Testeagles Are Set To Soar Again

Turn That Shit Up

Well, if you were a teenager back when one of Adelaide’s finest trios, the Testeagles dropped their monstrous debut album, Non Comprehendus, back in February of 2000, you might very well be asking for shit to be turned up.

After seventeen years, the band got together for a one-off reformation at last year’s Froth & Fury festival in Adelaide. It was their first live performance since 2008, and the response was nothing short of explosive. The crowd reaction, the energy, and the overwhelming demand from fans made it clear: one show wasn’t enough. That single set has now sparked a full-scale comeback tour, fuelled entirely by the people who wouldn’t let them stop at just one.

At one point this return seemed impossible due to bassist ‘D’s’ significant health battles, but through sheer perseverance he’s defied the odds to make this reformation a realty! And this October and November, Testeagles will hit the road in celebration of the 25th anniversary of arguably one of the nations seminal nu-metal albums, Non Comprehendus. Hi Fi Way spoke to Adrian “Ady” Matt about the tour.

Great to be talking to you. You’ve got to be blown away with the level of interest in this tour. I think there’s already a few sold-out shows already on the tour?
A: Yeah, it’s so bizarre, man, like, to all these years, for people to remember who we are. And just the fact we’ve had, you know, any sort of impact on our people was just… Feels weird. I mean, it’s amazing, but yeah, feels odd, but we appreciate it. All good news.

Was there always the intention to do a tour at some point, or was it really Froth and Fury that was the catalyst?
A: Yeah, Froth and Fury kind of caused it, really. Like, I think every year since, you know, we stopped playing in 2008, we’d get offers. We’d probably get two or three offers a year to say, like, oh, I’ve got this gig we want you to play, you got to come out and do it, it’s going be good, but none of them were really, there was always something wrong, like… it’s usually timing, you know? The timing wasn’t right, it clashed with something that was happening in our lives, or it was only two months away. We hadn’t played for years, and we knew it would take a lot of time and effort to get it together and get to the level we want to be at. To play properly. But Froth gave us heaps of time, and being hometown. We used to play gigs with Jason, who runs Froth, he played in a band that we played with all the time, so it just felt like the right thing to do.

Getting ready for that, oh, man, it took everything for us to come back from, basically we don’t play anymore and to getting in the standard we could be proud of it was a lot of work, time, and effort, and we only planned to do that one show, but then afterwards, we’re like, well, hang on, we just spent, like five months getting ready for this, maybe we should just keep playing, and then see what happens, and figure it out. So, yeah, here we are, doing it again.

Was Froth & Fury just beyond expectations, and just blow your mind, in terms of that hometown reaction? I remember when you guys came out on stage, and it seemed like a hero’s homecoming reception as you got into the first song.
Yeah, it was insane. I didn’t really expect all of that. Even just the setup of the Froth, we got there the day before to drop the gear off and check it all out, and I was just like, woah, I took all these selfies in front of the stage. It’d been so long since we played a show, and it was such an enormous setup. The crowd reaction was insane, and then seeing kids there, we got all these messages, and people saying, I’m bringing my kids, we listen to you every day… mind-blowing, incredible experience.

Did it take a lot of convincing to do this at least once more time?
I think it did, actually. It was a bit of a process, organised, I think mostly by Doug Bear at Rare Records, because he rang me. He was trying to get hold of us for ages, and we were just like, I don’t know, whatever. We don’t really check the socials, don’t look in DMs, and stuff like that. But somehow, he got my number, and he called, and there’s this whole process. He talked to me about how Sunk Loto had done it, and they went through a lot to come back and do their tour. Then Dane from Sunk’s actually talked to me, because we used to be really good mates back in the day when we toured together. So, he talked to me and said, bro, you got to do it, it’s really worth it, we went through these struggles, and he explained their journey through it all. He said, you won’t regret it when you get there. Then I got invited to a COG gig. So I went to this gig with COG, and Dane from Sunk was there, Lucius was there, and we all hung out and chatted about the old days, and what it would be like to be out there doing it again. So, yeah, all of that stuff contributed to it. We needed the confidence, we needed people to say, yeah, people want you to do this, and we need you out there doing this and we believe that you can pull it off.

Did you find, even when you weren’t playing, that there were different times when you actually did miss it?
Missed parts of it, yeah, for sure. I just miss hanging out with Matty and Dee a lot. Matty’s my bro, so we’d still kind of catch up, but we had to make excuses to catch up and do stuff together. I was used to spending all day, every day together, live together, and just having so many cool, like hanging out with other bands, and there were always highlights and good parts of it. There’s other tough areas that you don’t miss, but yeah, overall, for sure.

How have the rehearsals been going for the tour coming up?
Yeah, it’s actually been really, really good, because the Froth rehearsals were a bit stressful, and we were pretty bad at first. There was a lot of muscle soreness in my forearms, wrists. Matty was the same on the guitars and stuff, we were like, oh we’re getting old, our bodies, can we do this? Just not used to playing every day, but this time it’s a lot more fun, I think we have a lot more confidence, and we were just putting a little bit of extra in there now as were were trying to get back to a base level, and now we’re like, we can put this little bit of extra in there, a bit of spice on top, and play around with it.

Playing Non-Comprehenders start to end, does that bring its own little challenges as well?
Oh, absolutely, man, well, for starters, the first song on the album is TE’s In Style. I think we only ever played it once, which was at the album launch show that we did at Adelaide Uni in the Cloisters. I don’t think we ever played it again. Then, Ocean, we have never, ever played, not even at the launch show. I don’t even really know why, I think part of us liked the song, and part of us didn’t like the song at the time, and we’re like, just don’t play it. So, we had to learn it for the first time this year, which is the weirdest experience. Had to load up Spotify and listen to it, work out how to play it. I’ve been really enjoying playing these songs. The set really flows.

What does the future hold for the Testeagles?
Enjoy it for now. We don’t really know what we’re going to do. We’ve had a couple of very, very short chats about, oh, maybe we should put out some of those songs we didn’t put out. We’ve been jamming around, and we’ve written a couple of things. There’s one song in particular that I can’t get out of my head that came together in a gym one day, and it’s sick, man. It would be a bit silly not to share that with people, even if we don’t put a major effort into it, we don’t have to go and promote it like crazy, just put it out and give it to the real fans without being over the top about it. I think that would be smart. Our last show on this tour is in Brisbane. That would feel weird if that was our last show, so surely we have to at least, play our last show in Adelaide if we ever do, like, so… there’s that to consider.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Tickets from Teamwrk Touring…