Wayne Clarris – Toxicon

Making big waves on the Australian scene are Melbourne newcomers Toxicon. Bringing a new brand of metal to venues, the band cite many influences in their music, yet imitate few others in their sound. It’s this sort of thinking that has generated a lot of hype leading up to the release of their debut album, Purge.  Metal Obsession caught up with frontman Wayne Clarris to discuss the album, the supporting tour, the band’s social media antics, influences, and much more.

So Purge is finally out – how has the reception been for it?

“It’s been really positive so far and everybody has been jumping onboard. When we first decided to undertake an album as a first release instead of an EP we had a lot of mixed responses with people saying it might be a bit of a risk, but I feel like we have put the extra time and energy in and really tried to make something we are proud of. We are really happy with the outcome, and at the end of the day we are getting some really good responses and everybody has been really supportive. We officially release the album on Monday (1 August 2016), but we have had copies available at our shows for some time and everyone that has picked up an album has given a positive response so far.”

Purge is a concept album. Do you want to tell us about the themes that are present and how you latched onto them?

“Well, with the concept, it happened organically. It wasn’t something that we went out from the beginning and said ‘Hey, let’s make a concept and create something around it’, but it sort of started out as an idea when we were making the songs that seemed to have a bit of a theme running through them and we decided to run with it. There were times where we sort of thought that maybe doing a concept album as a first release was quite difficult and whether all the extra effort was worth it. People don’t realise how much extra energy and thought you have to put in to really pull it off, because you can’t go into it half-assed and you have to really stick to your guns to pull it off. We didn’t want to make it overbearingly concept-y either, we wanted the songs to be able to stand alone, but if you wanted to look a bit deeper that there was an underlying story. It’s a little bit sci-fi with the story sort of coming from the Horsemen of the Apocalypse tales with an extra harbinger – a fifth one that is trying to warn people. The album itself is from the perspective of a regular guy who is getting all these warnings that something is about to happen and that the world is in trouble and he is trying to figure out if he is going crazy and then it all just comes to a head in the end with a bit of a battle.”

Yeah, and that definitely shows through with the album; that although there is an underlying theme, each song can stand alone as individual songs, and not many bands can pull it off.

“Yeah, it was very difficult, and there were a few times where we sort of said, ‘Why did we do this? Why didn’t we take the easier option?’. But I think now that it’s all done and we are on the tour cycle, and it’s out there and with the response we are getting that I’m glad we went that route. That being said I don’t think we will be a concept band – it might be something we investigate in the future and maybe continue the storyline, but it would have to come organically. I think if you force this sort of thing that’s where you start to get into a bit of trouble.”

You played your first show of the tour in Adelaide on the weekend – how did that go?

“We haven’t been to Adelaide before so we weren’t really sure how it would go, but we put a bunch of promo in, and had good supports with Alkira, who are really rad dudes and helped promote the show, and they put us in a good spot, which is awesome for an out-of-state band. We had a really good response, and everyone was there jumped around, we even had a pit going at one point, so it was really cool to see people who haven’t heard of us before getting into it. For a first show of a tour it was super positive and has really pumped us up for the remainder of the tour. We had heard that Adelaide can be a bit hit and miss and I give a lot of credit to Alkira jumping on board, because I think they brought their community down with them which was great. That’s one of the things I love about the metal community in Australia is that when they help out all jump on board.”

You have a film clip for “Void” off the album, but can we expect any others soon?

“We are working on a second clip, and that’s sort of in the pipelines for the end of the year. We are still throwing ideas around, but it’s definitely something we are looking at doing between now and the end of the year. We didn’t want to put too much of a storyline into our last clip because when you go in with a budget storylines can feel a bit ‘cheesy’,  but this was sort of our introduction clip and with the next one we want to have a bit of fun with it. We will probably still be on a budget but we want to try and put as much fun in it as possible, as we try not to take ourselves too seriously.”

Tying in with not taking yourselves too seriously, you guys have described yourself as ‘Progressive Loungecore’ – what’s that all about?

“I had forgotten we even had that title! It’s been really hard, and I know it’s hard for every band to describe what style they fit into and I think that’s just another moment where we took the piss out of ourselves. I think one of the boys wrote that down when we first started our social media and it’s just stuck around. It always brings about a bit of a question mark where promotors take their material from our social media and it comes up with ‘Progressive Loungecore’ in big writing on the promo material. We actually did figure out what we are closest to, but I can’t remember what it was! I always like to think that we are somewhere in-between Mastodon and Lamb of God where we have those big groovy moments but also have those floaty sections.”

You seem to have a pretty good social media presence that basically takes the piss out of yourselves with every post you put up. Is it shared between the entire band or something that one or two manage and take hold of?

“Each band member has that joking personality which makes it easy for us to get along with each other and helps out when we are all packed into a little car on tour, and living in each other’s back pockets, but the sense of humour thing is really important for us. As a band we basically communicate purely through memes or movie quotes and there can pretty much be days where we don’t really say anything that’s not from a movie. But there’s a couple of us that look after the social media side of things which we take very seriously about what we post and how we put it across. We obviously want it to have our personalities, but also want to keep it as fresh as possible – and we do take the piss out of ourselves because, well, it’s easy to do!”

And that comes across in your posts, where you quite often have that joking aspect, but also have those professional undertones to them. It’s something that few bands can do successfully, but I think you guys do it well. 

“Cheers. Well it’s something that is constantly evolving and it’s something you have to have your finger on the pulse for and that’s why there’s only a couple of us that do it, we just don’t want there to be any crossovers or double ups and butting heads between band members.”

You guys have some big shows lined up towards the end of the year, including Metal United Down Under in Melbourne, but are you guys looking at fitting in any more touring once those shows are done?

“We definitely will, we are looking at coming up to Brisbane and have already had a few offers, but we are going to see how these shows go before we do anything. We’ve played Brisbane before and we got a really good response, so we are looking forward to coming back, and we also want to hit Perth and Tasmania eventually. The current tour is all locations we can drive to, and we are actually looking at investing in a van, because at the moment we are all crammed into the drummers station wagon, which quickly becomes a fart box, but it’s fuel efficient, which is good. The only problem arises when the boys make sandwiches for the trips so we aren’t always eating servo food, and for some reason they seem to love egg and lettuce and it just escalates from there.”

Who are you guys listening to at the moment and who are some of your influences?

“We draw from a lot of different bands, and a lot of the band members like different areas of metal. And we have all these different influences like Tool, Mastodon, Trivium, Lamb of God and we try to blend a bit of each into what we do and see how it all comes out. We have also been checking out a lot of the bands that we have been playing with and the calibre of the bands in Australia at the moment is phenomenal. We get really excited to get out and watch some of these other guys perform.”

Yeah, and I think the calibre across all genres are hitting their stride and it’s definitely a good time to be involved in Live Music in Australia at the moment…

“…and Metal in general. I think there has for a long time been these genre walls that have been up for a while and they are starting to come down a little bit – especially over the past 12 months where theres been a really big feeling with those walls coming down and shows are being put on with bands from different genres.”

Don’t miss Toxicon on tour in Australia now, performing in support of their debut album, Purge.

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