power Wizard Master Smasher (PPPWMS) know all about that.

"Well, we are a bunch of space-travelling Space Cuties from the Panda Galaxy," explains head Cutie, Starr Panda. "We just come to just Earth when our desire for pasta hits us. We come, we play for pasta ("best carbs in the galaxy") - and no one ever brings any. It's really disappointing. And then we have to leave right after the show." By "leave", Starr means time and space since PPPWMS are playing at random moments in history as they phase in and out of the continuum. Are they currently in the past? The present? "I have no idea," he laughs. "That all depends on where you are at that particular time."

More temporally grounded, but no less intriguing, The Burnt Sausages' origin is all in the name. "It was a travesty, actually," tells front sausage, Snagz. "We were left on this BBQ, we'd been burnt to a crisp. Horrific. Left behind. No one wanted us, completely unwanted. No one wanted us, that's the emphasis there, no one. And ah, we were like, ‘Fine. We'll just lie here, we're gonna go in the rubbish,’ and luckily this freak gust of wind came in, blew us onto these magic Heat Beads, and we bloody came to life and here we are. We formed a band, yeah? We're like 'let's do it'. And the rest is grease-tery."

Let's establish something quickly. However you feel about aliens and sausages and their place in the arts, it's already happening — they're out there playing some of the most over the top and entertaining shows in town and you can't stop it. Anybody who wants to write them off out of hand as just a bunch of ETwits and meatheads is just leaving some serious fun on the table.

"They can get stuffed," says Snagz. "We did perform with a particular artist who I don't think was a big fan of the music, but this artist didn't actually watch us perform. They just listened to the music and maybe went, 'Eeeeeeh.' It's like, mate, it's a combo deal. You gotta look at the whole thing. It's an experience. Like, welcome to our world. We're trying to welcome you into our greasy, oiled-up, disgusting world. Just, be part of it. Let yourself go... It's a picture mate, it's like a flat picture. No! It's a picture that jumps out at you and throws stuff all over you and has a smoke machine."

The picture also includes "BBQ punk", unlimited puns and a rotating cast of back-up dancers packing explosive choreography. "We've got some regular, amazing, dancing onions and tongs and bread who do come on board the cheese board with us frequently. So they're bloody legends, they're great."

PPPWMS switch fancy feet for cartoons on sheets, projecting classic Bugs Bunny shorts while providing their own unorthodox score; "Pretty much everything we’re doing is animated or animatronic or puppets in some way." For their upcoming album/DVD, however, they've had to commission their own animation. "I would love to re-present that music, and those cartoons, to a modern audience. But, you know, Warner Brothers don't play."

"They had wonderful music already attached - but we put our own little music to it," says Starr. "And then we presented that with every gimmick you can come up with. We have laser-firing costumes, we have a completely in-sync light show. All our costumes fire lasers and have lights that are all in-sync. Well, I say costumes, like, our 'faces' hahaha... We have confetti, we have lasers - I said lasers, we got a lotta of lasers - and we play perfectly in-sync to projected footage, which is everything everybody ever wanted to see."

The display actually snagged Melbourne grind rock legends Blood Duster's attention, the Space Cuties working on their recent final shows. "We did their [previous] show as well. That's when I froze them with CO2. That was really funny. Yeah, they've asked for less strobes," chuckles Starr. "I don't know what their problem is.”

Snagz is a bit confused by the idea of working with humans, as well. "Humans have bands? This is the first I've heard of it." She does rattle off a few BBQ punk influences though; The Sauce Pistols, Bread Kennedys, Black Snags. Are there any other snag bands around Oz? "Look, we technically haven't met any yet," says Snagz. "Someone did speak to me about starting a BBQ punk band, I shut them down. I said, 'Hey, that's our thing.' Shut them down. So yeah, haven't come across any yet in Mel-burn, Oz-tray-lia, but you never know what's around the corner.

"[But] it seems like a lot of people are enjoying it," says Snagz. "Different people from different places, so that's really good. We still haven't come across any other sausages, as I said, on any of the circuits. But that's alright, we've got each other to you know, to chat to about that kind of stuff."

PPPWMS, on the other hand, are running into other higher beings all over the place. "We have had a few more aliens rock up," says Starr. "I wasn't expecting that. At the last shows, at The Reverence especially. There were some wonderful people in antlers, and they were all spaced-up. That was really cool. And ah, lot of trippers. A lotta trippers are coming to our shows. They like to tell you that's exactly what they're doing and it's like, 'Ok, phhhah, fuck yeah. How was that?' [laughs] So yeah, that seems to be our audience. Other space animals, or space creatures, are starting to come, and trippers. And metalheads. We're attracting a lot of metalheads for some reason."

PPPWMS often get described as metal, which Starr finds reductive, though they "do have big brutal guitars and big fuck-off drums and everything, big base and huge vocals". We should point out here that their "big fuck-off drums" are actually a giant, kind of terrifying baby-faced spider ("Giggle Muffin? He's cute as fuck!"). "But then it's 1960s space lounge, or, I don't know, bebop. Arabic bebop. German techno. It all just comes out of everywhere. So once you have a listen to it, there's a lot of stuff going on. A lot of stuff going on. Genre? Not really specific. Which is probably the point."

Giggle Muffin. Pic by Brock Boslem.