Cartoon Darkness – the third album from Australian rockers Amyl and The Sniffers – arrives with a bruising perspective, swinging punches and slinging one-liners like sharpened javelins.

Three albums, world touring, and relentless media protection haven’t exhausted the Melbourne-founded four-piece. Gnarled, rumbling distortion and a few thunderous riffs sign the course issues are going to go on album opener Jerkin’. Although Iggy Pop made a whole profession from his sinewy, bare-chested onstage look, a girl in a punk-rock band carrying a string bikini and excessive heels on stage is someway nonetheless one thing about which sure males really feel the necessity to have an opinion on.

Amy Taylor has no time for this nonsense – epitomised by Jerkin’s sometimes unapologetic opening line, “You’re a dumb c**t, you’re an arsehole”. It’s a theme she comes again to once more on U Ought to Not Be Doing That – which serves as the last word takedown, and an anthem for each lady who has had the speak about having to put on a skirt, cowl their knees, tone down their outfit and themselves (and almost each lady has heard this at the least as soon as).

It’s a sometimes forthright and incisive message for a band that has been on a whip-fast rise in eight years for the reason that pals shaped a band within the bayside Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, the place they initially bonded over acting at home events.

The band’s 2021 second album, Consolation To Me, noticed them elevated to the ‘subsequent massive factor’ class exterior of their homeland, incomes help slots with megastars like Inexperienced Day and Smashing Pumpkins. And when it got here time to file the observe up final yr, LA appeared like an apparent place to start – not least as a result of it might present prepared entry to trade assets they might solely dream of again in Australia, but in addition as a result of Taylor and guitarist Declan Mehrtens had not too long ago moved to the leisure capital of the world.

Residence Is The place The Coronary heart Is

Because it occurs, Mehrtens is definitely again in Melbourne after we converse to him (“I come again for my mum’s birthday”), and he confesses that there was by no means a plan to go ‘LA’ with Cartoon Darkness. “We are able to’t shake the Australian factor, not that we’d ever attempt to. We’ve turn into this Australian band with the assets of a Los Angeles band, I assume. The album was mastered by Bernie Grundman, who did every thing from Spanish Flea by Eric Benet to Thriller by Michael Jackson and Purple Rain by Prince. As a result of we lived in LA, it was solely a 20-minute Uber to his studio.”

The punk DIY ethos has been half and parcel of Amyl and The Sniffers from the beginning – as a lot by necessity than the rest – however the elevated assets gave them the flexibleness to, nicely, flex a bit.

“It was like, ‘all proper, we’re severe’. We’re a part of the trade now, ,” he explains. “We recorded within the Foo Fighters’ Studio 606 and we just about had entry to any of the issues the Foo Fighters did, so we had their engineers and their gear. We had the Sound Metropolis consoles that Nevermind and Rumors and Tom Petty recorded on. We have been on the stage that these actually giant artists had been on, however the experiment was like, ‘What would it not be like if the stage was given to an Aussie pub band?’”

The query is answered with the eclectic mixture of upbeat funk, snarly punk, and empowerment anthems on Cartoon Darkness – which melds their aforementioned heavy Australian pub-rock influences (Chilly Chisel, AC/DC) with a pop sensibility that borrows some perspective from Prince. It isn’t going to please each listener, regardless of the breadth of musical influences (Taylor is an enormous fan of hip-hop and R&B), however it would possibly attract a wider circle than the unique Amyl fanbase of yore.

Regardless of holding one of many best social media handles round – he’s @dickheadofficial on Instagram if you happen to have been questioning – Mehrtens concedes that he barely makes use of social media past utilizing it to maintain up with information from again house. It’s a situation that makes him considerably oblivious to the keyboard warriors who gasoline Taylor’s righteous fury on U Ought to Not Be Doing That – regardless he’s at all times able to again her when she needs to clap again.

“Amy fires this music out, and I am going, ‘Yeah, no matter, I help you Amy,’ he displays on the music’s genesis. “I’ll stand there and play guitar whilst you take hearth at whoever.”

Go Discover

In terms of guitars, Mehrtens is never seen with out his trusty Gibson Explorer in hand – it’s a rock ‘n’ roll guitar for a rock ‘n’ roll band, and understandably the bedrock of Cartoon Darkness.

“The Explorer that I play dwell is what I exploit on many of the album,” he says, “besides that I had a P-90 within the bridge, which I don’t use dwell. My pal Nick Sheppard was in a punk band within the 70s known as The Cortinas, and he performed with The Conflict [between 1983 and 1986]. He informed me the P-90s right into a Marshall was the most effective sound for punk. So, I attempted it out and I appreciated it. However dwell, I simply want extra energy, so I’ve gone again to humbuckers dwell.”

Mehrtens says they “didn’t attempt to do something loopy” with regards to the guitar sound on the brand new album. “We weren’t making an attempt to revolutionise my sound or something, however the Foo Fighters studio has plenty of devices, plenty of amps, they usually have a loopy quantity of substances. So, we tried every thing that that they had there, and we discovered this Hiwatt amp [custom made for Studio 606 by Hiwatt, most similar to a Hiwatt DR504] to be the most effective for what I used to be doing, and now I exploit that dwell. The final two albums, I used Marshalls, however plenty of our music may be very choosy and single be aware, so with the Hiwatt amp, it sounds cleaner however nonetheless actually aggressive.”

One other pretty substantial and unconventional change was made to the sound nonetheless – and it’s one which’s bought much more in widespread with jazz than punk.

“This album is nearly solely with flatwound strings,” he reveals. “Which was one thing that isn’t actually carried out in our style of music. I met up with Matt Sweeney, who does these Guitar Strikes movies and he took me to a personal seashore in Malibu. We have been looking on the ocean, and he’s speaking to me about guitar strings. He informed me all of the 60s recordings have been carried out with flatwound strings, and that I ought to attempt it.”

It was revolutionary, particularly within the writing course of, Mehrtens insists. After the preliminary month of writing demos in early 2023, the band reconvened in full between January and March to flesh out the rest of the songs earlier than heading into pre-production with producer Nick Launay (L7, IDLES, Black Insurgent Motorbike Membership, Anna Calvi, Nick Cave and the Unhealthy Seeds).

“As a result of they’re flatwound, they don’t harm your fingers as a lot, they usually keep in tune lots higher,” he reveals. “So, when it got here to writing, I had much more stamina to play for hours and hours, as a result of my fingers by no means harm, . They type of shift your tone from being a focal lead instrument to extra of an instrument that’s a member of the band.

“If you happen to have been a rhythm guitarist and also you didn’t have any lead traces, I’d actually suggest utilizing flatwound strings, as a result of the harmonics of the strings don’t conflict with the extra focal frequencies {that a} vocalist would have, or a lead instrument would have. When it got here time to doing lead guitar traces, as quickly as I introduced out a roundwound string, then I’d be capable of sit atop of the music lots higher.”

Carry The Noise

There’s additionally a uncommon alternative for Mehrtens to essentially stretch himself as a soloist on the monitor Pigs – however it’s not one thing the band do notably deliberately.

“The preliminary thought of the solo is just not realizing what to do subsequent after we’re writing,” he admits, “And it ended up being useful to Amy, to offer her a breather. Pigs is among the only a few tracks on the album that was carried out within the monitoring course of. Many of the solos have been overdubbed, however that solo was carried out whereas monitoring drums and bass. Nick [Launay] wished to edit it to be as refined because the others, however I wished to maintain it because it was. He boosted the treble lots to get it to the way it sounds now – however it was impressed by Thunder And Lightning by Skinny Lizzy.”

Extra so than previous albums, there’s a way of funk driving a number of the tracks on Cartoon Darkness – notably on U Ought to Not Be Doing That. Mehrtens sounds delighted that Prince is referenced in relation to this monitor.

“We recorded at Studio 3 in Sundown Sound, the place Prince recorded within the 80s,” he enthuses. “By way of funk and dance, we’ve realised that we love that, and Amy actually loves it, so we’ve leaned into it. We now have to impress her. Amy responds principally to the rhythm and the groove as a result of she’s not a vocalist from the normal melodic background. We write the riffs for Amy to sing on high of, so we now have to impress her, I assume. You find yourself being artistic whenever you’re this far into it, to type of get Amy excited in regards to the music.”

She’s not the one one getting enthusiastic about Cartoon Darkness – for Amyl and The Sniffers, by the point they’re again within the studio after “a couple of extra years” on the highway, they may have much more well-known followers.

Cartoon Darkness is out 25 October on Tough Commerce