Hometown Legends The Mark Of Cain To Rock Froth & Fury
‘How the fuck are we still here? I dunno, it was never any intention. I think the thing is that it wasn’t about playing music to do something or be something or make it big or whatever. It was just we wanted to play music!’
John Scott, enigmatic vocalist and guitarist in Adelaide rock institution The Mark Of Cain, explains the less than technical, yet probably the most real answer you’ll ever get, reasons behind the band’s continued legacy over the last forty one years. John is joined by brother Kim Scott and drummer Eli Green to discuss the bands upcoming spot on another Adelaide institution, Froth & Fury Festival.
Kim: The other thing is, and this I attribute to John was, we always felt brothers in bands seem to do pretty well. You can want to beat the shit out of each other, but you’re still brothers and blood is thicker than water. If you have had a bad rehearsal, you just get over it. Whereas a lot of bands where egos come into play and they get a bit precious about, oh, this is my song and nobody wants to play it or whatever. I think that the fact that John and I are brothers we just keep coming back no matter what. Big gaps between albums, five, sometimes ten years between albums. But yeah, we’d never considered stopping. It is kind of weird. forty one years though.
In a industry that needs to box bands into genres so they can become marketable, reviewers over the years have veered from alt metal to British rock to punk hardcore with everything in between when boxing them in. How do the band perceive themselves one wonders.
John: I just always say it’s heavy rock because if I ask people, that’s the thing people ask at work, oh, you’re in a band, what do you play? And it’s just too hard to say post hardcore blah blah blah, whatever, I just say call it heavy rock.
Kim: One reviewer described us as English melody meets American sonic. It’s not a genre of course, but that’s probably the background of Joy Division influencing us. Then us playing a show with Big Black, their last show in the Southern hemisphere, which had a huge influence on the way we played and constructed stuff. But it’s not a genre so most of the time I don’t bother either trying to, because some people go, oh, you guys are metal, and it’s like, nah!
Eli Green is now the longest server drummer in The Mark Of Cain after he started filling in on the kit back in 2013. As a mainstay of the Adelaide scene with his own projects including Life Pilot, it’s interesting to see how he viewed the band and his own integration.
Eli: I grew up down south, rural South Australia, and I had this neighbour who used to lend my first bands PA gear and stuff, and he was ‘punk dude’. He said, ‘you got to listen to this band. They’re called The Mark Of Cain, they’re the best band in the world and John Scott, he taught me how to mix’ and I was like, whatever old guy. So, I missed the boat. It wasn’t really my era or my genre of the music specifically, but there were so many bands that I listened to around The Mark Of Cain that it was only a matter of time until eventually I got introduced to them and, I went, oh, this is fucking cool. How did I not know about this band? Then to work with the band years later is a pretty wild full circle moment.
Kim: He comes into where we were rehearsing and we give him the opportunity to try and join the band and he had no respect for us! No, he had learnt the songs and he wanted a music stand and we’re like, what do you fucking need a music stand for? He’d written out all the songs in drum music, music notation. We were like, fucking hell. Then he told John how he was doing something wrong on ‘Point Man’, I’m thinking this guy’s got balls!
John: It was really refreshing to see someone come in and be able to deconstruct what we do because it’s not particularly normal written music and it has some weird timings in it, it’s helped me even understand how I write from that point of view.
With a settled line up and a huge show on the horizon, writing new music completes the trifecta, so get excited The Mark Of Cain fans.
John: First time we’re writing with Eli, which has been a great experience. Quite often I would come in with a riff and we’d all work on it and finally get there. This has been very different. Eli’s come in with some fully formed songs that we’ve taken and worked and that’s a huge change in the way The Mark Of Cain works and it’s been great. It’s been really great. He’s got the musicianship to be able to look at the band and know what sort of sits outside of what we do, what sits inside and come up with things that really resonate for us as a band. We’ve got a couple of new songs that we’d like to play and try out as well. When we do play live, we don’t want to give everybody six new songs. They’ll just sit there and no one will know what’s going on. The idea is to continue down that path and probably record next year, put something out and tour on that. It’s really great to have that injection of someone coming in and just having ideas and wanting to do it. I love it from my point of view.
Kim: The songs that John would write from a musical perspective, not talking lyrically, would always be from the inside out. We would spend an hour and a half on one little riff and I’d be going, what is he chasing? He’d be chasing some tiny little timing thing on something and I’m thinking, man, what a waste of this time we’re doing. But then I’d realised it was worth it. Eli writes in a more holistic from the outside in, he brings fully formed songs to the rehearsal room, which is just a different way of writing. It’s just different and it’s going to be faster. We took forever to write albums because of the song writing process.’
Eli: I don’t want it to be play it as it is. If I bring something in, I’m doing what my interpretation of The Mark Of Cain is from thirteen years of sitting behind you guys playing. But given that this is the first time that I’m actually involved in the writing process, I want the writing process to be The Mark Of Cain’s writing process. So really what I’m doing is approaching it from the perspective of I’m trying to make a statue, I’m trying to chip away all the marble, this big block and eventually it’ll be a TMOC song. If I can chip eighty percent of it away and make it look kind of like that and then bring it into the room and we take that very organic approach and we spend an hour and a half on one riff and we change one note about it, but that makes it The Mark Of Cain or that makes it a riff that John would’ve written, that’s what I’m looking for.
The festival set at Froth & Fury will be complete with all the bands’ classics, however there may be a surprise or two.
John: It’ll be wham bam, thank you ma’am.
Kim: Forty five minutes of Intensity. I tend to assemble a set list. We’ve agreed roughly what it is with a couple of new songs, but it’s always coming out swinging, staying hard and intense. We’ll definitely be playing some fan favourites for the TMOC fans out there that have been with us, for some of ’em, forty one years.
The Mark Of Cain are an Adelaide institution, a name that still echoes on stages and green rooms across the state, and even the country, so with them now linked to another Adelaide institution such as Froth & Fury, does Adelaide itself stand proudly defiant from the East Coast? John is quoted as once saying ‘Adelaide’s marches to the beat of its own drum’.
Kim: What Jason’s doing with Froth and Fury is great for Adelaide, given some festivals bypass Adelaide as the forgotten son sometimes Whereas Jason, I think as a local and committed to the Adelaide scene, it’s a good thing to be part of. There’s an alignment with The Mark Of Cain. We stayed in Adelaide, we never left Adelaide. Everyone was telling us we needed to be successful. Jason’s now bringing to Adelaide a great festival. I mean, this year they’re taking it to Perth!
Eli: I think the quote is still accurate. Adelaide exists in its own kind of microcosm of a music scene. We get passed over for everything. I don’t think we get really considered by a lot of, not just the industry, especially on the East coast, but also some of the other bands. We’re just in our own little world in a similar way that WA is as well. I’ve got friends in bands in Perth, and I’ve seen them build their own scene and just do what they want to do. They have quite a thriving little music community over there. We are very similar in that. It’s always a really well run event. It’s always something where the artists are taken care of, the audience taken care of. It’s great production, everything just works smoothly. There’s a really good ethos behind everything. It’s not about outsourcing it to bigger people or people from the East coast or whatever. It’s very much a grassroots thing that has just grown. As someone from a band (Life Pilot) that played the first year, we’re really proud to see how much it’s grown. It’s incredible to be hitting the showgrounds this year with the calibre of bands and the scale of it all. It’s only been a few short years, so I think it’s great.
Interview By Iain McCallum
Catch The Mark Of Cain at Froth & Fury Festival on Saturday January 31 in Adelaide. Tickets on sale HERE…
