Album Review: Coheed and Cambria, The Afterman: The Ascension

05 October 2012

by Poppy Reid

When Coheed and Cambria announced their sixth release would be a double concept album following an astronomer named Sirius Armory through an alternate universe called Heaven’s Fence (a concept picked up by none other than Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson to develop into a live-action feature film) and that its deluxe edition would include a hardcover coffee table book, not one of their zealots flinched.

The New York quartet have been waxing-existentialist and shaping their ever-developing sci-fi tetralogy The Armory Wars - about two protagonists, Coheed and Cambria - since 1995. As for the accompanying tome, well this isn’t the first time the band have gone that extra mile for the project; 2003’s In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3 was released alongside a graphic novel (which this year reached #4 on the New York Times Bestsellers list), and 2010’s Year Of The Black Rainbow was offered with a novel.

Touted “the most honest record I’ve ever written” by frontman and creative linchpin Claudio Sanchez, The Afterman’s integrity will be told in two parts, the first The Afterman: The Ascension is out later this month before second instalment The Afterman: The Descension is out February next year. Self-financed and honed in Sanchez’s basement, The Afterman… marks the return of drummer Josh Eppard, who left in 2006, but sees the band journey into new territory with their sound. While Coheed and Cambria have always genre-crossed between their hardcore roots, prog-rock, soul and even intelligent pop on some tracks, The Afterman… is a different dimension altogether.

From the piano-driven opening in The Hollow, accompanied only by three lines of dialogue percolating extraterrestrial ambience, and the multi-pronged attack of Key Entity Extraction | Domino The Destitute where Sanchez wails thick and effervescent about Sirius Armory’s expedition, (punctuated with snippets of what sounds like sport commentary), The Afterman: Ascension pays homage to long-time fans with nods to past classics while stepping in a different direction and forging a whole new legacy.

The title track is where Sanchez goes off the trail to make exceptional exceptions, instead of sticking to his preconceived ideals which consistently fall in line with the tetralogy’s narrative arc, he has used his wife’s personal story of her friend’s death (which she found out through Facebook) and tells it from her perspective. From the darling opening plucks, which remain a subdued constant, to the slow building guitars and Sanchez’ growling whisper, The Afterman was an obvious choice for lead single, fans will be grateful the rest of the record is exempt of any carbon copies, given its charm.

Elsewhere, the flushes in future-scape Goodnight Fair Lady - where Sanchez’ drifting falsetto floats alongside casual, syncopated Thin Lizzy-esque drumming, and the anthemic rise of Mothers Of Men - the cinematic offering where guitars and vocals conduct a dialogue - this release allows the listener to hear and feel what the protagonists are going through, more than ever before.

Whether you want to lose yourself in the cryptic storyline that surrounds this opus, or you simply like to take each record at face value, Coheed and Cambria have created a post-apocalyptic dream that can’t be ignored, no matter how fleeting the experience.

The Afterman: The Ascension is out now.

Label Spotlight: Fat Wreck Chords, with Fat Mike

09 October 2012

by Poppy Reid

More than two decades ago when Fat Mike started Fat Wreck Chords, the NOFX frontman’s motives were simple – he saw friends doing it and thought he could do it just as well. Since starting the label in 1990 with his then wife Erin (who remians his business partner), Mike Burkett has created an iconic brand, home to the biggest names in American punk rock.

With releases from Against Me!, Anti-Flag, Rancid, No Use For A Name and Rise Against in the past and acts like Lagwagon, Descendents, Strung Out and Frenzal Rhomb on the current roster, Fat Wreck Chords is still weaving its legacy and helping like-minded folk keep the culture alive – all on a one-record-deal policy. But as the prolific and candid founder tells TMN, there did come a time when he considered throwing in the towel.

I remember selling Lagwagon records, and I think we sold 2,000 the first year. There was Epitaph and there was Lookout! and Dischord, and there weren’t many good labels besides that. I just saw a lot of good bands on tour and I thought I’d give it a shot, but you know, in the early ‘90s selling 10,000 records was as much as you could sell. Bad Religion’s Suffer (1988) had sold 12,000 records and that was unbelievable; you don’t think you’re going to be a successful label, but I guess I thought I could make money doing it - I had no idea that we’d have bands that would sell millions of records.

I’ve thought about giving it up for the past few years, we had a couple of years where we were losing money, terribly.

Look at the Billboard charts, records sell one tenth of what they used to sell. You sell 50,000 records and you can be #1 on the chart, so it’s just the music industry is failing and it’s going to keep failing but I think to have a small label, if you do it right, you can still survive.

 

What happened then was we cut down people; we went from eighteen people to five people. We had two choices, the choice that was the smartest one was to stop the label and just sell the back catalogue, and then you have no expense, just money coming in. We didn’t want to do that, so my wife and I at the time were like, ‘Let’s just revamp it and re-work it and see if we can make money out of it still’. So we did. That ended up being a really smart thing, now we’re making money again, and we’re selling records that are pretty good. All we did was trickle back into the label we were igniting.

I want to keep the label as a punk rock label, I don’t want to go into emo or weird shit, I don’t want popular music I want to keep it a punk rock label about good music.

Fat Wreck Chords have recently released new material from NOFX, Morning Glory and Cobra Skulls, and reissues from Lagwagon and Less Than Jake. The Fat Wreck Chords store in California is open Fridays from 3-6pm, they offer free beer to anyone who walks in.

NOFX: Secret Society

16 October 2012

by Poppy Reid

While NOFX fans were gushing over the release of twelfth studio album Self-Entitled, Mike Burkett (aka Fat Mike) was donning leather and exercising his trademark hedonism at Jamaican fetish event Kink In The Caribbean.

“It’s a rubberist's vacation resort where weirdos take over the whole hotel and the beach and get real weird,” Burkett explains nonchalantly down the phone from his home in San Francisco. “It’s fabulous. Are you kinky?” The forthcoming frontman has just returned with girlfriend Soma Snakeoil who makes a living from sharing his perversions – “My girlfriend is a dominatrix but occasionally we’ll switch, occasionally I’m her daddy.”

Although Self-Entitled sees the band take heed from the roots of American punk rock in the early ‘80s - both musically and lyrically (re: the track Ronnie and Mags about Reagan and Thatcher) – Snakeoil’s influence (I Believe In Goddess) and his embrace of the BDSM scene (Secret Society) show a new side to Burkett, quirks he likens to the type of album he set out to make.

“The BDSM world is super secret and fun,” he says before holding the phone away to shout, “we’re having steak tonight, two… It’s fucking dark,” he continues. “It’s very reminiscent to me of early punk rock, because it’s secret.”

It may come as a surprise that Burkett has had a dungeon in his home for over twenty years, but BDSM has been a part of his life since the age of twelve. “It was the first time I was privy to kinky porn,” he remembers. “My mum had a bunch of dirty magazines, you know Penthouse and Playboy and stuff, and none of it ever really did it for me. I read a kink magazine and it had some kinky story, I was like ‘oh, this is what being turned on is’.”

Burkett had been fronting NOFX for six years when he began to practice his leanings to the ‘scene,’ as he calls it. A dabbling which started with a magazine lead him to study Human Sexuality in college, ex-wife Erin – who remains his business partner at his label Fat Wreck Chords – and more recently to Snakeoil, who he now produces fetish films for.

“For me it’s a pre-requisite, there’s been lots of things that I would like to do that my partner didn’t want, and then we ended up doing it and it turned out to be awesome.

“Cutting was never my thing, I was never a cutter. But [Snakeoil], she loves medical stuff. Once she totally bound me and took a scalpel then carved an ‘S’ on my inner thigh. It was deep and she went over it a few times and spanked it, slapped it. It was cool because it was right when we first started going out and she put a permanent mark on me, and it was hers, she made me hers.”

Candid anecdotes like this are almost expected of Burkett, after his performance as alter-ego Cokie The Clown at SXSW festival in 2010 – where he used the stage as a cathartic sound-board to reveal personal experiences – NOFX fans saw Burkett as vulnerable and weathered for the very first time. This melancholy has only bled onto a NOFX album once, in the form of My Orphan Year, a track released a month after the SXSW debacle. Burkett does plan to release more “really dark personal songs” though, in fact he has enough written to record an LP.

 

“My Orphan Year was about as dark as [long-time NOFX] fans had ever seen me go, and that’s not nearly as dark as these songs… I tell the stories I told at that performance, about my mother dying of cancer and how she asked me to kill her earlier so she wouldn’t suffer. “One of the songs is about what I went through to do that, in serious detail.” Burkett speaks clinically about his past as if one-step removed. “Another song is about a rape that me and our guitar player Eric witnessed,” he says. “But it was these gangsters in LA in this really bad neighbourhood and we didn’t do a thing to stop it; I talk about my roommate who hung himself and I had to cut him down, some pretty dark shit.”

While NOFX have watched music and each others’ lives peak and crash, fade and change over almost three decades together, they’re yet to release an autobiography, until now. Apparently it has been in the works for over a year, and is being penned by a journalism amateur known only as Jeff. “It’s pretty crazy how deep people are going,” Burkett says of his bandmates. “I can’t believe some of the stuff that people are sharing, I think it’s going to be a pretty good book… I’m pretty open about my life, I’m happy that the other guys shared stuff that we’ve always been so secretive about.”

With no book release timeframe set, and no plans to tour Australia until 2014, fans can be genuinely placated with Self-Entitled; an album that is as socially awake as it is crude, while nodding to early offerings from genre pioneers Bad Religion and the Circle Jerks – not that Burkett cares about the reaction anyway.

“I always need some kind of inspiration, and it never is: ‘What will I do to please my fans?’ or ‘What will people like?’, it’s not my interest ever,” he states. “I just wanted to make an album that sounded like: ‘If we were around in 1981, what would it sound like?' That was my inspiration, and however this ranks against our other records, I don’t really care.”

Timomatic: Mr. Incredible

05 October 2012

by Poppy Reid

In the not-too-distant past, winning a televised talent show in Australia didn’t necessarily convert to stardom. Some winners were even berated for a chart placing that surmounted a less ‘manufactured’ act. One artist wholly aware of the changing times is Timomatic, the 24-year-old who entered Australian lounge-rooms on two different networks, on two vastly different talent shows.

“When an opportunity comes up where you have the platform to show exactly what you can do to a large amount of people-I took it and I ran with it. I don’t think I’d do it any other way.”
Nigerian-born Tim Omaji is gathering his breath at Sony Music’s Sydney offices after working on a surprise for fans before the release of his self-titled sophomore record. “I wanted to do the whole album a cappella in my native tongue,” he says very seriously. “I’m joking. Can you imagine?” he asks, laughing infectiously as he attempts it. “I don’t know my native tongue!”

Timomatic was actually filming dance accompaniments to each of the thirteen tracks on the album, and while he’s set on continuing his singing career, the hovering reminder of when he first made his name in 2009 (as a top eight contestant on Channel Ten’s So You Think You Can Dance) has only added to his semblance. In fact, it’s a venture Timomatic would never have taken without his mother’s push.

“She was like ‘the one thing you’re lacking is a fan-base, you have no one to perform to’,” he chuckles, imitating his mother. “’It’s all well and good you performing around here and doing your thing, but you need to get out there!’”

Since his formative years studying music and teaching dance in Melbourne, Timomatic placed third on Australia’s Got Talent in 2011, landed a role in Fame The Musical, inked a deal with Sony (and later a worldwide contract with EMI Music Publishing), and watched his single Set It Off become the most played Australian song at radio in the first six months of the year. The triple- threat has been songwriting since the age of fourteen and drummed in his family gospel band as soon as he could pick up sticks - so a career in music was always held above all else.

“When I would hear music I would create things in my head, naturally. I was like ‘I have to find where that part of my brain is going to fit in the real world’ – that was my quest,” he says. “When I heard the feeling I thought I would love to give that feeling to other people.”

Although he felt the parental push to audition for So You Think You Can Dance, Timomatic was very calculating when mapping out his career in 2009. “At that time it was all about Australian Idol and I felt that that show wasn’t exciting anymore,” he says. “It had its day... I guess the golden era of that show was kind of over.” The dance craze was just taking off after a successful season in the US and as Timomatic explains, he didn’t trust his vocal talent just yet. “I hadn’t really established my sound as an artist so I thought, ‘Go with what is established’.”

Televised talent shows are still booming in Australia, with over one million tuning in each night to watch various forms of filmed reality. The community of national winners is also growing as more programmes make their way across international waters, and with successful artists like Guy Sebastian, Jess Mauboy and Justice Crew, Timomatic is content with the epithets thrown upon his talent show populace.

“I think reality talent shows get a bad name too easily,” he considers. “More so from people already in the music industry who have established their names, but people forget that greats of our time got to where they are using that same medium.”

Another misconception about reality show talent surrounds their supposed hurried climb to fame. For Timomatic, it’s been an eight-year journey since he “heard the feeling” he wanted to share, and while the eponymous record marks his second release, it’s his most autobiographical, peppered with intimate nuances and self-production.

“There are songs on there which are more organic and showcase my voice,” he says. “They show I’m more musically inclined than, ‘Hey yo! Let’s have a party’ - you know what I mean?”

Thus is the dichotomy of manufactured fame, on one hand Timomatic is proud of his malleable stage and the associations it garners, but it seems the lead up to this album was largely spent ostracising the past.

“I had that exposure, I’ve got the fan-base to support me and be able to go to the next level and not be associated with it,” he states. “In any artistic person’s career, you don’t want to held by the things you did a year ago.”

Hanson: In an MMMBop

17 September 2012

by Poppy Reid

It’s been two decades since three effeminate brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma performed their first live show, and fifteen years since they dominated global radio with a pop track lead by a wordless hook. Taylor, Zac and Isaac Hanson have been wholly in charge of their careers since 2003 when they started their own label (3CG Records), so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that when the phone rings from Los Angeles, the middle child has even cut out the middleman. “Hi this is Taylor Hanson, I’m calling for the interview.”

The 29-year-old singer-songwriter/ multi-instrumentalist doesn’t use phone operators it seems, and has been taking the lead since he was nine; from the outside, it’s been a steady, wholesome twenty years exempt of any teen idol imprudence.

“It’s interesting how when people think of rock bands they think they idolise excess, being completely excessive, drug overdoses and rehab,” lists Hanson mannerly. “But honestly that stuff was just never,” he pauses, “I mean who really wants that?”

Since the runaway success of their magnum major-label debut Middle Of Nowhere, Hanson went from three boys toying with borrowed instruments to the muse of every young girl’s wet dream, and while they’ve successfully created solitary space-now each married with eight (soon to be nine) children between them-closet owners of the band’s Poster Power collection are selling out shows across the country, armed with new(ish - the 2010 record is only now seeing an Australian release) album Shout It Out. Currently on our shores for the first time since 2005, when they recorded The Best of Hanson: Live & Electric in Melbourne, the band has been living in a carefully crafted paradox, a situation Hanson doesn’t find remotely odd.

“We can go out, have a good time, do some stupid stuff where no one took pictures or video of us and embrace life in a positive way,” he says, as if one of his zealots may be within earshot.

“We’re not running away from having a good time but we’re also not looking every day for something to do in excess.”

:: HANSON'S MIDDLE OF NOWHERE REVISITED

Over the phone, Hanson can come across perfunctory and media savvy but as the conversation flows it’s apparent any preconceived ideals he has, however diplomatic, have been ingrained since childhood - a disposition most pop stars would envy. Perhaps it has something to do with the five embryonic years the band spent touring their two independent albums, or the years ‘pre-Def Jam Records contention,’ when they were forced to prove they weren’t just a manufactured band. “When you have success you’re gonna have to choose which battles to fight.” Hanson doesn’t sweat the specifics. “We were really young and we had success so there was a natural inclination to go ‘oh my gosh, this can’t really be for real?’ That’s just part of our story and we’ve never let the idea that some people didn’t get it in the beginning get in our way.”

It’s also possible the boys just came from good stock. Hanson says parents Clarke and Diana were always the comforting presence in the wings. “They were never involved from the point of view of telling anyone what they could and couldn’t do but they were definitely at our side... we never had that Svengali in the back steering everything we were doing,” he says, quashing rumours of the early years. “We always had a real strong sense of self and we had people close to us that were protective of what we were doing, and thankfully we came out of it in one piece!”

:: WATCH HANSON COVER WEEZER'S TROUBLEMAKER

Their parents were largely responsible for Hanson’s sound: infectious harmony-drenched hooks affixed to classic song structures that mined ‘60s pop records, and while the world was shocked at the talent of the three pre-pubescent brothers, the boys themselves were only mimicking the maturity and grace of their idols.

“We’d always looked up to great musicians and rock ‘n’ roll icons,” remembers Hanson. “Many of them were much older than we were, you’re talking about The Beach Boys and The Beatles and people like Ray Charles, all of which were in their teens when they first had success, so we felt we were right on schedule!”

For such a famously uncontroversial pop group, the band do inspire a sense of surprise that their private activities haven’t changed much since the early family outings to Redwood forests (re: 1997 documentary Tulsa, Tokyo and The Middle Of Nowhere). For Hanson, a legacy reminiscent of The Beach Boys-who just finished up their 50th anniversary tour of Australia-has always been the zenith aspiration.

“It’s always been about having a career,” Hanson states. “Having a long career, and honestly being able to make this our day job and continue to go out there and make music, as our lives. Thankfully we’ve been able to do that.”

While the honeyed third of Hanson has always been the dominant voice of the group, in charge of most press commitments, blogging, and the co-writing of Take The Walk-a philanthropic-heavy book created “to turn our simple pursuits of being artists into something positive so that people could begin to join us,” –he’s inadvertently in charge of the band’s public image; a role which spearheaded the charge from small-town family band to big-city bubblegum giants.

“You are aware of it and you do have some sort of responsibility to kind of handle yourself,” he admits. “But that was never particularly difficult because I guess we had a gauge of: we make records, we play shows, we travel - that’s a pretty good thing! It’s worth it to have the constant sidenote of ‘be a good guy and deal with the pressures right.’”

Most ridiculous lawsuits in music

04 September 2012

by Poppy Reid

TMN have covered some of the most entertaining lawsuits in recent months, and as we're the self-appointed dukes of nostalgia, we've put together a list of our favourite allegations for you to poke fun at.

John Fogerty sued for plagiarising himself

In 1985 when Creedence Clearwater Revival singer John Fogerty released solo track The Old Man Down the Road, he didn’t once think he may be sued for plagiarising his own work.

In 1993, Fogerty was brought before the United States Supreme Court for copyright infringement after Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz claimed the track was CCR’s 1970 track Run Through the Jungle with different lyrics. Fantasy owned the rights to Run Through The Jungle and felt Fogerty was profiting of the song.

The label owner had previously sued long-time foe Fogerty for $144 million after claiming Fogerty's tracks Zanz Kant Danz and Mr. Greed painted Zaentz as “a thief, robber, adulterer, and murderer.” Fogerty settled this case out of court (because... well, it did) but the self-plagiarism case was very much laughed out of the courtroom.

Lindsay sues baby used on commercial ad campaign

Of course sporadic singer Lindsay Lohan should make this list. She’s been embroiled in many-a-lawsuit ever since she went through the wrong career/life-choices door after the excellent Mean Girls. But it wasn’t her defamation case against Pitbull (before he counter-sued), that tops her list of Most Ridiculous Efforts To Make A Buck.

In March 2010 Lohan filed a suit against E-Trade, a financial services company who’s commercial used a baby named Lindsay who was dubbed a "milkaholic." Even if E-Trade did seek the association, this case still should have been dismissed as soon as Lohan disclosed she wanted $100 million in damages. The case was settled in September with neither parties revealing the sum of their stupidity.

Avril Lavigne sued for stealing a '70s song

When Avril Lavigne was sued for plagiarising a '70s track "she's never heard of", not many people were surprised. Said to have ripped of The Rubinoos’ ’79 single I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, the Dr. Luke co-write for Girlfriend was sent to a musicologist by Lavigne's lawyers in 2008 who (surprise, surprise) found no similarities. Despite publicly claiming they wouldn't settle out of court, Lavigne's lawyers later weighed up the potential costs of a lawsuit and decided to settle after all, leaving the Canadian singer to write pop ditties about her lacklustre love life - although this song comes dangerously close to Alanis Morrisette's Head Over Feet.

Placebo album cover star blames band for his failure at life

Remember the weird 12-year-old on the cover of Placebo’s 1996 self-titled debut? Well, the now 28-year-old David Fox sued the UK band in June this year, claiming the infamy from the #5 charting album (in the UK) led to bullying and unemployment after he felt forced to drop out of school. The band have since told Fox to direct his suit at Virgin, who released the album.

Miley Cyrus sued for racism
In early 2009 Miley Cyrus took a pretty tasteless photograph with her friends, inciting one LA resident to file a $4 billion lawsuit against her. The apparent violation of “the civil rights of Asian Pacific Islanders” was filed by Lucie J. Kim who requested the then 16-year-old pop singer to give $4 million to each of the over 1.9 million Asians in Los Angeles. Cyrus did publicly apologise, but nine months later the case was dismissed.

Carey vs. Carey

Mariah Carey might have been involved in a few sex tape scandals in the past but in 2006 she fought to keep her ever-so wholesome image in tact. The pop singer sued a porn star who was working under the name Mary Carey. Ridiculously, a judge agreed the adult actress should change her name and the suit was passed.

George Harrison ‘subconsciously’ plagiarises

When George Harrison released his triple-album All Things Must Pass in 1971, a year after the dissolution of The Beatles, he proved two things: that he had a shed-load of unreleased tunes built up after years of playing third-fiddle to Lennon and McCartney–understandable when you have the greatest songwriting team in history–and that he had definitely, definitely heard The Chiffons 1963 hit She's So Fine. Bright Tunes Music Corporation certainly agreed, filing a suit alleging that Harrison had plagiarised the tune in his single My Sweet Lord... twice - in the bridge and in the verse. Basically, he stole the whole thing. The case took five years to go to trial, and dragged out for ten years after the verdict (lesson: don't sue a Beatle), but a judge ruled that Harrison was guilty of "subconscious plagiarism" - a fairly rubbish ruling, considering the marked similarity. Being a Beatle, Harrison simply avoided all the bother by purchasing Bright Tunes, and therefore the song. S'pose you didn't hear James Taylor's Something In The Way She Moves when it was released on your own label, either George? He was always the subconscious Beatle...

Mother sues Justin Bieber for damaging her hearing

A mother who took her daughter to the singer’s Oregon gig in July 2010 is requesting $9.23 million in damages. Stacey Wilson Betts alleges Bieber “enticed the crowd into a frenzy of screams,” damaging her hearing. While we’re sure Biebs did in fact entice the crowds into frantic, eardrum-bursting bubbles of tween hysteria, we’re also banking on the fact mother Stacey Wilson Betts hasn’t been to a live concert since ’83 when she [allegedly] threw her bra onstage at a Jimmy Osmond concert. [speaking of potential lawsuits]

Jim Morrison’s parents sue remaining members of The Doors

In 2003, the parents of Jim Morrison filed a trademark suit against the remaining members of The Doors. Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger had been mourning Jim’s loss since 1971, and they, like many bands who lose a member at their prime, decided the most tasteful way to pay tribute to their departed friend was by touring with a new frontman (The Cult’s Ian Astbury) - in this case, under the name The Doors of the 21st Century.

 

"Defendants have knowingly, intentionally and maliciously misappropriated and infringed upon the valuable name and logo of the Doors,” the suit read, "by stealing these valuable property rights and employing them for the purpose of naming, promoting and marketing a new band."

To make matters even more convoluted, the parents of Morrison's (Val Kilmer) late wife, Pam Courson (Meg Ryan) also got in on the suit and unfortunately had every right to, because of their 25% ownership stake of the estate. After the case went to trial in 2005 it was ruled that the Morrison estate won a permanent injunction preventing Manzarek (Kyle McLachlan) and Krieger using the name (they now play under 'Riders Of The Storm'). While The Doors were only actively recording for five years with the self-appointed Lizard King at the helm, The Doors have sold over 49 million records since his death. The poetry books have sold more modestly...

Matchbox Twenty: True North

31 August 2012

by Poppy Reid

Survivors of the grunge rise, fall and revival, and comeback kings after two hiatuses, Matchbox Twenty have had their fair share of ups and downs. The Florida quintet saw their debut album sell fifteen million copies, reach Diamond certification in the US and clock ten times Platinum in Australia, just one year after forming.

Although the band have since sold 30 million records and are just under two months away from releasing a fourth LP, their seventeen years together did not come without several archetypal rock star epochs and experiences. TMN sat down with drummer/guitarist Paul Douchette and lead guitarist Kyle Cook to reminisce the peaks and valleys that lead them to this sunny suite at Sydney’s Intercontinental hotel.

“There were a couple of moments that got a little dark and kind of sad,” recalls Cook, 37. “I remember my mum coming to a show at the height of all the craziness and I’d forgotten that she was even there because it was like, mayhem. So I end up with this girl back at the hotel and mum knew where my room was and the door was ajar-and I’m wasted,” Cook cowers. “And I didn’t even have sex with the girl! My mum walks in-and I hear this later-she’s like ‘woop’ and this girl is petting me,” he attempts to fold his long legs into a foetal position, “like this.”

The band were on the right side of their teenage years when singles like 3 AM and Push were topping charts on a global scale. “We were on the radio station in every single station on the planet. We’d go into a town and people just kind of gave us the key to the city,” says Douchette.

Rewind three years and interestingly, the track most associate with ‘early Matchbox’ had already been recorded in 1993 for Rob Thomas and Douchette’s previous band, Tabitha’s Secret. Despite the track not even seeing a national release, the project did lead to the pair’s signing with Atlantic Records.

“They weren’t interested [in Tabitha’s Secret], but they were interested in Rob,” Douchette laughs. “For a while Rob started getting a lot of offers to go and he thought ‘well you know what, I think I’m gonna do that’. And they were like ‘well you can bring the bass player and the drummer.’

“Up until the time where we signed our record deal, I had no idea I was going to be on the deal, no clue. I thought I was just going to be Rob’s hired drummer.”

“We’re still employees of Rob,” Cook jokingly admits. “Nothing’s changed.”

While Cook’s slick comment proves he is happily aware of both the players’ perceived and endowed position, he couldn’t be more wrong about Thomas’ personal turnaround. “Rob really went off the rails for a while,” says Douchette, referring to the touring years with Yourself or Someone Like You. “There was a moment when him and I were flying to the UK and he was really trashed. I took him aside and said ‘what the fuck?’-He has told me many times afterward, that that was a pivotal moment where he went ‘okay, I need to slow down’.”

Cook’s opinion mirrors the thoughts of most, give a young man the key to every city he performs and a team of ‘yes men’, and bedlam will ensue. “Quite honestly, us making a gig, a lot of people’s jobs depended on that,” Cook states. “No body was going to tell you ‘look dude you’re really fucked up,’ everyone was like ‘just grab his luggage and get him on the plane’.”

It’s fitting that Douchette and Cook are in Australia without Thomas; throughout their career the band have spent years waiting in the wings, preparing the band’s next venture while the frontman fulfils his solo commitments or collaborations. All five members were in Sydney in 2010 when a plan was hatched for upcoming album North; Thomas was about to tour his second record Cradlesong, so the four members prepared around sixty songs in the interim. Over the next three years, the group would meet at each other’s personal studios culminating demos and capturing the vibe of each city before renting a house with a basement studio in Nashville.

“That kind of got out of hand,” grants Douchette. “We were left to our own devices and we kind of got overwhelmed with the amount of material and the amount of different ways we could take it.” This was also the first time Thomas, Douchette and Cook sat down together to write music. “It was hard for Rob, it was hard for us, at first,” accepts Douchette. Cook cuts in; “which is understandable. Rob felt like he was being demoted a little bit.”

“At the end of the day it didn’t really matter,” continues Douchette. “If Rob wrote all the best songs on the record then it would be a record of all Rob’s songs… but he’s as attached to the songs that are the three of us as he is the songs that are just his.”

:: WATCH THE VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE SHE'S SO MEAN

After calling in longtime producer Matt Serletic the band spent three months recording the direction he guided them toward and although the band says first single She’s So Mean isn’t at all indicative of the record as a whole, it does pave a more pop rock path. “We talked about [a backlash] with She’s So Mean,” acknowledges Cook. “We’ve seen it on the Internet already. There’s going to be people who really love it and then there’s going to be people that think it’s too poppy. Whatever, it’s how it is.”

Admittedly, a pop direction shouldn’t come as a surprise to fans who have followed Matchbox Twenty from their embryonic days, tracks like Real World in 1998 and How Far We’ve Come in 2007 all have hook and bridge elements that weave through the band’s grunge genesis. “We’re big fans of pop music,” smiles Douchette. Cook is more philosophical, North holds a bigger creative slice than he’s ever offered before; after a five year cessation it’s clear the band have a lot riding on this new leaning.

“You just never know, the very thing that destroys your sound could be the very thing that is the identity of new direction or personality.”