Justice For The Damned
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Justice For The Damned

If you’re into the metal scene, you may have realised that Justice For The Damned have been crushing it since 2017’s release of Dragged Through The Dirt, the bands brutal debut album. Not only have the lads found their rightful place on tours alongside Thy Art Is Murder, In Hearts Wake and Ocean Grove; they have also been busy playing headline shows, touring Europe and working on their sophomore release.
Having recently played down in Geelong at the Barwon Club’s sell-out Polaris show, we figured it would be the perfect time to have a chat to Bobak Rafiee, the lead vocalist of Sydney’s hottest up-and-coming “metalcore/deathcore/death metal/blackened hardcore, or whatever the fuck you want to call it,” band.
Speaking of the groups first European tour (alongside Thy Art Is Murder, After The Burial and Oceano) Bobak doesn’t hold back. “It was fucked up dude. I can’t even explain it. It was just the best ever.
“Going to another country, being the opening band and not necessarily having a big fan base over there, one of the biggest things you realise is that no one gives a fuck about you. No one cares about you. What are you worth? Who is your band?” he explains.
“You need to prove yourself as hard as you can and that was the biggest thing that I took away from that tour; realising that the grind permanently doesn’t stop. You just can’t stop or slow down ever was a pretty big learning curve.”
A far cry from the bands first ever headline tour last year. “It was a lot better than I thought it would be; leading up to it I was 100 per cent keen and 100 per cent anxious,” he says. “It’s really interesting actually headlining your own shows and taking really good bands along with you on the tour was. The shows were insane, I literally couldn’t of asked for more from that tour.”
When I asked Bobak to compare the countries live music scenes (with both Australia and Europe having avid metal fanbases,) he gives credit where credit is due.
“I think the scene in Australia is really good, I think there are a few things Europe could learn from Australia.
“The biggest thing would be ‘stage potatoes’, there are way more stage potatoes in Europe,” he explains. “There are people who get on stage take a selfie and jump off or whatever and then there’s some people will just get up and then not stage dive and just be standing on the stage and in Australia that doesn’t really happen. It does but it doesn’t, definitely a lot less.”
Having already secured themselves a European booking agent at Avocado (Thy Art Is Murder, Parkway Drive) as well as working on the new album, it’s fair to say Justice will be pretty flat out over the coming months. But before they settle down to record, they are headed off on ‘the Survival of the Riffest,’ co-headline tour of Australia with pals in Alpha Wolf.
“We want to do a second record; we are ready to go we are just waiting on producers at the moment. We have a specific producer in mind and then quite a few others who we are also really interested in and then we also have a co-headline tour with Alpha Wolf in December and some cool stuff happening next year, so it’s a pretty busy and exciting time at the moment.”
Justice For The Damned and Alpha Wolf will play at Stay Gold in Melbourne on December 14.
Written by Alex Callan