Brisbane Band Zuko Are Primed For Froth & Fury

‘It’s been a crazy twelve months for us! We’ve really seen the Momentum ramp up!’

Ben Matthews, bassist of extreme metal genre bending Zuko understates the band’s rapid rise this last year. He is chatting with me, alongside vocalist Jesse Hudson, in preparation of Froth & Fury Festival next year and, coincidentally, the day after brand new video for Teeth To The Curb dropped.

Jesse: We’re pretty stoked with the reception and all the stuff people have been saying so far. We’ve done everything by ourselves and it’s just awesome to see how much people have really backed us all over the years. It’s really cool! We’re very DIY, we’ve tried to be smart with when we release something, we want it to be as good as we can make it at that point in time. ‘Stand For Nothing’ was a response to getting that massive tour with Alphawolf, so after we released ‘Hatred’, we were still writing, but we didn’t really have anything finalised. As soon as we got the offer, we we’re going to the studio immediately and we’re recording something, so then we have something to release. I feel like we pulled it off pretty well.’
Ben: I don’t think we’ve ever worked that quickly before.

I was pretty shocked at how fast we move the whole process of writing, getting it finish, written and recording a video pretty much like a month before releasing.

Ben: We crammed a lot into a really small window of time and that release in particular was a bit of a glass shattering moment for us, realising that, oh, we can get this shit done, we just need to lock the fuck in and make it happen.

The glass shattering moment was a huge leap for the band who proved to themselves the quality they drop and then had to follow through with gargantuan Australia tour with Alpha Wolf and Malevolence.

Ben: It was an endurance tester for sure. Before that, the most hectic thing we’ve done was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so that was like that, times ten. Crazy. But hell of an experience, man. I think we needed something like that to test us out, see if we can actually commit to doing this and I think I could speak for all the boys and say that it was something that none of us will ever forget. I got to see parts of the country we’d never seen before. Play with some bands we literally worship. Watching Josh from Malevolence shred guitar in person is insane.

Fast forward six months and the brutal new single Teeth To The Curb drops with the band playing in a Dexter style kill room.

Jesse: With this song in particular, it needed something that related to it or had the same vibe of the song. The song is about creeps being creeps to women or whoever. Around that time, I was watching or I saw clips of Dexter and I immediately thought of it’d be so cool to do a video in his kill room thing. So, I pitched it to the guys and everyone was like, yeah, that’s cool. Pretty happy with how it turned out and definitely shout out to Colin from Ten Of Swords for doing that for us. He did a fantastic job as always.

Ben: Jesse thematically had something going on with his lyrics and he was pretty on the ball with visuals immediately and we all just fully backed him. At the end of the day, we’re all pretty stoked with how it came out. Colin from Ten Of Swords is a digital wizard! That dude can make any idea come to life.

By the time twelve months passes on that glass shattering moment, the band will throwdown on Froth & Fury stages in both Perth and Adelaide, which is good time to remind Ben of a quote he made a few years ago about one of his heroes, Josh Smith from Archspire, who will also be playing.

Ben: I’m going to do my best to not, or at least to play it casual, but let’s be real, the dude is a fucking wizard man. He does things that should not be humanly possible. There’s so many freakishly talented people playing this festival. It’s going to be hard to not fan girl, not say something stupid, but I’m just going to enjoy it.

What about fans, or those who don’t know the band, what can they expect?

Jesse: I reckon you all aren’t ready. Every show that we’ve played so far this year, the crowd gets more rowdy and that’s reciprocated with excitement. Usually, we call for stage diving and all that stuff, there’s going to be a lot of circle pitting and probably, I want to say crowd surfing, but I don’t know what Adelaide and Perth are like. So hopefully they show us what they’re made of!

Comeback Kid, In Hearts Wake and Terminal Sleep are three of the bands both the lads are desperate to check out, however you shouldn’t sleep on Zuko either on a festival getting envious glances over the fence from the east coast.

Ben: I think the fact too that it’s in Adelaide and it’s coming to Perth – Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane get the VIP treatment, they get all the good things. They get absolutely everything. It’s so fucking cool to see that these places that are usually left out on everything, it’s really cool that it’s exclusive to there for the time being. I’m seeing people comment on how sick this line up is and be like, oh, it’s a shame, it’s over there. I’m just responding to ’em. Buy a fucking ticket then!

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Zuko at Froth & Fury Festival on Saturday January 31 in Adelaide. Tickets on sale HERE…