It’s warming up this month… Melbourne’s Arkive are coming to Geelong and Warrnambool to tear the roof off some historic venues.
The progressive rock legends will be at The Barwon Club Hotel in Geelong on Friday November 30th and The Loft in Warrnambool on Saturday December 1st, and will be bringing along with them their sophomore EP ‘Sonder.’
“We’re looking forward to it,” beams heavy vocalist Court Walters. “We’ve always wanted to do some of those regional shows and we kind of just haven’t. We’ve just gone straight to doing Brisbane, Sydney, East Coast kind of tours and Adelaide a few times and we’ve even been over to Taiwan recently and we’ve just neglected the regional towns.”
Released last year, Sonder well and truly positioned Arkive as one of the better up and coming heavy bands in Australia. In October last year, Hysteria Mag dubbed Sonder ‘by all accounts a superbly written, produced and performed EP…’ And we would have to agree. The blistering EP is moody, well-produced and technically exceptional – with special mention to the epic tracks ‘Acquiescence’ featuring Marcel Gadacz (Dream On, Dreamer), and ‘Luminous’ (check the video below).
“It’s been really cool to have that connection with people foremost,” Walters explains of Sonder’s success. “[We had the] time to write lyrics that we think we can connect more with people and we had a lot of time to think about how it was going to sound as well,” he continues, referring to the creation of Sonder. “We stripped a lot of it back and tried to make the soundscape a lot bigger and fatter, with less noodly guitars and with more groovy things going on [compared to their previous release]… and I think that’s helped us to communicate with people a lot better in the music.”
With the band spending the better part of two years, writing and recording between bedrooms in Melbourne’s quiet suburbs with touches completed in Oakland Studios, as well as sharing the stage with like-minded bands including Buried in Verona, Make Them Suffer, Polaris, Belle Haven, DVSR and Pridelands, the release of Sonder has seen the progressive metalcore band establish themselves as a powerhouse in the technical heavy music scene and are described as ‘sonically intricate and technically exceptional’.
“It’s really exciting for us. Especially for the boys Sammy [Armstrong, guitarist] and Tom [Clarke, drummer] who’ve just been doing this for the last eight years, having an EP like Sonder where and something actually happens, it’s been really kind of a gratifying experience, and reminds you ‘this is why you do it’. We’re not signed to a label, we don’t have a lot of money; we’re all working our arses off to do music. It’s just been really good to have something that we feel like connects with people a lot more.”
Armed with their fierce EP, Arkive will be joined by heavy progressive rockers, Ebonivory and progressive metalcore lads, Earthbøund at both venues, while metal- progressive-punk aficionados Shopping Trolley Fist Fight will step in at The Barwon Club, and post-hardcore powerhouse, In Deception will drop into The Loft.
Tickets to both shows are $8 online and $10 on the door, get in quick before they sell out.
Check the FB event here.