Melbourne dirge-rock champions BATPISS are shoving the social and political dimensions back into Australian rock music with confronting new song ‘Weatherboard Man’. They’ll be taking it to the road through March and April.
Drawn from the band’s forthcoming third LP, ‘Weatherboard Man’ is one intense and powerful song. This single sees the trio channelling a new and arresting writing style, one that owes a significant debt to the intensity of fellow bastions of Australian grot-rock. Indeed, the song was produced and mixed by Gareth Liddiard of The Drones. Within you will find grit, regret and ire, a vital and unhinged guitar-driven narrative. Huge, and imposing…
Says guitarist Paul Pirie of this hard-hitting slow burner. “I hope the song comes across pretty direct. Its a universal western theme; inheriting a shit legacy of genocide and disenfranchisement, and realising that once you’ve rattled off all your own personal problems and hardships, you probably still don’t have any right to be standing where you’re standing.”
Pirie goes on, explaining the video, “my Grandad had his old super 8 film rolls converted to digital, and amongst the family stuff is about 20 minutes of film he shot on Christmas Day 1974 in Darwin, the morning after Cyclone Tracy. What you see in the clip is what he saw driving around that morning, his Marlboro reds reflected on the windscreen and the carnage. We thought it nicely summed our fragile human existence. This footage of Cyclone Tracy has never been seen before.”
Batpiss as a live experience is as grimy and visceral as you’d expect. They will propel you headfirst into a world of dim dive bars and the kind of gritty, disgruntled rock that could only spring out of Melbourne town in the here and now. Best catch them doin’ their noisey thing across Victoria through March and April, before unleashing this new LP via Poison City come winter time.
“…a glue huffing nightmare writ large.” – Rolling Stone
VIC launch shows
Friday March 17
Sooki Lounge, Belgrave
Tix here
Friday March 31
The Gaso, Melbourne
w/ Harmony, Cable Ties & TV Haze
Tix here
Friday April 7
Music Man, Bendigo
Tix here
Saturday April 8
Karova Lounge, Ballarat
Tix on the door
Saturday April 15
The Loft, Warnambool
Tix on the door
Sunday April 16
Barwon Club, Geelong (Hola Fest)
Info and tix at barwonclub.com.au
