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Shihad.
 It's official; Shihad are back. An EP titled 'Alive' slated for release mid-February is a four course entree to the main dish - an album out mid-year. Lead singer and guitarist Jonny Toogood is out of breath when he calls, but happily answers when I ask what have the quartet been doing lately. "Basically we just made a record in Canada, which we are about three-quarters of the way through," he begins, "and we've got the Big Day Out, then we fly straight to Melbourne and start mixing it, and hopefully we'll have a record finished after that."
Many band members tend to lose their enthusiastic edge after working on the tracks for six months to a year, then talking about them for two or three weeks of promotions. Toogood, however, has the fire of life in him speaking about 'Love Is The New Hate'.
"The producer, Garth Richardson, we made the 'General Electric' with," Toogood explains. "And after writing all the music and realising how heavy it was going to be, we went 'Oh, that guy knows guitars better than anybody else! Let's get him!' And we sent him our demos and he went 'Sweet! Come on over!'
"We went to this ranch...on an island called Gibson's Island, and it's surrounded by native forests, which is basically that red wood sort of beech kind of look, and it's got bears running around and stuff; then he's got this studio in the middle of it."
Clearly the environment lent itself to a relaxed atmosphere, and Toogood enthuses about the positive working atmosphere. "This time around, unlike the Pacifier record, we had everything written," he says. "Pre-production consisted of [Richardson] listening to us play in a room, saying "That's good! That doesn't hit the chorus at one minute' and 'you're going into a totally separate part from the actual structure of the song halfway through the song; I love it, let's keep it like that', and that was the only rule - to make sure that we didn't play by the rules. I think it's a really fresh and challenging record, you know? It's a lot of experimenting with rhythm and melody that we've never tried before, and it's weighty at the same time," he enthuses. "It's fucking good. Yeah, I'm really pleased with it," he adds.
When asked about the title, Toogood answers, "It actually came from a conversation I was having with my friend, where it was like, 'These Iraqi's actually don't want you there, dude, whether or not you're saying 'we're giving you freedom', you're actually occupying their country.' And it was just that whole idea of that it's all done under this pretence of doing something for them, when it's actually doing something not for them at all. It sums up how a little weasel like John Howard can get back in power in Australia, because people know that he's a lying scumbag, but they don't care enough," he sneers, "and that's basically what the world's become. We're all smart human beings, we can all see what's going on, but everyone's too apathetic at the moment; it's fucked. Us lefties have got to fucking stand up and do something! So that's where 'Love Is The New Hate' came from... And we're going to have a picture of two praying mantis' fucking on the front cover."
In a roundabout way, we end up arriving at the difficulties faced by bands, where the fine line of missing family and doing what you love becomes a very rocky road. Toogood, however, has been lucky enough to have had the same partner for 13 years; they even married last year. When asked whether we should expect little Jonny's soon, Toogood laughingly replies: "I'm pushing that way! We've already got a 13 year old daughter; I've got a step-daughter, which is really handy because she tells you what's cool and what's geeky without actually thinking about what other people think."
When I tell Toogood I'm looking forward to seeing him in his trance-like, semi-possessed on-stage state, he explains: "If you've noticed it's really fucking loud, and our drummer's really solid, and it's just such a buzz to be on the stage with that sort of volume. When the band's really tight, I can't help myself. I love feeling my guitar through my feet, that's why it's so loud!"
Ann Marie Sosnowski
 | 'Alive' is out now through Warners and Shihad play the Adelaide UniBar on Fri 11 Feb with Mere Theory and Grand Fatal. |
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