Munt On ‘The World Is Not Yours’
‘There’s conviction there and I want that to come across, everyone clearly wants that to come across in their performance in this kind of chaotic in- your-face experience. It’s a bit of a whirlwind. You don’t really get much time to breathe when you watch us play live.’
Tim Richmond, frontman of Melbourne blackened grinding death band Munt explains on the eve of their nine date Australian tour to support their extremely long-awaited debut album The World Is Not Yours released late last year.
‘I like to say we are a very well-rehearsed band and working really hard to nail everything, allows us to be chaotic rather than being like, “Fuck it, we’ll be chaotic and that will make up for sloppy playing.” We’ve got a really strong foundation and really able to nail our songs. From the time that I joined the band, it was just about trying to be chaotic on stage and vaguely threatening.’
Anyone who has heard the bands debut album – a rollicking runaway train through styles of extreme metal, emotions, vocals ranges and sonic pummelling – will tell you how hard the band goes. Yet, from being formed as one man project band in 2016 by guitarist Spud to collecting band members on their way, to drop a debut ten years in the making is almost of Guns N Roses proportions.
‘Technically the first year and a half or two was kind of a studio project, but really the band from the moment it was conceived till now, is about basically ten years. The most boring reason is money. It costs a lot of money to make an album. The more interesting reason is that we just wanted to be at a level with our craft where we were like, yes! Every single song that’s going into this is awesome! They’re not only awesome, they all flow together, they work together. Our previous EP, ‘Pain Ouroboros’, we were talking about making that an album, we were like, well, we’ve written these four songs and oh fuck, we could just pull out five, six, seven songs and use them!’
‘But that wasn’t particularly inspiring. We didn’t want to force it. I’ve heard stories from other people in bands where they’re like, “Fuck, kind of wish with our first album, it’s a memory, it’s a good memory, but we did just rush and throw whatever we had at it. ” So, for this one, we’ve been doing release after release and it just finally hit. The time was right. The inspiration was there and we went for it.’
The band over the years has played, including supporting Behemoth no less, countless shows with the last show late last year with Cryptosy, so they are no strangers to the stage, yet it’s interesting to find out what they believe you, the punter, can expect from them on this upcoming tour when they describe themselves.
‘We’ve kind of ended up referring to ourselves as Black Grinding Death. We’re not really a marketing-driven band. We’ve got a logo shirt we’ve just put out where we’ve got that below it. It’s a catchall way to describe us. I mean, there’s so much going on there. When the band started, when Spud started it, it was pretty much just power violence grindcore with black metal. Pretty straight up. As time’s gone on, adding new members, all of those influences that you hear have always been in the members that have been in the band. It’s been a progress of going, “Actually, we can veer outside the box just a little bit more. We can add a little bit more in.”
‘Even breakdowns and stuff, look, on the first EP ‘Towards Extinction’, there was maybe one bit in the first song that was kind of a breakdown. I think of it as sounding a bit more like a primitive man – style sludge, just crushing thing. But over time, it’s almost like we’ve been like, “Fuck it. ” I don’t personally think that there’s death core in our sound, although when you mix death metal and hardcore, probably it’s hard for it not to sound like that!’
Interview By Iain McCallum
The World Is Not Yours out now, order HERE/ Stream HERE…
On tour, tickets HERE…
