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Interviews : “We wanted to write something that meant something to all of us” – An Interview With Bailey Schembri (Bury The Kings)

By on April 22, 2018

Bailey Schembri is the frontman for Melbourne based deathcore tinged progressive heavy outfit, Bury The Kings.

Catching up with Schembri ahead of the launch of the band’s superb new EP, called “V”, tuning into the lyrical narrative across the cuts, they sound like a collection of songs with subject matter dealing with loss, fighting your inner demons and overcoming significant odds.

“You pretty much hit the nail right on the head. Basically, what we wanted to do was kind of write something that meant something to all of us and can hopefully mean something to the people that are listening as well. We didn’t want it to be fake emotions that we have made up and thought would sound cool on paper. (The lyrics are) something that we’ve been through ourselves. We just wanted to do something that was a little bit more personal to us in that sense.”

Mining personal experience and turning it into a positive listening experience means that artists bare their inner thoughts and feelings. In this case, it was a group effort with input from across the band’s core membership.

“The whole kind of idea for the EP, we all came up with together, but in recent times it was something that I dealt with myself and that other members of the band had dealt with as well. We thought that writing about something that we knew that we were feeling was a lot better for us to get stuff off our chest, and it was a lot easier to write as well with us knowing what the emotions were.”

Tens of hours must have gone into the sounds produced on the EP, the guitars in particular sound righteously vicious. It is through the guitar sound that the deathcore reference is offered, although Schembri isn’t so sure the band’s music neatly fits under any one genre.

“I think what’s new is Scott (Simpson) from Alpha Wolf as well, he did a really awesome job and he helped us produce the whole EP while we were in the studio, so huge props to him for helping us out during that whole time. I’m not too sure what kind of genre you’d call it, there’s way too many genres these days. ‘Progressive/Heavy’ we kind of wanted to just use that as a broad statement, because you can’t really pin it down to a specific title.”

Tours across Australia and the globe could well be on the agenda given the strength of “V”, but what if the band have realistic expectations of its commercial and critical performance? The band are certainly good enough to be given a spot opening for Hatebreed or The Black Dahlia Murder in a state-side trek, yet Schembri explains in that typically Australian way of looking at things, a grounded outlook is what keeps the bands perspective in check.

“We’re not expecting too much. We kind of want to keep our feet on the ground, we’re not expecting it to take us anywhere, but we do have high hopes. This was just more something that we thought would define us more as a sound and get us back out into the scene because we’ve been on a bit of a break. I believe it’s been around two years, and we just wanted to get ourselves back into the scene with something that we hope everyone will enjoy, but it is also really personal to us as well. Not too concerned about if the EP will make it big or anything like that, we just hope that it goes well for us and everyone enjoys it, whoever listens to it.”

“V” is available from May 18th.

About

Andrew is a musician who has spent many years performing on the stages of the pubs and clubs of Queensland. A devotee of the broad church that is rock, punk, funk, jazz and of course all genres of metal... he now shares his enthusiasm via a burgeoning pursuit of music journalism. Follow him on twitter @andymckaysmith