DEADLIGHTS // Mesmarised

Brisbane’s Deadlights are set to release their first full length Mesma this Friday, and have just dropped their latest video for single The Mad Scientist.

The vid sees the group hire a hypnotist to put them under; lo and behold, their experiment actually works. With a premise like that, we had to find out more about a band that’s willing to throw themselves into anything. So when they hit Melbourne a few weeks ago, Hysteria ask how the Southern crowd have responded since Deadlights signed to Greyscale and announced the record.

“The room was full, we played well and the feedback was awesome,” says vocalist Dylan Davidson. “It’s probably the best Melbourne show we’ve had. We’ve done a few shows but nothing to the calibre of last night. We’re really happy with our progress.” The EV Youth Centre is a significantly larger venue than they’re used to, so how did a bigger crowd respond to material they hadn’t heard yet? “We’re definitely used to small rooms and as the frontman I prefer the smaller ones to gee up the crowd. We’re playing all the songs from a record that isn’t even out yet, so people are coming for a taste rather than a sing-along.”

The band have been sitting on Mesma for longer than some upstart bands have even been around. But wait, wasn’t there an incredibly similar title released in the past two weeks? The band groans good-naturedly when we bring up Northlane’s recent decision to entitle their record Mesmer. “We definitely all went ‘fuuuuuck,’” laughs Reibalt. “It’s just a freak coincidence and we announced months ago obviously. Just as well we decided to change the spelling hey?” Speaking further on how long they’d worked on their own record, Reibalt says: “By the time we got the recordings, we’d been doing it for a year and a half. So we wanted to release it properly and have it heard by the most people. I think if we’d got them back when we wanted them, we would’ve tried to do it ourselves,” Callaghan continues about their decision to sign with local company Greyscale, “If you sign with a large label before your first record is out, you just become a cog in a sea of a thousand cogs. But being with a label where they actually come to your shows and they actually vibe your music, that’s why we signed.”

Mesma (emphasis on the A here), has no reservations about forcing the listener into putting the album on repeat to get the full picture. “We’re trying to develop concepts and themes in the record that makes it an album, not just a collection of songs,” says Reibalt. Drummer Josh Callaghan says of their inspiration to push themselves further: “All of us respect musicianship. We listen to a lot of Steely Dan and Cab Calloway and people like that.” Reibalt chimes in: “There’s still a lot of new stuff coming out that we love. Some of the older genres can be a bit more inspiring at times though. In terms of heavy alternative bands, it’s Tool and Rage Against The Machine. On the softer side it’s Radiohead and artists like that. We love all those bands and the reason they’re huge is because there’s no one else like them.”

He continues: “People are very very good at picking up on what’s genuine and what place it comes from. Who wants to listen to Diet Amity? There are a million and one Thy Art Zeros.” Davidson laughs, “I like that term!” “There’s already an Amity, there’s already a Stray From The Path,” says Callaghan. “There’s no need for a ‘Stray From The Path with singing’.”

We move onto discussing how local groups like Ocean Grove have made themselves a household name purely from their points of difference. “If you want to stand out, you have to be different,” says Davidson.” Otherwise you might just be popular for two years and then die out. If your first album you try to break the mould and the second album’s even weirder… that’s what we want” Callaghan grins: “Rick Rubin is the man. We want to end up in the same room as him somehow. There’s an interview with him talking about how he heard System of A Down before anybody. He pitched them to a radio station he had a lot of clout with and they said ‘there’s no way any of this crazy shit will be on my station’. Almost exactly a year later, they were the number one played band on that exact station. So it’s all about originality, and people pick up on that.”

Mesma is out this Friday through Greyscale Records.