If you like your music to rattle your bones, Blaze Music Festival is something you need to get to this January. Featuring an all Australian line up that includes a slew of brilliant local and national touring acts, spread across two stages of mayhem at the Karova Lounge in Ballarat, the festival is set to raise the bar of local music events. Among those on the lineup, an exciting addition comes from ‘the most isolated band in the world’ NT’s Southeast Desert Metal who hail from the small Aboriginal community of Santa Teresa, the home of the Arrente people. We chat to vocalist Chris Wallace.
Hey Chris thanks for chatting to Forte Magazine! Congrats on being added to the Blaze Music Festival lineup in Ballarat.
It’s really great, I can’t wait to head over and perform. We’ve played there [Ballarat] on tour before for our first album a few years back, and there’s a few bands on the lineup that we’ve played with before so we’re really looking forward to catching up with them. Some of them have even played our way at Blacken Open Air Festival in Alice Springs.
What importance do you see of having a heavy music festival with all Australian bands?
It’s pretty exciting, it’s a good way to interact with other bands around the country and see the crowd, going off and banging their heads to all our music.
You guys just released your second album ‘Break The Silence last month. What was the process like for that album? Is there a message within it?
We only took about a month to make it. We were with a few other bands who were using the same studio so it was roughly about a month to put it together – the mixing and mastering was the part that took a while though. As for the message; this album is just more about educating the younger generation and promoting strong messages about the effects of drugs. Some of the songs are also educating people about our history too, our ancestors.
Now you are heading out on a ‘Break the Silence’ Australian tour Part 1 hitting up Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria (including Blaze Fest). Do you guys prefer doing live shows or jamming?
When we come back from Victoria and New South Wales, Queensland and Tassie, we’ll have a couple of weeks break, and then we actually head off on another tour in March down to Western Australia and South Australia as a ‘part 2’ to the tour. We like to do a bit of both – jamming and performing. When we’re bored, we just sit around and start playing music, and then a lot of the time we’ll put on a bit of a show on the weekends and invite other bands to come. Our music is just trying to personally keep this younger generation out of trouble and keep them entertained.
Thanks for chatting! We’re looking forward to catching you at Blaze Fest. Any last words?
We’re just really looking forward to catching up with the bands that we’ve jammed with before and we hope it goes well for everyone involved. We’re really looking forward to it and to put our music out there in this part of the country.
When & Where: Blaze Music Festival @ Karova Lounge, Ballarat – January 26. Tickets available at Oztix
