School's Out

As Melbourne's Snakadaktal begins pre-production for a second EP, drummer Barna Nemeth is on a mission to ensure the band tops its last efforts. Despite the fact their single Air came in at number 22 on triple j's Hottest 100, Nemeth's his own worst critic and can't help give the release a rigorous evaluation. “There are a million things that we could fix up. There are so many mistakes: wrong notes; wrong words; things are out of time. We didn't bother fixing it up because we didn't expect it to be anything,” he explains. “But I think that's what people like about it.

“We're focusing a little more on the production and the format of each song. When we recorded our first EP we just put in whatever we felt like chucking in at the time. We didn't expect anyone to really hear it,” Nemeth continues. “It was only to show the cool older kids in the school,” he laughs. “It was for our own benefit as well; to have a project to work on. I'm shocked that it's done so well and that so many people have listened to it and enjoyed it.”

The EP began as a way to kill time after school and on weekends, and fittingly the band's name was also derived from a productive activity that was used to kill boredom during long school days. “Our singer, Sean Kelly, and a friend were in a class at school and were coming up with all these animals that are joined together. They had this Internet zoo going and they put the animals in this Internet zoo. One of them,” he pauses to laugh. “So nerdy… was a snake and a pterodactyl put together.”

It can be hard to hold down a casual job, let alone find time for tertiary studies, when you're fresh out of high school and your band gets their first taste of success. Last year, while the members of Melbourne's Snakadaktal were doing their high school exams and selecting what universities they'd be going to, fate had something else in the works. “Some of us had courses we wanted to do, and we wanted to work, and travel overseas with our friends and that kind of thing. But all our intentions this year are focused on the band. We've deferred from courses and we won't be able to travel, apart from with the band,” he explains.

“We can't exactly get jobs because we're going to be away for so long. We've had jobs that we've had to decline or say we won't be able to work, purely because we're not reliable. We've got gigs coming up all the time, rehearsals, recording and tours,” he expounds. “Things have changed from what we once wanted to do, but we're really excited for this year. We're going to try and build the band up a bit more now that we have time and don't have to worry about school.”

With the excitement of selling out numerous dates on their upcoming Australian tour still sinking in, Snakadaktal shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. “We did a mini east coast tour in December and we sold out Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. We were super shocked about that. We weren't sure how this tour was going to go because we haven't really brought out anything new since that tour and we're going to the same places. We were hoping that Melbourne would sell out, but there's no way we thought we'd be putting on three shows in Melbourne, two in Sydney, two in Adelaide, and that kind of thing. It's really cool, and we're so excited.”