The Frenzy Arrives: Better Lovers Break Open Their Australian Tour Debut

‘Listen, he couldn’t get us over the hump. I don’t think it was his fault. Oddly enough, of all the years that it wasn’t his fault, it was this year. This year our guys didn’t play their best. The refs, I mean, I’m never a blame the refs kind of guy, but I’m starting to really, really, really feel like the NFL was rigged after that game. Josh had a bad game. That’s fine. I’ll live and die by Josh. I’d rather go deep into the playoffs every year with Josh Allen than win one Super Bowl with fucking Joe Flacco.’

If Jordan Buckley is this passionate about his NFL team, The Buffalo Bills, not only losing in the post season in OT to some questionable calls this week, and this conversation mere minutes after firing head coach Sean McDermott, then how passionate is he about his band music in supergroup Better Lovers? Fortunately for Hi -Fi Way, he sat down with collaborator and metal uber-producer Will Putney to discuss such things on the eve of their debut Australian tour.

‘It’s high energy. It’s a nice little release for the guys on stage as well as all the people in the crowd. We’re going to play our songs, we’re going to fucking nail it and it’s going to sound great. I’m more curious about what we should expect from you guys. Is it still insane there? When I was there with Every Time I Die, our shows were bananas, so I’m just hoping it’s more of the same. If so, then people know what they’re in for because Will’s been there a billion times. I’ve been there a billion times. We just kind of hope that everyone knows already what they’re going to get and that they bring friends that they can go, “Yo, you’re not going to want to miss this!’

Better Lovers is a rapid, insane, chaotic metal outfit that are more superheroes than supergroup. Featuring band members from the ashes of Every Time I Die, Will Putney and the manic vocalisations of Greg Puciato, debut album ‘Highly Irresponsible’ I referred to as ‘drinking ten energy drinks in thirty minutes, then going for a drive at 200mph in a Ferrari’ on release. How did it all come together then? Jordan explains.

‘We started writing right away because we had just gone through the pandemic, we had just put a record out, then the band broke up and we didn’t really have any time for woe is me. We started a band before we knew Will wanted to be in it, before we even had a singer. You’re running on a treadmill and you fall off the treadmill, it’s a lot harder to get back on the treadmill. That’s how creatively I felt. I felt like I had a lot of riffs in me and I needed to get them out. If I just sat around feeling sorry for myself, that maybe I would lose those riffs. So, when inspiration strikes, you kind of got to take advantage of it.

‘Me and Steve (bassist Stephen Micciche) were in Vegas drowning our sorrows, and Greg was there with Jerry Cantrell. And Ben, the drummer of Converge, he was there because he lives in LA and he’s like, “Yo, I saw you’re in Vegas. I’m in Vegas too. I just came up to hang with Greg because he’s in … ” What is the fucking band? Greg’s in a million bands. What band is he in with Ben? Killer Be Killed, right? He’s in a band with Ben from Converge. I’m pretty damn sure. Yeah so, he was like, “Oh, I’m going to hang with Greg at this Jerry Cantrell show if you got nothing to do. ” We fucking hung for the night. I gave him these demos of this new band and then the rest is history. Technically, no one ever planned on the breakup happening. It had to happen from scratch. Nothing was premeditated, and so it just fell into place.’

Ah Greg Puciato, a firebrand best described as a sensation rather than a person. With that uniqueness matching ETID fury, who can they rely on to manage that lightning and capture it into a bottle. Only one man. Enter Will Putney.

‘We sound the way that it is warranted. I feel like we do a certain thing that plays a side of his skill sets and gives him the ability to do some stuff that he wasn’t doing with other projects. When this band started, he was in a different place musically and it probably took him … He didn’t really even sign on right away to this because he had to have a thought or two about it, do I want to come back to this world and do this crazy aggressive stuff? I think there was some room probably in his creative wheelhouse to go this route with stuff and refocus that kind of energy in a band. Yeah, I don’t really like speaking for him, but that’s my guess because he probably still had some gas in the tank on that side.’

‘There’s a lot of moving parts. It’s definitely the sum of all of it where that type of energy translates. There’s no real one thing. It’s just what you’re tuning to do, the nature of this band and the way we sound. I think a lot of it just comes from the style that we play and the type of activeness we put into our writing where it warrants production that sort of writes itself in a way. It’s not really something that I had overly obsessed over, I got to make this sound this certain way or it needs to have this production trick or anything like that. It was more so just letting the songs speak for themselves. There really is nothing crazy going on, I guess is what I’m trying to say. It’s just like when you write music that feels a certain way and you just capture it right.’

The band are here for six shows in a week and while they have been constantly touring, there are plans for the future as Jordan explains.

‘We had a really good writing session last year and we had a lot of good leftover stuff from ‘Highly Irresponsible’. I’ve been in the zone just on a personal level this last month, it’s been really fun to sit down with a guitar and write pretty much every day. So, you got to do something with it, right?’

You certainly do Jordan, as I did ask about ETID being done to which a one-word answer, ‘Correct’, was sufficient and if we’ve seen anything from this interview, it’s that if Jordan is not working on music, sports is the focus.

‘Seeing Josh with tears in his eyes got me a little … It hurts. And Steve is still, he won’t talk to anyone. It’s brutal, especially to lose that way in overtime to questionable calls. I believe it was a catch. I don’t think it was an interception. Sabres are looking good. They’re going to the playoffs, so we’ll just focus on them for now!’’

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Better Lovers on tour with Split Chain and Blind Girls on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…