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Deadfriends.
 Matthew Kenward has clear ideas about why his band Deadfriends (or, as they determinedly render it, the far-harder-to-type "deadFRIENDS") are using their set at the 2006 Scorcher Festival to launch their debut CD-EP 'Mutate'. "I think the main thing is that to really get awareness about Deadfriends we need to put ourselves out to as many different people and as many different bands as we can," he explains simply.
"From doing gigs over the last couple of months you just get a couple of bands following and it's very hard to tap into everyone else's fans, I guess, to see what they're like. So with something like this, where there's 40 bands and ten or fifteen of a similar style, it's an opportunity to get some awareness about what we're about."
The event's already sold a heap of tickets and Kenward's quietly confident he'll be playing to a complete sell out crowd in Scorcher's first year at the Bay.
"I think from the Parklands where it was last year it's got a good reputation for putting on a pretty good cross-section of local music," he enthuses. "I'm not sure if there's a link [in people's minds] with Scorcher and summer and Glenelg, which is a pretty good mix, and that all points to a pretty good time down there. And I'm not sure if it was the very best line up of this year's Big Day Out, but following on from that I think people in Adelaide love going to festivals where there's lots of bands for not much money."
And as relative new kids on the rock'n'roll block, what is it that Deadfriends will bring to the Scorcher mix? "Well, looking at the rest of the line up, there's a lot of alternative rock, but not really a lot of what we sort of are: which is a straight-ahead rock [band], but mixing harmony in the choruses with power in the verses. There's a lot of anger in the vocals, but still presented in a way that's too fast or too discordant for the general punter."
My own response when I listened to the disc was that its drop-tuned grooves harkened back to the early 90s likes of Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. "That's probably the biggest influence of our singer [Phil Howlet, bassist]; I'm pretty much a Pantera man myself, from the guitar point of view, and our drummer [Andrew Ewan] is definitely more a Grinspoon sort of man, that stompy straight-ahead rock. And then you chuck in that sort of alternative anger, I guess, from the singer who's coming more from that Seattle scene, and I guess you blend all that together. I kind of liken it to Alice In Chains-meets-the Metallica black album, but with those alternative vocals."
Post-Scorcher, Deadfriends seem to have the same plans as most local bands with a new CD. "Distribution has probably been the biggest thing [that the band have been focussing on]; the website's pretty much done [deadfriendstheband.com], and hopefully some of the bands and punters that we've played to at the Scorcher Festival will relate to some of our music," Kenward shrugs. "But it's going to be about getting the CD out to as many people as we possibly can. And once there's a build up [of interest], we'll be looking at making those long weekends in Sydney and Melbourne."
Andrew P Street | Deadfriends launch 'Mutate' at the Scorcher Festival at Glenelg Football Club from midday on Sun 5 March along with the likes of Dexter Jones, Swayback, Granny Flat, Unspoken Things and loads more. |
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