Freestyling The Rapids With MONICA STRUT From THE LAST MARTYR

Interview by Kris Peters
Melbourne metal outfit The Last Martyr have wasted little time
entrenching their roots in the Australian music scene.
After announcing their intentions in 2021 with the single
Hindsight, the band have pressed the accelerator firmly to the
floor in pursuit of musical integrity, touring relentlessly and
securing spots alongside international heavyweights such as
Dayseeker, The Gateway Plan, Story Of The Year and Black Veil
Brides.
After a successful run of shows last year as part of Sunk Loto's
triumphant return, The Last Martyr followed expectations by
releasing a banger of a track in Comedy/Tragedy earlier this year,
but last month threw that script into the abyss by turning their
focus back to the turn of the century with a reworked version of
Bomfunk MC's hit song Freestyler.
Featuring J-Figure from Sydney's The Weight Of Silence alongside
frontwoman Monica Strut, Freestyler has shown a more adventurous
and dangerous side to The Last Martyr that can only be the
by-product of a band completely at ease with themselves and their
music.
Strut sat down with HEAVY to discuss the single and more.
"We were so nervous about this one," she smiled, "but so far, so
good. It's one of those songs that is a little bit more obscure,
but everyone knows it once they hear it. It's been a good reminder
for people that grew up in the 90s and were kids in the 90s like we
were. Maybe it's even introduced it to some new people as well. I
think it's going well."
That whole era was rich for tracks such as this, leading us to ask
Strut as to why The Last Martyr chose this particular song to
cover.
"I have no idea," she laughed. "We're one of those bands where
we've all got eclectic music tastes, and it's really, really
difficult for us to agree on a cover. I think it was Ben, our
drummer, who originally came up with the idea, and we thought why
don't we play a snippet of a cover, just to break up the set a
little bit. We used to play a Linkin Park cover, so that was our
designated cover, but we had this idea to do a verse and a chorus
of another song into an original song and have it as a little bit
of a feature. So Vin was on an absolute mission to track down the
samples for the original version, and we could not find it
anywhere. He actually came across someone he found I think on
YouTube from somewhere in Europe and reached out on Instagram and
kept following up, and eventually he was good enough to give us the
samples. So we started playing that live and playing it into our
song Like A Ghost, which worked well."
In the full interview, Monica talks more about the song, having
J-Figure as guest vocalist, how they dismantled then reassembled
the original song from the ground up, whether Freestyler is a
stand-alone track or part of a bigger picture, progress on new
music, what direction it might take, their two upcoming headline
shows and more.