Regurgitator To Top 2025 Off At Hotter Than Hell

Grab a pair of Vans and your best mates, and get set for some classic summer festival vibes like the good old days; this October and November, the hottest ticket in town will be Hotter Than Hell, with the Aussie festival celebrating all things rock returning later this year for a monster 2024 edition with one stage, no clashes and affordable prices with tickets from $85. Bringing the old-school vibes off the beaten track to outdoor venues in Western Australia, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland, Hotter Than Hell will feature unforgettable performances across five days from familiar and new favourites, including the likes of Regurgitator, American icons Less Than Jake (performing in SA and QLD only) and Unwritten Law (performing in WA and VIC only), along with Jebediah, Little Birdy, The Bennies, Adalita, and The Kickons. Once again bringing a monstrous lineup truly blessed by the rock gods down under, Hotter Than Hell is here to kick off summer festival season with a bang!

An undisputed and unstoppable force on the Aussie alternative landscape, Hotter Than Hell’s 2024 headliners Regurgitator need very little introduction. Forming in Brisbane in the early 90s, the group have gone on to take home multiple ARIA Awards, tour the globe across Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East, playing with Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Prodigy and Silverchair, and obliterate festival stages, from the iconic days of Big Day Out through to their recent appearance as part of 2022’s Good Things Festival. Armed with ten studio albums under the Regurgitator moniker, including their groundbreaking 1996 debut album Tu-Plang, through to their recent 2024 opus Invader, Regurgitator remain a cultural force to be reckoned with. Boundlessly inventive, and armed with everything from rock, rap, funk, and thrash (and even a kid’s album for good measure), Regurgitator’s live show remains to this day as infamous as their genre-defying earworms; and Hotter Than Hell was the perfect lure to get the band back on Aussie stages again. Quan Yeomans speaks to Hi Fi Way about finishing their 2024 touring schedule off at Hotter Than Hell.

Another massive year for Regurgitator, on reflection his this exceeded all expectations?
Yeah, it’s been really, really cool. Great to release a new record and the tour went really well, played some excellent shows, really great crowds. Really, really lucky and it’s been a hoot. We’ve got a new player with us who’s been marvellous. Sarah is playing a second guitar. We’ve never had a second guitarist before, and she’s also on keytar. Sarah has worked out really awesome, really great performer, really fun to be on tour with and everything just run really smoothly this year.

Will that be a long term thing with Sarah?
It feels like it. Yeah, like we just love eating noodles together. I think we should just solidify that noodle connection that we have.

After the last tour it almost sounded like that was it for the year, but does playing Hotter Than Hell feel like the cherry on top of the cake to wrap up the year for Regurgitator?
Absolutely! Doing twenty-five shows in a row in two months was pretty hectic and our bodies are just starting to fall apart towards the end of it. So having a nice little break and then doing like a really cool festival run is such a great feeling and a really great opportunity to do it.

Do these festivals seem more like reunions and catch ups these days?
I think so, it’s really chill, I remember when there was more of a competitive vibe there. We’ve all you grown up and moved on and it is great to see how people have developed and what they’ve done with their lives. The one really great thing about these band is now they actually play really well and maybe not appreciated at the time. It’s really lovely to be able to socialise after the show.

Once the final date rolls around will you be able to down tools?
Yeah, I think Ben’s already interested in doing a record. I think we’re going to have to go back into the writing room and do some more recording early next year. He’s got a really cool retreat set up. I might go join him and the other members of the band might come up for a little bit and do some writing. I think the idea is to do the next record as more of a double album, like a rock record and a hip hop record and then just stick them together a little bit.

Are you able to totally remove yourself from music when you take your break and what does the break coming up look like for yourself?
Well, I’m in the middle of moving house, so I’m going to sell this place and buy another place and then sort out what the hell’s going on! I’m really lucky I’ve got this three month period after the last tour before Hotter Than Hell. After Hotter Than Hell I should be just settling in, getting my studio set again, I’ve got other projects on the on the back burner in terms of bigger narrative kind of projects, more animation series type things in mind. I want to sit down for the next six months and do some serious writing and also do another record with Ben. There’s plenty going on. There’s life admin to be dealt with for me.

Looking back on Invader are you really proud of that album?
I am, strangely, I’m not normally and that made me a little bit worried about it to be honest, because I’m normally pretty critical. There are some strong songs and not so strong songs but I think the thing that I’m really proud of is just the way that we have collaborated with a bunch of other people and that kind of input really took it to the next level in my mind. We were really lucky to work with JK and with Peaches. Tyson is one of my favourite Indigenous First Nations writers and just having connections with those people, getting to know them more and working with them is just amazing for me. I went and saw the documentary about Peaches recently at the Melbourne International Film Awards called the Teachers of Peaches, and it just took me back to when we first heard her record.

Her very first record and how inspiring it was at the time. I think we were working on our fourth album in London with Andy Gill from the Gang Of Four. I remember taking in that record and showing it to him and saying it’s amazing, it’s so simple, but so incredible. The vibes and then her coming to Australia and Paul our manager hooking shows up for her here and getting to play with her at the Big Day Out. Having her on stage for the first time in front of a festival crowd and just seeing her background in that documentary was really fascinating. I have a lot of respect for what she does and her values and stuff. I’m really proud of that aspect of the record for sure.

Do you think doing collabs is something you will do a little bit more on the next?
Yeah, I’d love to. The thing is you have to be very patient. I think with collabs, people have their own lives going on. their own busy creative schedules. So, that’s the hardest thing just getting it all to line up in time for you to release your own stuff. But apart from that, it’s really rewarding and it’s great to be able to just let go and let someone else put their spin on it.

Are you able to listen to the record without being critical?
Well, that usually takes a good decade for me to do that. I’m only just starting to appreciate “Unit”, I think the other one that I quite like is Super Happy Fun Times those three are my favourite of ours so far, Unit, Super Happy Fun Times and Invader. Strangely, those three feel the best to me, but it usually takes a long time for me to be able to listen to it and actually enjoy it.

Did anything particular inspire Invader?
There’s just always been a huge variation with us. We’re never really too careful about how we position ourselves genre wise. That’s one thing about the band that will never change. It’s always a mix of weird genres. I think this one in particular, we had a lot of control over the mixing. There’s a crafting of the engineering and crafting of the record that we haven’t really had so much of in the past. That might have something to do with it. There was a lot of various inspirations for it ranging from the 80s all the way through to the 90s sounds and then modern sounds as well. I think a lot of the sounders is us just grasping the technology that’s available now to be able to do our own mixing and engineering.

Have you got many ideas for the next album?
Ben’s really getting into it. He’s pretty settled at the moment, so he’s got plenty of time to work on it. He’s quite enjoying writing songs again. He needs to get into a room though and bash it out with us, that’s his modus operandi. I just write in the box stuff a lot of the time on my own. I’ve got about nine or ten hip-hop tracks ready to go. I just need some input from those guys, some final moulding and some collaborations going on with those. I think I’ve got enough to work with and I think he’s working towards a good half dozen tunes already as well, so I don’t think there’ll be much of a wait to be honest.

For a band like Regurgitator who has pretty much done everything what is next? A documentary maybe?
We’ve had one been worked on for about a decade now. I can’t let it go somehow. This is not a drama in our band. Someone has to die tragically!!! I had a really great meeting with my very first drummer recently, Martin. I hadn’t spoken to him for like twenty years and I haven’t seen him for twenty-five. Then I randomly pull up at a place in Carlton North in Melbourne at a guitar store with some straps that I had to put on my guitar that I put in there to sell. I was literally parked ten metres away from the storefront, walked towards it, heard someone say hey, is that Quan Yeomans? And it turns out to be Martin Lee walking along the street in Melbourne, he lives in Mexico mind you, and he was only in Melbourne for three days.

I was like, what the heck? He gave me a hug, said I can’t talk to you now. I’ve got to go hang out with Brian Canham to talk to him about doing the film clip for Cocaine Runaway. So I had to go, but I gave my number, said call me and we’ll get together have coffee. We got together the next day and spoke for two hours over coffee and it was just lovely. All the hatchets have been buried and rotten away. Didn’t matter at all. It was really a nice way to reconnect and bookend that era. So, we talked about the past and talked about what it was up to now. It was just like two mature men talking to each other as friends. It was really nice. Really, really nice! It was such a random thing, like one in a billion chance having that meeting, really strange!

Will we get to see Regurgitator at some stage in 2025?
Oh no doubt, we’ll probably take a longish break at the start. I’m not sure, and if we do release a record, it probably won’t come out until towards the end of 2025, maybe even early 2026. I’m not sure but pretty excited about new material. I’m looking forward to doing more hip-hop stuff and honing that craft element. But yeah, no doubt we’ll play here and there. We love playing and it’s always good to stay on the horse and keep going. I think people seem to still appreciate us live and it’s just really good to move your body in that way as well!

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Regurgitator at Hotter Than Hell on the following dates, tickets HERE…