Obdurate Seduction

It's not often that I come across a band whose name has me running to the dictionary, but this was certainly the case with local metal four-piece Obdurate Seduction, the first part of whose name means 'hardened against persuasions or tender feelings'.

"I've got to tell you how we found the name; it's a classic story," drummer/guitarist Ben Farrelly tells me, "Will [Fowles, guitarist/vocalist] and I were looking for a name for the band. Will pulled out the dictionary, opened it to the 'o' section, and went, 'O. O's always good.' And then, a few moments later, he was like, 'wow! Look at the meaning for this!' And when I read the meaning for what he'd found, I thought, 'this is really cool!' And then he goes, 'obdurate - I always wanted to put a 'seduction' on the end of it!' That's how the name came about. Seriously, though, we didn't want to just pick something at random; we wanted to find something that would reflect what we did."

The band's name does indeed do that, for, just as the words that make it up would not normally be found together (something that, as a bonus, meant it was unlikely any other band would have that name as well), the material of Obdurate Seduction combines starkly contrasting styles, often changing without warning from hard and heavy music to much more melodic material and vice versa.

"We really like the techy metal guitar thing," bassist Tanya Schneyder explains, "but we also like the guitar work to be really beautiful; we try to create a lot of melody with it."

"We all have really different influences as well," drummer/vocalist Natasha Sekulic adds, "which helps us make something a bit different. Ben and Will like more old-school stuff, while Tanya and I are more into bands like Killswitch Engage, Trivium and Caliban, more groove metal. We combine the two things and throw in a few other influences as well."

One thing that would have surely influenced one of the members - Farrelly - would have been his experience playing with a "Lameass" pub-covers band back in the early '90s.

"I was the drummer and the youngest guy in the crew," he recalls. "I was about 20 while the rest of the group were in their '30s. We played pretty much everything."

Out of curiosity, I ask him if the scene he was involved with back then was much different from the one he finds himself apart of now.

"Oh yeah! Totally!" he exclaims. "I mean, just the fashion for starters. Back in the day, everyone wore tight jeans, either with a pair of Tiger Asics or ripple soles and a nice pair of fluoro socks too; they were sexy! And they had big fringes in their hair. The music was a lot different as well; whereas it seems to be more rhythmic nowadays, back then it was more flamboyant and generally just wanky."

So, once again, it would appear the past was a pretty awful place and not somewhere you'd really want to go back to. Funny, but I don't remember it seeming quite so daggy at the time.

Obdurate Seduction's next public appearance will be at a gothic ball entitled 'Welcome To The Carnivale', an event that will also feature performances from the Rambutan Circus troupe and fellow local metal band Chalice.

"I think that show will be very good for us," says Schneyder. "It'll be good for the gothic crowd to be exposed to us and we really love supporting other women in music as well. We've gone and seen Chalice a lot and it's always good to play with a band you've watched and been inspired by over the years."

On the subject of women in music, Schneyder is also a member of all-female band Star Ten Hash. When performing with either group, she always wears a skirt because her job has her "Dressing like a bloke.

"I'm a conservationist," she informs me, "so when I'm out there planting trees, pulling weeds and generally doing dirty work, I've gotta wear me steel-cap boots and me Hard Yakka pants. I don't want to look like a man. That's the good thing about having a gothic ball as our next gig, where else can you wear all these wicked frocks? I mean, I'm just a girl; I want to get dressed up and be all pretty too."

JAMES BRAZEL

Obdurate Seduction play at the Lizard Lounge on Sat 14 October. Obdurate Seduction's self-titled debut EP is out now independently.