The Story Behind Barriers New EP ‘Decay’

‘That pretty low key first show? Back at the beginning, three of us used to play in a band called Cry Murder and being from Adelaide, we were playing shows with Prom Queen all the time. That’s how we got started. They helped us out a lot. Then they did a side show off their big tour and they said it’d be awesome if you guys could join for your first show. So that happened through friendship, which we were really happy about. A good first show to blow the cobwebs off and that’s the first show we’ve played.’

Ben Loy, bassist in Barriers explains to me how his band played with I Killed The Prom Queen on their return tour, a show that was also Barriers first ever gig.

‘A few people that hadn’t heard us before came up afterwards saying ‘I could get into it straight away.’ That’s what we want. Anyone that likes anything heavy, whether it’s Doom, Death, Metal, Grind, whatever, we’re just one of the bands that we hope that you can just get into. It’s easy to feel the groove. It’s for everyone. I think it was good fun. Looking forward to doing it again.’

The story of Barriers, a part Melbourne, part Adelaide venture, has its origin story in The City Of Churches itself.

‘2004, this is when Cry Murder started. That was a five piece, we played till around 2009 and then stopped. A lot of us had a ten-year hiatus from playing, Liam, our drummer, I know he did. Kyle, our vocalist and guitarist, was playing for Embodiment for a little while. Stacey and I played in Saving Savannah, which was a rock band for a few years, but work, all that sort of thing had Stacey and I move to Perth, then we moved to Melbourne. We were just busy. Music was put on the back burner. Then we reunited with Liam, our drummer. He was living in Melbourne and we started just hanging out weekly a couple of times talking about the old days. Stacey just busted the guitar out and said ‘Let’s make a few riffs. Let’s see if Liam might want to play some drums.’ It is just reliving what we used to do for so long. Then we were thinking we like that guitarist, vocalist, sort of front. Who can we get? It would be awesome to get someone that sings and plays guitar well. We remembered Kyle back in the day, played in lots of bands as a vocalist, played guitar and an engineer. He recorded one of the Cry Murder albums. We just sent him a few rough riffs and we’re thinking who knows what he’s going to think about it. But straight away he was into the four of us just, yeah, he thought it was a good idea and boom. From then we started introducing more riffs and that gradually happened from there.’

The past logistical challenges of having band members in different locations doesn’t apply as much these days, and are certainly not a concern for the cross state Barriers. Further help in Kyle’s engineering abilities proves this is no issue at all.

‘Having Kyle as an engineer as well really helps because the demos, they’re all done sitting in the lounge room so we can get an idea of what we want, share it with each other and Liam will just jump on his electric kit, how’s this? How’s this? A few different takes. We can piece it all together. ‘Okay, cool. This is sort of what we’re going for’. Then when we’re ready, we can meet, fill it out in the room, record in the studio. I think it works well.’

Barriers have released a debut EP Decay and have that one massive show under the belt, so for those unfamiliar, what does Ben think of Barriers compared to the quartets original ventures.

‘We’re just a bit more relaxed. We let the song breathe a bit, let’s have a little bit of an ambiance section come in. Then when it comes back in heavy it has got more of an impact or let’s not go too crazy on the drums, let’s get a big chorus kick in. We’ve maybe matured, we just sort of slowed down a little and the sound sort of comes across that way. It’s easier to access, to get into the groove and the song has time to breathe. We feel when it’s heavy, it’s heavy. When it’s sort of the riff, you can hear the riff. It hasn’t got drums blaring 24/7, which I still love bands that do that. But for us we just sort of wanted to try something a little different and it is fun. I wouldn’t call ourselves a Doom band, but some people even say we’ve a little bit hardcore here and there. I really don’t know, to be honest. A few people have said a little bit like Fit For An Autopsy, Conjurer mixed with a bit of old Machine Head. I’m like, man, I’ll take that.’

Ben and Stacey are a couple who rock together. In an industry that can ego driven, how do they manage?

‘It’s pretty easy. I’ve been with her for twenty one years, two kids together, so we know how each other work. We can be very honest with each other when we’re writing. I think I annoy her a bit when she’s playing guitar, when she’s writing riffs. So I know to keep quiet when I need to keep quiet! We listen to very similar stuff. She knows her stuff and we’re on the same page. I think all four of us, we’re all on the same page. If someone doesn’t think something really works, we’re not touchy about it. We can take anything on board, let’s move on. Let’s try it. It makes a big difference where you can all just, okay, let’s try it then and don’t get touchy about it. And it’s just more fun as well!’

Decay was done in house, no label, no distribution, just four musicians doing what they love in an age of manipulated streams of candy floss music taking over your listening devices.

‘We’re not on a label, no booking agent, ain’t nothing like that. We really want to put an album out. We don’t want to wait too long until we follow up. We want to keep a bit of momentum going if we can. If it’s maybe trying to get in with a label or we fund it, maybe it is a little bit harder with doing it completely independent. You’ve got no one with contacts trying to book you on shows, you’re sending the emails yourself. You’ve got no distro, you’re just relying on people on Spotify, Apple Music. So maybe we can do a few demos and ship it out to some labels. That could be something we’re keen to look into is playing more shows around Australia, we’d like to, we’ve done Adelaide, we want to try and get out there and play.’

Ben is also a member of recently reformed Adelaide hardcore heavyweights Day Of Contempt, I couldn’t help but ask about a double header.

‘I have talked about that. That’s the thing, I think we probably could play on a Day Of Contempt show because the hardcore, I mean a lot of metal people like Day Of Contempt as well. We could do a good crossover of hardcore bands. I’d love to do something with ’em, have a few bands in between us so I don’t have to do one straight into the other, but it’d be awesome. Yeah, I think something like that could definitely happen.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

Decay is out now and available via Bandcamp…