After Years Of Anticipation Car Bomb Are Finally On Tour In Australia…

After years of anticipation, Car Bomb are finally on their way to Australia, gearing up for a run of arena shows alongside Karnivool and ready to introduce their chaotic, precision‑engineered heaviness to fans who’ve only ever experienced it from afar. Speaking ahead of the tour, guitarist Greg Kubacki opened up about the band’s long journey to get here, the creative headspace behind their evolving sound, and the strange, obsessive process of shaping new music and a studio philosophy that’s slowly teaching him how to let go.

Touring with Karnivool, this is their biggest Australian tour yet, and you’re first up. You must be looking forward to getting on stage and introducing yourself to Australian fans?
Absolutely. We were supposed to go last year with Animals as Leaders, and unfortunately they weren’t able to make the tour, so we were really bummed we couldn’t make it. But now it feels like we got a little bit of a reward for waiting. We’re insanely stoked to finally get there.

For Australian fans who might be new to the band, how would you describe what they’re likely to experience when they see you live for the first time?
Compared to TesseracT and Karnivool, we’re definitely heavier for sure. Maybe a little more math, maybe a little more into polyrhythms and odd time signatures and metric modulation. But it’ll serve as a nice warm‑up for those guys, they do a lot of that kind of stuff too, so it’ll be awesome.

If there’s one album you’d encourage fans to listen to before the show, which one would you pick?
It depends. If you’re into the really crazy metal stuff, I’d start with the earlier stuff like Centralia or the Waveform (w^w^^w^w) record. If you want something a little more groove‑orientated with some shoegaze elements, I’d suggest Mordial or Meta. Meta is the big one that kind of broke us, that’s the one most people like the most. And then our latest EP Tiles Whisper Dreams is sort of a throwback to our older sound but way more polished.

With such an impressive back catalogue, how do you condense that down into forty to forty-five minutes?
It’s tough. It was full of compromises, like, “We definitely have to play this, we definitely have to play that.” And also whatever we play the best, because we know we’re going to be a little jet‑lagged. We’re playing in arenas, and we haven’t really played arenas yet, and our music’s pretty fast. So we had to pick something a little more mid‑tempo for certain parts of the set to translate better in such a big room.

Is there anything you’ve been told about Australian audiences and what to expect?
I’ve played Australia before with Ben Frost, who’s a composer — he did the soundtrack for Dark and shows like Raised by Wolves. We had a little project together and I played Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. That music’s way weirder than Car Bomb, it’s sound design mixed with heavy guitars, improvised, and people were really receptive to it. So I’m sure the audience will be receptive to what we’re doing.

Do you get to put the tourist hat on while you’re here?
Totally. Elliot’s staying for a week after. Johnny and I are staying for a day or two afterwards, hanging out. I’ve never been to Perth, so I’m stoked to check that out. I’ll be there for about four or five days.

How much has the Car Bomb sound evolved over the years? With four albums, do you feel pressure to deliver another one?
We’re currently working on one. It’s slow going, but it’s coming along. We sort of went one direction with Mordial, we started more experimental, influenced by bands like Mr. Bungle, Primas, the whole John Zorn type of thing mixed with New York experimental jazz. Then we gravitated toward a more machine‑oriented sound like Meshuggah, because we all love that band. I think Meta is where we figured out our sound. With Mordial, I personally leaned more into the Deftones, My Bloody Valentine, Hum, more on the shoegaze tip, and tried to incorporate that. I love how that record sounds. Moving forward, we’ll probably find an area in the middle between Meta and the earlier stuff.

Have you been stoked with the reaction to Tiles Whisper Dreams?
Absolutely. Those songs were kind of designed to play live, especially Paroxysm. When we play them, you can feel the audience feel that recharge energy we had when we were releasing our earlier stuff.

Is that likely to be a glimpse of what the next album might sound like?
We made all the songs together, the idea was to make a whole record. But between there being eleven songs and it taking so long, we thought, “Why don’t we just put out these groups of songs?” because they sound kind of similar. The other stuff sounds more on the Mordial side, we have a big tempo song, and a type of song we’ve never really done before that we’re going to throw in there. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but it’s a little different from what we normally do. It has all the Car Bomb elements, but it’s definitely different.

How do you find the whole studio experience? Is it hard to let go of songs because you want to keep searching for a particular sound or tinkering with things?
Totally. I’m trying to be a little more forgiving with that stuff now, and that’s why I started this new thing called Sun Guts, just me writing music on my computer and guitar and releasing it. I’m trying to do it really fast and be less precious about it, and take those lessons into Car Bomb a little bit. With Car Bomb we definitely try to make everything as best as possible, but we paint ourselves into a corner with a couple of things, trying to figure certain parts out. I worked with this engineer with Ben and he said something that resonated: a song is finished when nothing no longer bothers you. So we try to do that now, maybe it’s not one hundred percent there, but I like it, so let’s move on. We’re learning that lesson with the new record, and it’s moving along way better. Hopefully we’ll release the first thing by the end of this year.

Is it hard to let go of those songs, given how invested you are? Even when you listen back, do you struggle to hear it like a fan would because you’re critiquing your own work?
Of course. You get nose‑blind to it. It’s like if you have a smell in your house, you go away on vacation, come back, and suddenly you notice it. It’s the same thing. You lose a sense of it. Right now I haven’t heard the songs in months; I forget what they sound like. I’m trying to get as much distance as possible so I can get a fresh impression and say, “Okay, it needs this, it needs that, all this stuff can stay,” and then wrap it up and mix it.

Does it get to a point where you just have to say, “That’s it, we’re moving on, let’s get the artwork done and get this thing out”?
Well, the artwork and all the other stuff takes equally as long anyway. Not equally, but it’s definitely a process, especially music videos and visuals, because that’s a key component of what we do.

Do you find that influences come out strongly in the music you’re writing? Or do you eventually separate yourself from what influenced you earlier on?
No, I can hear every single influence in whatever riff or part. I listened to w^w^^w^w the other day and was like, “Oh, that’s from Oceansize. Oh, that’s from Meshuggah. Oh, that’s from that Deftones song.” Every single part, I’m like, “Yeah, that was that song but with a twist.” We’re not shy about it. We’re not shy that we’re Meshuggah fans, Deftones fans, Aphex Twin, Gojira. We love paying homage to those guys. Even Metallica, we have a song called Black and Battery, which, I mean, come on.

Is there a timeline for the album? Is that likely next year?
I’m hoping. We have this tour, then another tour in November. We’re going to try to wrap up all the audio stuff before that second tour. Artwork will take a while, but we have an idea of what it is already. I’m hoping the first single will be out by the end of the year, and then probably early next year will be the record.

I read you got Best Guitar Riff of 2025 in Guitar World, that’s a nice accolade.
Yeah, that’s crazy. Insane. Hearing people like Vernon Reid give us a shout‑out, or Ian, or Joe Satriani, it boggles my mind. And there’s another thing happening that I can’t mention yet that I just found out about yesterday. I can’t believe someone reached out and asked us to do this thing. It’s really cool.

I have been told your meme game is pretty strong, what’s your best meme?
I’m still new to it, so I don’t know. I posted a Britney Spears one today and I like that one a lot. It’s the same thing, you’re searching the internet, you find something you like, and you go, “Oh, I can do that. I can rip that off and put it on something else.” The one that did the best was some random dude, I think it was AI, dancing at a kid’s party. He looks like he’s coked up or on amphetamines or meth or whatever, and he just dives head‑first into a table and breaks it with a little kid next to him. For some strange reason that took off like a rocket. So I guess that’s the best one.

Is there an Australian experience you’re looking forward to having while you are here?
Perth. I’m a huge Tame Impala fan, I love everything Kevin Parker does. Just being in the same city he was in is a huge thing I’m looking forward to. When I was in Sydney, I went to the Opera House, that was a big surprise because I’m a huge architecture nerd. Seeing those arcs and shapes… I know it’s like someone coming to New York to look at the Statue of Liberty, but for me it was a huge moment. I’m just really looking forward to doing more of what I do as a metal player in Australia and seeing how that goes.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Car Bomb on tour with Karnivool and TesseracT on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…