Shatter Brain are an Adelaide based metal band comprised of members of some of South Australia’s most successful heavy bands. The band draws on an eclectic but coherent range of influences and seamlessly blends fast, razor-tight rhythms with laid back grooves. Their sound is reminiscent of its contemporaries, such as High on Fire, Merauder, Black Breath, and Power Trip, with the occasional nod to classic metal and crossover. Their debut album “Pitchfork Justice” is out now so we grabbed a few words from the band to find out all the latest.
Metal-Roos: Welcome to the interview, Shatter Brain. It’s an honour to have you here.
Shatter Brain: Oh, you’re too kind, cheers for having us!
MR: Tell us about Shatter Brain.
Shatter Brain: We’re a 5 piece metal band from South Australia. We formed in 2017 and since then have released a 4 track demo, Split EP with Melbourne’s Blunt Shovel and have just released our debut album, ‘Pitchfork Justice’, via Wormholedeath. We’ve also tried to tour pretty hard to support our releases, which has taken us to New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan and around Australia a few times!
MR: Your debut album is out right now, a great step for you, how was the recording process?
Shatter Brain: Yeh we recorded it with Jimmy Balderston at Ghostnote Studios here in Adelaide and it was a cool experience! We wanted to go into this recording with an external producer and really push ourselves to try and improve upon the recording we had previously done. We got to use a bunch of cool amps, guitars and effects throughout the recording process and I feel that really added some depth to the overall sound of the album!
MR: Many plans have been cancelled due to the pandemic virus, how is the band coping with the situation?
Shatter Brain: Yes, many haha. We’re really proud of the album and stoked with how it came out so we were planning to hit the ground running and do a heap of touring this year to get it out to as many people and places as we could. So when this COVID 19 hit it was a bit frustrating, to say the least, but can’t be helped. So we’ve just been focusing on doing promo for the album, doing interviews and getting reviews back, and releasing a few videos. Also trying to keep the creative juices flowing and get a few new riffs together!
MR: Returning to the album, what can you say about it? What are you trying to reflect with the lyrics?
Shatter Brain: I guess you could say we have a loose lyrical theme threaded through the album haha. We wanted to touch on some of this PC culture and social justice outrage we quite often see these days all over social media. People generally like to think that we have come a long way since the days of angry mobs with torches and pitchforks banding together and lynching folks for many different reasons. But it seems some people quite easily slip back into this kind of mob mentality when they’re behind a keyboard, so maybe we aren’t as civilised as some people think haha. The overall message of the album isn’t directed at any particular person, sex, race, political view etc. I guess the overall message of the album is life is short, and the only certain thing is that we’re all going to die, so let’s loosen up and enjoy the ride while we’re here.
MR: How was the reaction of the fans?
Shatter Brain: It’s been great! Getting lots of positive feedback! One thing I have noticed chatting to some fans and even from a lot of the reviews we’ve been getting, is that there seems to be a lot of variance in people’s highlights and favourite tracks on the album. I mean, that’s a good thing right?
MR: Any different plan during the quarantine time?
Shatter Brain: We’re just gonna keep promoting the album as best we can! Having all this downtime we’ve been playing around with our Go Pros a bit, so there might be a few cool things coming out of that!
MR: Thanks for the interview, Shatter Brain. It was an honour to have you here! Tell us your social media to follow your career.
Thank you so much for supporting Shatter Brain! If you like what you hear then, please order the album and/or some merch from our Online Store: https://shatterbrainmetal.square.site/
Make sure you follow our social media pages at the links below:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
Hopefully, we can catch you all at a show sometime soon. Cheers!
Interview Date: 2020-05-25
Interviewer: Jhossbert Gonzalez