Standing On The Outside

For decades now, Adelaide outfit The Mark Of Cain have been one of the most powerful and unrelenting rock bands on the Australian scene, pummelling senses and sensibilities on stage and off with their uncompromising music and occasionally bleak worldview.

Based around the core of brothers John (guitar/vocals) and Kim Scott (bass) – augmented by a revolving cast of drummers, although powerhouse John Stanier (Helmet, Battles, Tomahawk) has been behind the kit since 1999 – late last year the band returned from a decade-long exile with their epic fifth long-player, Songs Of The Third And Fifth, a record which they'd slaved over out of sight for a number of years, but which took so long to eventually surface because of life issues getting in the way rather than any creative malaise.

“It was intensive from the point of view of when we first recorded it, which was like 'Bang, bang, bang – let's get everything down', because John Stanier was here; he'd just done the Big Day Out with Battles, so it was, like, 'Let's get this thing done',” recalls John Scott of the album's lengthy gestation. “But I keep telling people to blame me for the time it took – I was struggling a bit to get in there all the time, I was working and I had a bit of a meltdown too. I was getting over a bad breakup and selling my house, and you just struggle sometimes to have the energy to go in and record guitars and mix and listen to how it's all going. But I sort of hung onto it in the end – it was a little bit like a lifebuoy, it was the one thing I could look forward to. But it did take a while, and a lot of that was definitely me trying to manage work, getting home to manage family, manage all of the shit that was going on and then also going in at night time to work on it.”

According to Scott, Stanier (who can't be here for the current tour due to commitments with Tomahawk, replaced for the run by Eli Green) played a big role in shaping the album's eventual direction – a mixture of the brutality of recent releases with the more melodic (albeit still heavy) sound of The Mark Of Cain's early output.

“John Stanier came to us liking the early stuff like [1989 debut] Battlesick and The Unclaimed Prize (1990) – he often used to say how he just loved the feel of those albums,” he tells. “He'd also remind us not to ignore that, because we'd gone from back in the day where it was more obvious where the influences were from, [to a point where] it was more of a riff-a-rama. I knew myself that I didn't want to be writing another riff-a-rama album, something the same. It's two-sided – when a band does something that's the same as their last album, you're, like, 'Oh well, maybe it should have been a double-album release last time; nothing's changed' – but I still wanted it to be us.

“I wanted it to straddle everything from the beginning to where the last album was, and then take it over the line a little further – it's not radically different, but it's everything that we are. And without hitting that unfortunate 'selling out' stage that some bands get to, because we don't have to worry about commerciality, we don't have to worry about how many units get sold or whether we're writing something that's palatable for mass consumption. This is what we do – it's our vanity project. It's not a hobby, because it's full-time for me and always is – it's all my spare time, apart from when I'm at work. So the idea was just to not say 'no' to some of the songs that maybe in the later years I might have said 'no' to, that were perhaps more melodic or something.”

There's a distinct military theme throughout the music and artwork of Songs Of The Third And Fifth, but this is allegorical and ties in with the familial hardship that Scott had been facing leading up to the album. “I can see a theme through there in retrospect,” he reflects. “At the time of writing I wasn't trying for anything – I think that's normal, when a guy writes a book or makes a film he'll look back and tell you that he can see some sort of theme running through that he wasn't even aware was there, without making shit up – but to me it was always going to be about alienation and the idea of the outsider, because of what I was going through in the last few years when my family was splitting up and the emotions involved in that, and the ability to try and make people understand what you're feeling. When you go to work you're not supposed to be showing any of that – leave all your problems behind – but I was really struggling there for a bit, and I think it's still thematically linked to the concept of the outsider, and looking at the idea of the individual's feelings, as well, as sometimes going out there in story mode and looking at narratives of the frontline infantryman. It's always that coupling over of looking at life as a battle, without being disingenuous about it. I just feel that life is a battle for a lot of us – that's the theme, if you like.”

That concept of the infantryman as outsider has been something of a recurring motif in the world of The Mark Of Cain over the years. “Absolutely, because that's my interest,” Scott concurs. “I read a lot of stuff, but one thing that's always interested me is how everyday people get pulled into a situation like in any great war or any great conflict, and people who are just average Joe Blows do these amazingly great deeds – their courage is amazing to me, and I just enjoy reading those sort of oral histories. They interview people and you just think, 'My fucking God, how do nations train farmers, school teachers and miners and put them together and they just become this cohesive unit?' It's a visceral thing I feel from it and it just amazes me, and I like the idea sometimes of how in war the military just fucking drive through, keep on going and worry about the dead later – 'it doesn't mean a thing' . I sometimes think that it's a little bit like how some of us have to go through life, otherwise I'd get dragged down by every fucking thing that tugged at my heart. I just try and drive on through, and I find it part and parcel of my lyrical exploration. I leave it to the others to do those happy songs.”

The Mark Of Cain will be playing the following dates:

Sunday 10 March - Golden Plains Festival, Meredith VIC
Friday 15 March - The Hi-Fi, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 17 March - The Capitol, Perth WA
Thursday 21 March - The Hi-Fi, Brisbane QLD
Friday 22 March - Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast QLD
Saturday 23 March - The Metro, Sydney NSW