TEMPLESTOWE

Templestowe are a metal band from Canberra. They are one of the most promising young bands around at the moment, and good friends of mine. They also sometimes do a cover of “Slaughter of The Soul” by At The Gates which can only be a good thing! However, one time when they were between vocalists, I got up to sing it with them, and even though there were less than 20 people in the room, I was struck with complete stage fright, it was ridiculous!

These are some questions I fired of to Pete, one of the guitarists. I plan to have it in Issue 4, but I think it may be a while until I get that out…we’ll see what happens. Here’s the interview

Ok, standard intro question, who’s in the band and what do they play?

I’m Pete, I do the guitars, then we have Josh also on the guitars, Andy on the vocals, Grant on the bass and Jesse on the drums.

You’ve just got a new drummer on board, what other bands has he been in?

Jesse has been doing time for a while now in Canberra ska outfit Los Capitanes, I’m not sure what he was doing before that. I know a few people will be questioning the link between a ska band and a metal band. Jesse’s style on the drums transcends a lot of genres and he draws influence from a wide range of styles, one of which is metal. Everyone can rest easy though, I don’t think you’ll be hearing any ska drum beats in Templestowe songs anytime soon.

You just played “Chaos ACT” over the weekend, how’d that all go. It was the first big metal weekend in Canberra in quite some time.

The weekend was extremely promising. The scene in Canberra is definitely on the up. There’s some new fresh bands kicking it around the traps and most of the other bands have got something on the burner. It’s great to see some bigger crowds getting into the spirit of things and embracing some of the great metal Canberra has to offer. Fogz (promoter of Chaos ACT) really stepped the bar up a notch in terms of metal shows in the region. It’s great to see someone taking up the legacy of Metal for the Brain and doing so with such enthusiasm and determination.

You will be recording a full length soon. Where are you recording that, and when do you expect it to be out….do you have any labels showing interest?

At present we are heading back into Dark Corpse studio with Scott Carter to churn out the tracks. Scott is an incredible mind and one of Canberra’s untapped resources in terms of recording and producing so it was basically a given that we were going to go back to him after our E.P. All things equal and fingers crossed looking at an end of year release. But that said, we’re definitely not rushing. We’ve spent too long writing and putting in the hard yards on these songs to be worried about a release date. We’re currently chatting to one independent label about distribution and release. Hopefully something will eventuate.

I know a couple of you guys are going to Europe for a while, and getting to see bands like At The Gates and Carcass at Wacken… will this delay the completion of the album?

Not so much delay. We’ve had this trip on the cards for many months so we’ve factored recording in around it. As far as I’m concerned recording can wait for something like a chance to see some of the world’s best metal bands with 60,000 other people rocking along side you. Not to mention I’m a complete At The Gates fan boy so I’m jumping out of my skin to see them and plus, all the most beautiful, delicious, thirst abating German beer one could ever want. Recording what?

You’ve had some pretty solid supports in the time you’ve been around, what have been some of the highlights so far?

Yeah, in terms of Australian metal we’ve played with some really great bands. Daysend in Canberra was great, a few of us have been listening to them since before our band even started so it was great to rock the stage with them. Apart from that we’ve played with Terrorust which was again great ‘cause a few of us are big Damaged fans, Double Dragon from Adelaide (despite their misfortune getting to the venue) and Nocturnal Graves last year was pretty cool.

What does the future hold for Templestowe? Will there be extensive touring once the full length comes out?

That’s the plan yeah. A CD without mileage in the Australian metal scene is pretty useless. I’ve always been a fan of the mentality that if you keep coming back to a place people are going to start to take notice. There was some talk after our EP was released of a national tour with Kill for Satan and Aeon of Horus, however we decided to sit tight till we had someone more substantive than an EP to tour on. Unfortunately due to the nature of our continent it’s very difficult to go on tour and make a living off it just because we’re not a big country population wise, we don’t have a lot of big cities and the ones we do have are so far away from each other. It’s a lot different to say for example the American metal scene where you can hop in a van and tour around till your little metal heart is content.

You’ve played a couple of shows out of Canberra, how have they gone….is there a big difference playing at home compared to playing interstate?

Playing out of Canberra is definitely a whole other ball game. Our shows outside of Canberra have been alright, but not great. It’s very easy to get complacent playing shows in Canberra. You play to decent crowds most of the time and you start to think that ‘yeah, this isn’t going to bad’. But really, it’s only the very tip of the ice burg. It’s not enough to just play your local 4 or 5 venues again and again. You have to get out there and play to the 10 people in another city, confident that the next time you go back there will be 20 and so on and so forth.

What can we expect from the album? Will be similar in sound and themes to the demo?

I think what people will find that the album is a lot more mature and polished than our EP. Not to mention everyone in the band is trying really hard to push the musicianship on this one. Apart from that we’ve gone out of our way to make sure we’re producing material that’s fresh. We’re always searching for ways to get out of our elements when writing and try and produce something different. On a whole the album is quite diverse. We’ve got some of the heaviest stuff we’ve done so far, and on the other hand we’ve also toned it down in some parts and produced some of the most progressive and melodic stuff we’ve done so far too. The last thing I wanted to do was produce 10 songs that are basically the same riff and song structure played every which way. I want an album to be durable and that for me comes with embracing different genres and styles of music. The inclusion of two new members in the band, that being Grant on bass and Jesse on the drums will also alter our studio sound a fair bit too. They both bring their own personality to the music which I’m hoping will shine through a fair bit in the songs.

What bands do you recommend at the moment?

At the moment I’m really getting into Enslaved, new Opeth is great, Necrophagist have been running a fair bit in my car. I’ve been loving some more proggy stuff too, Porcupine Tree are amazing, Three, Jesu and Isis. On the local scene Infinitum have just released a CD which absolutely slays, Aeon of Horus are brilliant as well as a band out of Sydney called Sword Towards Self. I also caught a band called Epoch of Inexistance at Chaos ACT from Orange who were very promising.

Any thanks or anything else to add?

Big thanks to Fogz for Chaos ACT, Benny Hocking, Scott Carter and yourself for the interview. Keep millin.