Dead Mall Return With Their Heaviest, Alien-inspired Track 'Chris Martian'

Newcastle outfit Dead Mall returned with a new single yesterday, and it’s their heaviest track to date. Chris Martian is a hardcore ripper that follows vocalist Ruairi Burns as he is hunted by aliens.

Guitarist Joe Willis wrote the new number, highlighting his eerily robotic singing alongside Burns’ desperate, punchy, gruff vocals.

Drawing on similar lyrical themes to their past releases, Chris Martian pulls from the perspective of a low-life character, angry at the rest of the world for their own misfortune. The new song follows the band’s November 2022 single, Everything’s Broken, which we premiered right here on Kill Your Stereo.

“For whatever reason we usually like to write from the perspective of a really low-life sort of character, and this one’s no different,” Willis said in a statement. “It’s essentially about feeling like you’re an outcast from the rest of the world; like everyone’s out to get you and using that as an excuse to act like a scumbag.”

Chris Martian does in fact refer to a particular English frontman of a little band called Coldplay, but the title was attached from the demo-tracking sessions. Despite Dead Mall’s best efforts to change the name, the title had stuck, and with a small variation, the band decided to go with it.

Burns explained, “The demo for this track, which didn’t have lyrics yet, was initially called Chris Martin just because we thought it was funny. We went through a couple of different names once we had lyrics, but nothing seemed to fit, and we always ended up calling it Chris Martin when we would jam anyways.

“Once we started filming our upcoming music video, which features some extraterrestrial themes, we changed Martin to Martian and everything fell into place.” Check out the music video below.

In recent times, Dead Mall have been taking their brand of hardcore across the East Coast of Australia, performing alongside Honest Crooks, Peace Ritual, Dregg, Dropsaw and Whatever, Forever.