Interviews : “I think we’re in a great period of amazing Australian music” – an interview with Lord’s Andy Dowling

This weekend sees one of Metal Obsession’s favourite Aussie bands hit the road. With every show, Sydney’s LORD prove yet again to be one of the most entertaining and hard working bands in the country, and with this tour designed to fund a very special recording, we’re even more excited. In the lead-up, we had a chat with bassist Andy Dowling about, well, these things;

So you’re hitting the road soon for the “Singing For Our Supper” tour, to raise funds for a new recording project. Can we get any more information on what’s in the pipeline?

At this stage, not really. We’re in the process of recording at the moment and we have a specific format release in mind, however it really is going to come down to money and whether we can turn it into a reality. I will note, however, that it is the 25th anniversary of Dungeon this year, so it may or may not have a link to that in one way or another. We’ll look to release more information on the release in June after our tour is wrapped up.

I’m sure you guys considered a crowd funding campaign at some point, why did you do decide to do it the old fashioned way?

Quite simply, we didn’t want to jump on the band wagon. We’ve seen some bands get a lot of success and others who have failed miserably. While we believe this project is very important, its not really appropriate in this instance. We want to approach this in a very organic way. You come to and pay to see us play, buy some merchandise, we work out butts off to entertain you and then put the money towards giving you something back down the track.

With all of that being said, we haven’t ruled out crowd funding in the future. When we get together to look at the new studio album, we’ll keep it in mind. If we were going to go down that path, then we want to ensure people get true bang for their buck, and not ridiculous offers like ‘come and have a BBQ with the band’ or ‘we’ll play at your place, however pay for us to get over there’.

The tour marks the 25th anniversary of Dungeon, and you’ve mentioned there’ll be a few older tracks coming back into the sets. It must be fun to flick through the back catalogue and bring some old favourites back in? Was there any conflict about what to play?

It was great to go back and there are a lot of songs that we would love to play, however as we’re currently utilising a fill in drummer for this tour, we’ve had to go with safer songs which required less time to get everyone up to speed. Regardless of that, there will be a lot of surprises and fan favourites. Once we get our new permanent drummer on board then we’ll go back and revisit some of those Dungeon tracks that we’ve been meaning to play for years.

Outside of this new project, has there been any writing on whatever the next usual LORD album will be? How is the material sounding in comparison to the past few?

We’re always writing. As soon as the last album Digital Lies dropped, we were already throwing together new material. There’s also a lot of left over material that we just didn’t have enough time to go through, so I don’t think we’ll be short of music. It’s too early to tell which direction it will go, however I dare say that it will be in a similar vein to Digital Lies, however we’ll look to make it a bit heavier.

You recently parted ways with Damo, and have Troldhaugen’s Simon Batley filling in on drums for a while, has there been any progress with finding a new permanent member?

Not at this stage. We’ve had quite a few expressions of interest and we’ll be looking to commence auditions in June after the tour. Hopefully we can secure someone in June/July so that we can continue touring in the second half of the year and look towards the next studio album. Whoever comes in will be very busy, but a lot of fun awaits.

In the meantime, however, Simon is doing an amazing job filling in for us on drums. Its a pity the guy is so tied up with Troldhaugen and his other projects because the guy is a brilliant drummer and has been a breeze to work with. In the coming years, I dare say he’ll become one of the most respected drummers in the country. Very knowledgeable and proficient in his craft.

You’re always pretty outspoken about things happening in the music scene, so I thought I’d stoke the fire a bit. What really grinds your gears in the Australian metal scene? What bad habits you see around really get under your skin? Anything, here’s your chance to rant away…

You want me to bore people? I could write a 50 page essay about it. To be honest, there are so many variables and reasons as to why things don’t work or alternatively why they do work. There will always be a counter argument to anything put out there and opinions are like arseholes, everyone (including me, funnily enough) has one!

The number one thing for me is that bands don’t take themselves seriously. I don’t mean having an ego and thinking you’re king shit (plenty of bands like that already), but putting effort into image, merchandising, promotion, press/PR, live show and strangely enough the music itself.

A large percentage of bands half arse everything they do and then hope they will get lucky at some point down the track. It doesn’t work like that. Put everything you can into what you do, with the expectation that you are investing in the future of your own band and your immediate fans. Start from the ground up and ensure every decision has a logical reason behind it. Focus on rewarding the people who support you, whether that be through your merchandising, your live show or simply your music. If you do it right and the people in your immediate circles love what you’re doing then it will have a flow on affect to others who will want to be a part of what you’re doing.

Don’t get up on stage with no banner, wearing a flanno and a random band t-shirt, not talk to the crowd and keep that awkward silence between songs. Put some effort in and give yourselves the respect that you would command from the crowd. Now, I’m not saying that do the opposite of the above will achieve success, however it will at least steer you in a better direction of seeing positive long term benefits.

The only other main one (I won’t keep going too much longer) is that promoters/bookers need to step up and create standards for who they book on their shows. Stop booking your mates or bands that you just think are good musically. Don’t take the fun out of it, but treat it a little bit more like a business. We all complain about the reduction of numbers from people who come out to local shows, but what do you expect when someone pays $15 to see 4 bands and 3 of them are quite simply, shit (see above comments about half-arsing). Consider booking bands who work hard, have a dedicated fan base, have a good image and of course are doing great things musically. Being in a band isn’t an automatic ticket/right to play live. You need to earn it and people who book bands need to raise the bar and reward only those bands who work their arses off for what they love.

With all that being said, however, if you’re in it ‘just for the love’ of it and love playing in front of your girlfriend and one other guy in the room who’s scrolling through facebook, then ignore what i’ve written above! If you’re a booker with the same mentality, then start booking shows in backyard sheds, stop fucking up our live venues with your crap attended shows and low quality line ups.

On the flipside, what local acts have really impressed you lately?

There’s definitely been an upswing in the last few years. A lot more bands have gone out there and really stepped up. There’s an underlying friendly competitiveness where people are looking at other bands and trying to go one better, which I think is great. We should always work together as much as possible, but I think we should all constantly push ourselves to try and outdo either (in a non-malicious way) to continue to raise the bar.

Some of the bands who are doing great things at the moment are Truth Corroded, Voyager, King Parrot, Taberah, Troldhaugen, Claim the Throne, Lagerstein and the list goes on. While our live scene is still trying to repair itself, I think we’re in a great period of amazing Australian music. I just hope that we can all band together to breathe some life back into the live -music culture.

Tell us one fact about Lord that most people wouldn’t know.

We wrote a song called ‘Haunted’ quite a while ago that was never released. Maybe we’ll let everyone hear it one day.

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