Before they support Yob in Sydney at the Manning Bar on August 22, we spend a couple of minutes with Thorax and find out what’s new.
Describe your music in five words or less.
Dark power from beyond time.
What’s going on in the world of Thorax?
We have just released our debut LP through excellent Sydney label One Brick Today. People seem to dig it, which is gratifying! In other news we are working jobs, looking after children, eating food, drinking drinks, living life… and in between all these things trying to play a bunch of shows! We are playing Adelaide/Melbourne in mid-August, and Byron Bay/Brisbane in late August.
What motivates you to make music?
The Great Old Ones. They speak to us. They speak through us. We bear the joy of their darkness. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
What have been the high and low points of your musical experiences so far?
I think the high point is just the continued experience of making something out of nothing with some good friends. The low point is lugging Lachie’s Orange amp to gigs.
What music are you listening to at the moment?
Right at this moment I am listening to the clacking of keyboards and the unsteady thump of my own pulse in my ears. And I’m humming the theme song to “Diff’rent Strokes”. The last record I listened to was Glow by Chris Abrahams.
If you were stranded on a desert island, which member of the band would get eaten first?
Probably Lachie… he has a mouth-watering rump.
Here’s an opportunity to bitch about something, whether music related or not. What really pisses you off?
Forced closure of Indigenous communities is a good start. Violence against women and LGBT persons. Refugee detention centres. The rise of blinkered patriotism in the wake of heavily spun terrorist threats. Lockout laws. Nationalism. The state of the environment under the ceaseless onslaught of capitalism. THE HUMAN SPECIES.
You’re putting together your perfect gig featuring Australian artists. Who would you get to play and where? Feel free to include acts/DJs/bands/venues that no longer exist.
OK, it would be a festival at Midnight Star, headlined by the ghost of Rowland S Howard. The rest of the lineup would be Nunchukka Superfly, Dead, Unit 11:74, X, Brain Resin, Agents of Abhorrence, Us Mob, the Bee Gees, The Drones, Price of Silence, Flycop, Subversion, S.M.U.T., Lawnsmell, Lentil Soup, True Radical Miracle, Navel Graveyard and Scum System Kill. And about a hundred more bands, too many to list here. The festival would run for a whole year with free beer, single malt whiskey and tofu burgers.… And nangs at the bar.
Thorax join Sumeru in support of doom lords Yob on August 22 at the Manning Bar in Sydney. Tickets on sale now through lifeisnoise.com.