Smashin' Fashion

Psycroptic's fifth album The Inherited Depression is yet another chapter in the quartet's storied career, the record seeing Australia's foremost death metal exports continue to deliver lighting paced technicality with an unrelenting strength that few acts, domestically and abroad, can compete with. Although the album was unleashed on the world six months ago, the band are only just about to embark on their Australian launch tour. Not that they've been relaxing, having done an extensive tour through Europe and dates in South East Asia; Psycroptic have simply been doing things their way, as they always do.

“We just want to do what's fun, and that's sort of how we've always worked,” Haley says. “We've never had this thing, y'know, 'Okay, let's push the band and try and live off it'. We still want to play a lot, but we just want to have that balance with work and home life. I guess that's what's given us our longevity and keeps us all very enthused with the band. We do as much as we can while just trying to make everything count.”

With time to reflect on the album, Haley speaks warmly about what the band accomplished on the record and the new ground that they covered, sonically and thematically. But although he admits that it's his LP of choice from the band's discography, he's quick to counter that it's more so because it's current as opposed to superseding any of the Tasmanian's previous efforts.

“The new albums we release are always our favourite albums because that's what we want to do at the time,” the drummer levels, “so when it comes to writing and recording the next album, then that is going to be our new favourite. We evolve as our listening tastes evolve and change, and we're influenced by everything that is going on around us, musical and non-musical.”

When pressed for any revelations though, he laughs off the notion. “I'd like to say that there was some turbulent, massive life-changing event and that it was a super-emotional album but nah, I haven't got any stories like that.”

Written in sporadic bursts around the band's individual pursuits, Psycroptic have taken a more hands on approach to The Inherited Depression than anything they've ever done before, a trend that Haley admits should only become more constant in the future.

“There's a real strong DIY ethos with this record,” he says. “Joe [Haley – guitar] recorded it from start to finish, he mixed it then we got someone else to master it so essentially it's all self-produced and recorded within the band so from that point of view we're really proud of it.”

As the tides move around them, Psycroptic continue to stand tall on the Australian metal landscape. Haley finishes by weighing in on the state of the present environment.

“Heavier styles of music are definitely way more accepted [nowadays], but there's still this huge division between 'metal' and 'hardcore', where the lines are so blurred,” he explains. “Now there's all these deathcore and thrash bands that sound exactly like hardcore bands. But the only real division is this fashion thing at the moment. A lot of people have in their heads, especially from the hardcore scene, that, 'Oh, the metal scene's fucked; it's just a bunch of long-haired losers'. And then there's the metal scene thinking that the hardcore kids are just into tattoos and looking cool, so there's still a division there but sonically speaking I don't think it's much. But I think the more people into heavy music the better, at the end of the day.”