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Contrive.
 Andrew Haug will be instantly recognizable to many metalheads as the host of Triple J's 'Full Metal Racket'. What may not be quite as widely known, however, is that he is also the drummer for Melbourne metal outfit, Contrive, whose debut full-length release, 'The Meaning Unseen', will be out very soon.
"I formed Contrive in 1999 with my [identical] twin brother Paul, who does guitar and vocals," Haug says, embarking upon an obligatory rundown of the band's history. "We wrote for quite a long time as a two-piece. We had a hell of a hassle trying to find a bass player; even in late 2000 when we had a good nine or ten songs written, we ended up playing our first show as a two-piece, just because we were itching to just get out and play these songs live! Eventually we hit up a long-time friend of ours called Tim, who played bass for a technical death metal outfit called Fracture. When Fracture eventually fell apart, we pulled Tim aside, and asked if he wanted to be a part of what we were doing. He did, and has stuck with us ever since."
During their existence, Contrive have played at Metal For The Brain three times, and have also scored an enviable number of support slots for overseas bands: bands of the calibre of Machine Head, Soilwork, Skinlab and Sepultura. "Machine Head was a tough one!" Haug remembers. "We did the show in Sydney, and just after we'd kicked off our set, people in the audience were shouting things like 'You're shit!', 'Get off!', and 'Machine Head!', and generally just giving us a lot of abuse. That sort of thing just makes you work hard to try and turn the audience around, and I guess by the end of the set we did sort of have their ear. Afterwards, we sold most of the remaining copies we had of an earlier EP of ours called 'Prosper', so all in all, it was a tough gig but a memorable one, and one that I guess we turned from bad to good. Sepultura was just an honour because we've been longtime fans and friends of those guys, and it was great to just be watching them play, let alone being on the same bill. In general, though, we really just enjoy playing live, because as far as we're concerned, we're a live band. A show's a show, and you've got to put on the best performance you can for those who paid to see you; I think it's our duty, and that's what we love to do."
The band's new album took its time coming together, but the group took care not to neglect things on the live front. "We were still playing the odd gig or two, definitely", recalls Haug, "but at the same time, we were also writing quite heavily for 'The Meaning Unseen'. We were actually going to release an EP first, but then just decided to go the hack, and do a full album instead. We kept our heads down in the rehearsal room, and really took our time to think about where we wanted to take our music. We still don't really know; we're just going with how it feels, but we hope that when people hear 'The Meaning Unseen', they'll realize that there has been a lot of thought put into our music; we haven't just slapped a few riffs and vocals together."
The band enlisted famed Swedish producer Fredrik Nordstrom, who has also worked with the likes of Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir and Opeth, to mix the album. "Once we'd written the album songs and started recording them in the studio, we just said, 'We really want this to be heard by not just the Australian public, but the rest of the world too,'" says Haug. "If you want to aim high like that, it really does help to have someone of a higher calibre to work with your music. I logged onto Fredrik's site, because we're all big fans of the work he's done for many other bands, and there was a phone number on it. I thought I'd call it because there might have been a secretary on the other end, but he actually answered it himself. When he did, my jaw was on the floor. I told him who we were, and asked if he'd like to mix our work, and he told me to send him what we'd already done, and he'd let us know. So we sent him a box of stuff. He was actually pretty impressed with our material, so it ended up being just a matter of working around his schedule."
James Brazel
 | Contrive play at Against The Grain at The Bridgeway Hotel on Sat 3 Sept. 'The Meaning Unseen' lands Mon 5 Sept. |
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