Prehistoric Sounds

It's a rare beast, the band that's big enough to field its own cricket team from within its ranks. In the case of Brisbane garage party starters Velociraptor they even have enough members to provide a twelfth man to carry the drinks (which, if you've seen them play, would probably involve carrying a lot of drinks). Yet things weren't always so multitudinous in the Velociraptor camp. The band actually began with frontman and creative lynchpin Jeremy Neale playing stand-up drums while Shane Parsons and Simon Ridley (the pair now best known as world-conquering duo DZ Deathrays) smashed away on guitars. Necessity made them expand the outfit.

“It was initially a trio, we kicked off in May of 2008. We all used to play in a band together way back in the day – I think it was 2006, when we were at uni together – called Down Forward Punch, a Street Fighter reference,” the affable Neale recalls with a smile. “We were kinda doing an eclectic mix because we didn't have one songwriter and we didn't really know what we wanted to do, so we'd just chuck every cool riff we had into the band. But I couldn't really get my shit together in 2006 – it was an interesting time for me – so we just practiced a lot and never played a show. Then one night later on we met out and about at a mutual friend's show, and they were like, 'We're going out to drink, we're pretty bummed because our band is no more,' which was at the time Denzel, the precursor to DZ. So I thought, 'Here's my chance to get these songs that I'd written in my bedroom back into action again,' using myself and the only other two guys I knew in Brisbane music, so I asked them to listen to the demos and see if they'd want to do it. The main selling point was seemingly immature at the time – 'How cool would it be to be in a band called Velociraptor?' – which in hindsight was a pretty childlike ambition,” he laughs. “They were like, 'Yeah, that's fucking awesome! Dinosaurs rule!' so we tried to find a drummer so we could work as a four-piece with us three up the front, but we couldn't get one to fit, so we started playing [as a trio] and one day I had a [Iron Man protagonist] Tony Stark moment in the garage and went, 'Wait a minute, I can just lift everything up and play standing up!', because I didn't really like bands with sit-down drummers singing as I didn't think it was as much of a commanding force as a frontman.”

It was the early ground gained by the fledgling duo that became DZ Deathrays in 2011 to avoid a name clash with a US dubstep artist that forced the Velociraptor lineup to expand exponentially, allowing the band to continue playing while Parsons and Ridley tended to their increasingly busy commitments. Luckily the thriving Brisbane scene provided them with a plethora of willing and talented fill-ins.

“They formed DZ at about the same time, then they started getting busy, so by about 2009 we couldn't really play a lot of the shows that we were getting offered because they were out of town,” Neale continues, “so we got a couple of guys in to play as like an 'away team' when DZ were out of town. We got two guys from Running Guns – Michael Fletcher and James Boyd – and Joshua Byrd from The Strange Attractors to sub in for those guys when they were out. Then one day the DZ guys happened to be in town at the same time, and we played a show with all six of us – possibly seven with Julien [James] by that stage – and it just ruled, so we decided to never play with less than seven. And if we were going to do that, whenever DZ were out of town we were going to need some other guys so there was a blurry six or so months when I went out drunk, met heaps of cool people and wanted to stay in contact with them so I'd ask them to join the band. It was just like, 'Who's a rad guy that I like hanging out with?' So we got the Sulphur Lights guys and a couple of people from The Strange Attractors, and Jesse Hawkins who I was playing in Tiger Beams with and Corey [Herekiuha], who's just a great dude. Eventually we capped it at twelve because it was the number of members for each letter in the band name – beyond that it seems ridiculous. Even though people say that twelve is ridiculous...”

As with every band with a point of differentiation that makes them stand apart from the throng, as Velociraptor's profile rises there are certain to be detractors who claim that the band's size is superfluous, but anyone who's seen them live will attest the mass party vibe is integral to their substantial appeal.

“They're totally missing the point, I can't stress that enough,” Neale suggests of the naysayers. “You could do it with four or five people – and lots of bands do that – but it's the live experience that sets us apart, it's ridiculous. It's like what a billionaire would get to play at their party if they were after something outlandish – it's next level ridiculous! And it's as fun to play as it looks! Logistically it's not fun to organise a lot of the time, but it's as fun as it looks to play. The DZ guys especially look forward to it, because they just get to strum chords and do their Iron Maiden neck rolls. Everybody gets to just get rowdy.We get [that response] from our recordings too, because we record so clean people are like, 'You don't need seven guitars to make this happen', but we reckon that if you come to see the live show you'll get it. People have posted to that effect on Facebook and stuff; 'I thought these guys were just like a cheap version of The Hives and then I saw them live and had my mind blown.' At the end of the day it's a logistical nightmare but a lot of fun, which is basically all that matters.”

After an EP and slew of radio-only singles they're finally releasing debut mini-album, The World Warriors, eight songs of insidiously catchy garage rock, all gang harmonies and call-and-responses augmenting the most hook-riddled garage pop songs imaginable, the perfect encapsulation of what makes the band so much fun.

“I guess really early on we modelled on The Hives, because The Hives are a fucking amazing band, but there was only three of us and we couldn't really be that loud with three people – well you can, but we couldn't get our heads around it back then to make it as loud as we wanted it to be – so we made it really brutal. Because we couldn't have a lot of depth in the music there was a lot of yelling. Me and Shane were yelling a lot, so it was really rough, especially compared to now, especially on record – now we record in a pop kind of way, back then we recorded in a roughhouse way. Then the sound evolved at the point where I wrote a song called Hey Suzanne, which is on the first EP, which was pretty much a '60s pop song, so we started combining more elements of that '60s pop into a modern context. That point is where the sound kinda changed, and at least I know now when I'm writing what direction a 'Raptor song should go in: garage pop, but a little bit throwback and a little bit today.”

The catchy goodness inherent in the songs Neale brings to the Velociraptor table (he also has a thriving solo career and plays in numerous other Brisbane bands) is due as much to necessity as aesthetics.

“Generally I know what is going to be a 'Raptor song – generally it's something that I can see having elements of twelve people using, whether that's a huge gang vocal, or a call-and-response, or just sounding really raw. Maybe occasionally I'll throw in hooks just to suit the band. Generally the structure is fully-formed, and then everybody else goes to town on it – they put lead lines in, harmonies, bass lines (I never do bass), then maybe the beat changes as well. So when I bring a song in I'll always bring it in with generally what I feel is the most accessible structure – which is not so much for the people to listen to but for the band to remember.”