EXHIBITORS // To The Faithless Departed

Oct 02, 2018 / WORDS Aimee Ravik / Fuelled by Hainan Chicken Rice

Discussing their previous tours to the land of Oz the band reckons, “Australia is like our second home, a couple of us travel every year to Australia for shows and holidays. We did an east coast run back in 2016 December with Snakepit and played about six shows. Definitely the best time of our lives.”

MORE: HALLOWEEN HYSTERIA: Your Guide To The Best Gig This October // DOWNLOAD AUSTRALIA 2019: Drop First Epic Line-Up With Two Major Farewells

Halloween Hysteria marks the first time the band has played in Australia since 2016, so it potentially means it will also be the last time the band will be back here for a while.

With melodic hardcore influences, listening to the band’s latest single Absence there’s a clear maturity, and progression that can be heard. Discussing the writing and process behind it the band indicated they’d approached the song writing experience claiming “The whole process of the song was more mature and structured, and we actually drew influences from our second EP. We wanted to keep that Exhibitors sound while venturing into new aspects of songwriting.” There were a lot of personal situations that the band faced between their second EP Forever Loved, Never Forgotten and their more recently written tracks including the loss of a family member for lead singer Adryan.

EXHIBITORS play Halloween Hysteria 2018 on October 27 at Jubilee Hotel, Brisbane.

Anyone who has suffered a loss of a close loved one will understand that it fundamentally changes something within you, and the band agreed that it’s certainly affected their writing to an extent, divulging “It affects our writing style but our writing process has always been similar. I think the major changes lie in the lyrics. More often than not, Adryan would write about personal experiences, or write a story in a third person’s POV, but as of late, Adryan channels his emotions of losing his brother into writing. Applying a lot more emotions translated into words and his vocal stylings give the song a lot more dynamics simply because it’s more personal and sincere.”

In every word that Adryan screams in Absence, you can just feel the depth and emotion he’s trying to portray.
[CHRIS]

While it’s an intimate topic to draw inspiration and passion for lyrics, it’s also something that resonates with fans, it’s a thing of comfort being able to share the feeling of loss, touching on this Bassist Chris says, “I think music keeps the whole world sane. Our music is solely written off our personal experiences and we want to let people know that they’re not alone in this after all, that there are lots of people who are going through the same things and that it is okay to be grieving. Our music is a place for us to express our best selves, and we do hope we have helped our listeners find solace in our songs, be it the melodies or the lyrics.” With this outlook behind them, the band has gone on to release music that is infused with emotion, and things will be no different going forward.

On writing their music, the band says that they “always have a rough direction of how we want our songs to turn out like, but we never confine ourselves to the specific direction. This has always been a practice for us as we do not want to limit our creativity. You can also feel it when you know you’ve written a good track, it will come to us naturally. In every word that Adryan screams in Absence, you can just feel the depth and emotion he’s trying to portray.”

They’re pushing the confines that Singapore has and are making their way across the waters to Australia’s shores at the end of October for Halloween Hysteria. Between now and then though the band has big things in the works mentioning they’ll, “Be working on the Split EP. All of us are currently working full time jobs so that takes up 80% of our lives now. Growing up sucks and we wish we had all the time in the world to continue making music and tour the world. We are super excited for Halloween Hysteria though as it’s gonna be the first festival we’ll be playing outside of Singapore.”