DANGER DEN // Top Tunes From The Top End

Over the last few years, Danger Den has spread their love for pop-punk all over Darwin, and now, they’re set to infect the hearts of music fans all over Australia with their debut LP, Pull Yourself Together. 

MORE: CLOWNS: Unleash New Single ‘Sarah’ // TIMES OF GRACE: Jesse Leach On How The New Record Captured Him Reconstructing From The Ground Up REVIEWS: THE BRONX: VI // LIL LOTUS: ERRØR BØY // JINJER: Wallflowers // TURNSTILE: Glow On // DANGER DEN: Pull Yourself Together

It’s been a long time coming for the band formed in 2018, and the product of multiple rewrites and lineup changes. Before its official release, we caught up with frontman Jeremy Uyloan and got chatting about their history, the record and the bands that have shaped their sound.

Hysteria: Let’s get the band introduced.

Jeremy: My name’s Jeremy. I’m the lead singer and lead guitarist. We have Callan Power on bass. He’s been in the band the longest, other than myself. On the drums, we have Morgan Lockhart. He’s in high school at the moment and is 17. Our rhythm guitarist, Brendan Weinheimer, was the last member to join the band.

The band started with a buddy and me when we were back in high school. He’s no longer in the band, but we started back in 2018 doing open mic nights and jam nights in local pubs. Fast forward to 2021, and we’re releasing this debut album.

To us, the album feels really inspired by the nostalgic American 2000’s skate punk sound. So if you had to pinpoint a few bands that have shaped your sound, who would they be?

Green Day is probably my favourite band of all time. I also really enjoy All Time Low, Blink-182, The Offspring and all the bands of that era. Just really old-school pop-punk. It’s great it’s making its comeback. I’d like to see more bands come out now with this sound. 

We’ve heard a lot of the songs were inspired by girls and relationships.

Like 90% of them (laughs).

Can you give us a bit of insight into what inspired the remaining 10%?

Graduation is a song we released a few weeks back. It’s basically about graduating high school and not knowing what you want to do afterwards. I wrote it when I was 18. The record has a mix of songs from high school days to now.

Green Day is probably my favourite band of all time. I also really enjoy All Time Low, Blink-182, The Offspring and all the bands of that era.
[ Jeremy Uyloan ]

So how long have you been sitting on some of these tracks?

I’ve been writing songs since I was 12 or 13. But in terms of this record, the oldest song would be our second single, Too Much to Ask.  Back in high school, I was in and out of bands. I’d write songs and jam, but I was never good at recording. Funnily enough, I only got good at recording when we went into lockdown last year. I sat at home with a laptop and looked up all these YouTube videos and got good from there. 

It was a lot of trial and error though. We started writing the album in 2018, but with things changing, we had to rewrite it. We had to change recording engineers too. When we started, we just went with our friends. When I started getting good at it, I did most of it myself. The drums were the only thing we did in a real studio, Masters Studio. Then we sent them off to a guy called Cory Bergeron, who did all the mixing and mastering. It was a pretty DIY effort though. We recorded all the guitars, bass and vocals at my house.

What are some of your favourite things about the Darwin scene?

We get to do gigs, and the majority of Australia is in lockdown. We’re really thankful for that. Recently we did Territory Day celebrations, and we opened for Eskimo Joe and Timmy Trumpet, which was probably our biggest gig yet.

As for the local scene, there are just different kinds of bands here. There are heaps of metal ones, like Tapestry, who are now based in Melbourne. We also have Draft Day, who has toured in Sydney and Melbourne. There’s also another band called Summit. We’re pretty much the only pop-punk band here that I know of right now.

Anything before we let you go?

Our album launch show will be on October 2nd at Happy Yess. Follow our social media for more updates.

Purchase and stream here.