How To Control A Rudderless Motorsteeple With BATTLESNAKE

Interview by Kris Peters
Last year's The World Is A Vampire festival might have been
promoted as an internationally led concert event headlined by The
Smashing Pumpkins, but for me, it will forever be remembered as the
first time I saw or heard a Sydney band called Battlesnake. After a
continual chorus of praise for the band from one of my friends
there, I reluctantly peeled myself off the comfy interview lounge
and trudged to the main stage under duress from not getting my own
way.
But by the time I got halfway there and heard the rumblings of
deep, throbbing metal notes coupled with possibly a naughty word or
two for effect, I suddenly had something else to focus on rather
than my own petulance.
With a raw-sounding mix of huge Black Sabbath drenched riffs and
the toughness and fortitude of Judas Priest in their prime,
Battlesnake were systematically winning the crowd over one set of
ears at a time. It was a brutal and welcome initiation to a band
and music I hadn't even known existed just 12 hours earlier and I
have followed the rise and rise of the band ever since.
So when the opportunity came knocking to have a chat with Samuel,
Elliott and Dan preceding the release of their new album The Rise
and Demise of the Motorsteeple I strapped myself in and prepared
for war.
Battlesnake style.
"We've been sitting on it for a while, and we can't wait to share
it with the world," Dan enthused when we ask him how they are
feeling with the album so close to birth.
"There's so much going on," Elliott picked up. "I almost forgot we
had the album coming out!"
"Same," echoed Dan and Sam.
"We're in the middle of organising the next Europe tour, and we've
got all these launch events happening. It's really exciting, but
yeah, I kinda almost forgot (laughs)."
Unable to hold our tongue any longer, HEAVY asks what the hell the
name of the album actually means.
"It's pretty obvious," Sam deadpanned. "The Motorsteeple is this
gigantic, colossal church on tank tracks that drives the waste
eternally, and it has no brakes. The album is about the rise and
demise of the motorsteeple. Pretty bleeding obvious…"
Seeing we got no sense out of any of them regarding the title, we
try our luck asking about the album musically.
"I guess an expansion of the sound that we've been working on for a
while," Elliott measured, "and some new, exciting flavours to
come."
There's a few surprises that you will hear," Dan teased.
"We kind of branched a bit more out into the electronic thing,"
Elliott continued. "We've got an old-school dub chorus in one of
the songs. I feel like we got super weird with it. Every time in
the studio we thought no, it's too weird we probably shouldn't do
that, we'd come back the next day and say nah that's fucken sick,
we have to keep that. I think it's just proof that we need to keep
getting weirder (laughs)."
In the full interview, the boys discuss how The Rise and Demise of
the Motorsteeple differs musically to their self-titled debut
album, their breakthrough success because of The World Is A Vampire
tour, how they capitalised on that momentum moving forward, the
challenges of writing the second album with more attention and
expectation on them as a band, their musical inspirations, how and
where to draw the line between imitation and inspiration, their
recent European tour and plans to go back, how overseas crowds
reacted to their live shows and sense of humour, the upcoming
Australian tour and more.


Become a supporter of this podcast:
https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/heavy-music-interviews--2687660/support.