Whoretopsy brings the brutality to Ballarat

Regional Victoria will play host to one of the heaviest music festivals in the land on
Saturday, 26 January 2019, and Melbourne’s brutal death metallers will be taking to the stage. We chat to drummer Jake Sproule.
For starters, I’ve grown up as an avid metal head and would credit a lot of my interest in the genre to seeing bands such as Thy Art Is Murder at events that were sponsored by the council, so it was quite disappointing for me when they censored Whoretopsy from playing at the Court House. What are your thoughts on this decision?
I’m not exactly opposed to the decision of them banning us, it is justified since it’s an underage event and we do have very obscene and graphic themes. The only thing that was a bit annoying was that they approached us for this show and we explained to them and warned them that there may be backlash and drama over the decision to book us for that show… they then reassured us it would be fine and that they would handle any backlash that arose which they then approved the show. Of course you know the end game, they couldn’t handle the backlash and we weren’t on the show. Obviously we learnt from it and will have to be more cautious with bookers in the future, it’s in the past though there is no hard feelings and we are currently just moving forward.
With a name like ‘Whoretopsy’ I feel being provocative is slightly in your band credo, have you been in situations like this before?
Well from what I understand the band name was never meant to provoke or start drama in the first place, it was just a cheesy play on words made for a ridiculous slam band years ago. Obviously now it’s coming off very offensive even though not intended. We do have to constantly outlay that we have no agenda of violence and that we’re a satire band, but regardless the groups against us just want us to disband and disappear just because the name exists.
Unreal work on ‘Take My Breath Away,’ how was the recording process?
Thanks mate, this was a fun one to record, we did it over the space of a few months. We recorded the drums at Pony Studios with Troy McCosker as we have recorded with him in the past, though this time we tracked all guitars and vocals at LMG Studios (our guitarist Luke Graham’s studio) in which Luke also mixed and mastered the album.
How do you feel this album differentiates itself from your previous two releases?
This album came out with a much different vibe; we’ve had different members join since Never Tear Us Apart and the writing process was a bit different this time around. This time we aimed for a bit more of a catchy vibe with bold hooky riffs instead of trying to go too extreme, also Zac’s style is different to Storma’s on previous records as well so in terms of Whoretopsy records Take My Breath Away came out pretty different to the older stuff due to different members and what we wanted musically for this album.
Would you say that you enjoy bringing a bit of humour to death metal?
We love bringing humour into our music and image. We are a gore satire band so we emphasise the point that all of our material is a fictional laugh and we just love bringing energy to the stage and having our audience laughing along with us at just how ridiculous our material is.
When & Where: Ballarat Blaze Music Festival @ Karova Lounge, Ballarat – January 26 2019
Written by Alex Callan