Aussie deathcore metal band Thy Art Is Murder have been gaining some serious attention in recent times in particular in the US and Europe where they have played headlining shows and performed in front of massive festival crowds. Currently they are embarking on an Australian tour as part of a metal package comprised of some of Australia’s most well known metal bands along with a couple of amazing underground bands from the U.S. We caught up with vocalist Chris “CJ” McMahon to discuss the tour and the latest updates with the band.
Andrew: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, it’s much appreciated.
CJ: Yeah no worries.
Andrew: How are things with the band at the moment?
CJ: Good man! We got a severe case of jetlag but other than that we’re hanging out and enjoying some sunshine that we haven’t had in about 6 to 8 weeks.
Andrew: Where were you guys at?
CJ: We’ve been in Europe and UK for about 5 weeks and before that we were in America for 3 and a half months-4 months.
Andrew: How was it?
CJ: Sick man! We recorded a new album on the secret but yeah it was really good. America is going into Winter as we’re there, Europe is in winter as we’re there. I fucking hate the cold man, we’re 27 degrees in the sun in Adelaide today and I’m just sitting back smoking cigarettes, getting hot and fucking having a good day.
Andrew: Yeah the tour kicks off tonight in Adelaide, what are the expectations for the tour?
CJ: We don’t really have any expectations or anything really, at the end of the day all we just have to do is try to play the best we can and we pretty much know most of the people on tour already. We got Revocation and Fit For An Autopsy, good friends of ours from the States, Disentomb and we met a couple of Psycroptic dudes a couple of years ago. It should be cool, it’s gonna be good! We got an awesome metal package, I don’t think there’s too many really big metal packages coming from Australia so it’s cool to do a straight out metal package rather than a mixed bill.
Andrew: Yeah it’s a great list of bands like Psycroptic and Disentomb but Revocation is a bit of a different one. I’m a huge fan of them actually so how did you guys get them them onto the tour?
CJ: We toured the States last year at Summerblast with those guys and we got on with them very cool and they are an awesome band. They are a little different, the thrash style and ridiculous players man. Some of those players in that band are in the top 5 in the world like guitars, bass and stuff, they just shred man. Awesome dudes, party like crazy and we just wanted to bring a couple of bands to Australia that people may have heard of or may not have heard of and just have that difference in Australia instead of having a metalcore band or hardcore band, which I love personally, I’m more of a hardcore dude. But it’s cool to have different style bands come out and show some people some bands that people may not have heard of before and that they might actually enjoy.
Andrew: Yeah definitely. I mean a lot of Aussie fans would have heard of Psycroptic and Disentomb but I think Revocation is a little under the radar so I think this will be a bit of an eye opening experience for them.
CJ: Yeah it will be good man, I don’t think too many people know them but once they see them play, they will definitely see some fans.
Andrew: We are based in Perth so it’s good to see you guys doing 2 shows over here, one at an all ages show and the other at Capitol. It’s awesome that you are doing 2 shows!
CJ: Yeah we always try to do 2 shows in Perth just because business wise it’s going to cost us $3500 just to fly there and get home. We kinda need to do 2 shows but Perth is one of those weird spots, you can go over there and kill it and the shows are psycho which generally happens most of the time but sometimes you can go over and they can just bomb – wrong time of the year, too many shows go through or whatever. But I’m excited, I like Perth, it’s hot, there’s lots of sharks so it’ll be pretty good.
Andrew: Haha it’s definitely hot over here, we had 35 (degrees) yesterday so it’s sweltering!
CJ: I can’t wait to get there, Wednesday I think we fly in so I’ll be stoked!
Andrew: Do you find much difference between the crowds here in Australia and the ones overseas at all?
CJ: As sad as it sounds, the crowds overseas are better.
Andrew: Oh in what way?
CJ: They are just better, they are more into it. Don’t get me wrong, Australian crowds are sick and they are awesome and everyone is super supportive but for us at the moment we are blowing up ridiculously big in the States and Canada and Europe and UK. It’s like I can jump off a PA stack that’s 15 feet high that I just climbed and I can jump into a crowd of people and they will catch me. I try to do that shit in Australia and probably 60% of the time they just get out the way and won’t unerstand what the fuck’s going on. I got to be a little bit more careful in Australia now when I go off because…I don’t know what it is man. Americans and Europeans are fucking crazy, our shows over there are just getting bigger and bigger every tour we get there and we just generally go crazy when we play. I love playing in Australia, everything is so familiar here but in the States man and especially in the UK it’s a crazy fucking show.
Andrew: So the controversy that happened at Soundwave, you’ve never experienced that kind of thing overseas before?
CJ: Na man there’s some places like Leipzig in Germany in January this year when we went over for a headliner, we couldn’t play live “Whore To A Chainsaw” because of violence against women and all that sort of shit but usually we have no trouble. We’re banned from Disneyland in Orlando because of our name and our lyrical content so we can’t play there but other than that everyone is cool as fuck, just turn up and play and have a good time and depending on what the venues are like the Live Nation thing I can’t do the crazy jump and stage dives and throw shit off the stage into the crowd and I just have to remain calm which kinda sucks. But yeah everything is cool man.
Andrew: So you said that you just finished recording, when can we expect to see that come out?
CJ: March/April I think. Don’t say that’s exactly it but we’re looking for March/April I think. We recorded 2 and a half months ago, we did it in secret and did it really quick. We’re not one of those bands that need to advertise what we’re doing all the time like ‘Oh we’re going into the studio to do pre-production’, ‘Guitars in pre-production are done, now we’re going to do pre-production vocals’. Just tell people if you have a record or you don’t, that’s our philosophy. We have a record and it’s to be mixed and mastered and stuff, our engineers are working on it at the moment and it’s sick, we’re stoked. It’s definitely going to blow up bigger than what it already has done with “Hate” so we’re excited for people to listen to it.
Andrew: Is it a continuation of “Hate” or is there different stuff in there? What can we expect on this album?
CJ: Yeah it’s a little different, it’s like “Hate” volume 2 with a couple of little elements that we touched on in “Hate” but brought them out a little bit. I don’t want to give anything away but we’re stoked. The lyrical content is pretty confronting and it hits home and it’s relevant to today’s society, economics, health, political, religious views so it’s stuff we’re really happy with. We got really deep with some of the lyrical content with our producer and I got the utmost confidence that it’s going to be better than “Hate” and “Hate” has been the best thing that has happened to me in my life other than meeting my fiance.
Andrew: Do you find there is still a lot of stuff to still sing about, controversial stuff?
CJ: Yeah the single that’s a track on the album is extremely controversial. There’s going to be people that don’t really get how we’re talking about the subject matter and it’s not a derogatory thing or anything, some people listen to it and go ‘oh my god they pushed it too far’ but we really haven’t. It’s a very smart, thought out song but there will definitely be a few people that will hate us and might even be a few people try to kill us but at the end of the day we’ll be fine.
Andrew: Can we expect any of these new songs to appear on the sets at these upcoming shows?
CJ: Na hell no man it’s going to be a secret, there’s only 4 people in the world that have it on lockdown and we’ve shown a couple of people that are close to us. We’re going to keep it on lockdown so it can’t get spread out and it can’t get leaked or anything. We’re that confident in it that we have a very selective amount of people who have listened to it. It’ll be out when we want it to be out and noone else will hear it until then.
Andrew: OK cool. So we got a couple of questions that we try to ask everyone and would love to hear what kind of answers you come up with. First question, if you could be a fly on the wall for the recording of any classic album in history what would it be?
CJ: White Pony – Deftones
Andrew: Why that album?
CJ: It was one of those album…I always wanted to be a musician which most dudes do if they’re into music and “White Pony” was an album that just gave us what I wanted to do. I want to make albums like this, I want people to feel this powerful in my music. And they are so influential not just to me but to people that I am influenced by or people that I’ve influenced as well. So definitely “White Pony”, such an epic band, there’s no reason for somebody to not like the Deftones.
Andrew: Yeah you’re right in saying they are influential, after they came out every band wanted to be the Deftones.
CJ: Exactly.
Andrew: And for you, what is the meaning of life?
CJ: To thrive. That is the meaning of life, it’s not just my meaning. I believe that is the meaning of life for every existence whether it’s a plant or an animal or an insect or a human. Our main objective is to thrive, we need to make things, we need to create things such as buildings and agriculture and humans such as babies and reproduce and thrive and do well. That’s my meaning of life because I believe that is the meaning of life for everybody.
Andrew: Awesome, that sounds really good! Thanks again for taking the time to chat with us and we are looking forward to seeing you guys in Perth so thanks again!
CJ: No worries thanks for the interview!
The tour dates are as follows:
Dec 12 – Fowler’s Live, Adelaide. Lic/AA.
Dec 13 – The Hifi, Melbourne. 18+.
Dec 14 – Ringwood OLP, Melbourne. AA.
Dec 17 – YMCA HQ, Perth. AA.
Dec 18 – Capitol, Perth. 18+.
Dec 19 – Manning Bar, Sydney. 18+.
Dec 20 – Crowbar, Brisbane. 18+
Dec 21 – Crowbar, Brisbane. AA.
