Korn‘s Jonathan Davis was so excited by ORGY that he created his own record label …
Perth-based progressive rockers Karnivool are about to hit the road and bring their renowned live show to stages across Australia. We join guitarist Mark ‘Hoss’ Hosking to find out what’s been going down in the Temple of Vool.
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“Yeah, we’ve basically been locked away in the studio,” Hosking laughs, “heads down and haven’t looked up too much, just sort of looked up to name a tour, looked up to check the tour dates made sense, and that was about it for us, sort of jumping around studios here in Perth for the last couple of months, just trying to track as much as we can, we’ve got a whole bunch of great ideas that sort of popped out of our heads, and want to get them down as quickly as possible for the coming album. So that’s kind of been the focus, … and we’re about to go into serious rehearsals for the tour … which is going to be a good one from the looks of it!”
The Praxis Tour kicks off this week, and it has been a while coming for Karnivool’s Australian fans. Although Karnivool came out of their album-writing burrow for a few shows earlier this year, we haven’t seen them on the touring beat for a while. “Yeah we tend to do that!”, Hosking explains, “We have periods of, ah, dissection, we’d call it, each doing our own thing, and that’s not necessarily not doing Karnivool–sometimes doing your own thing is Karnivool–you go away, you get inspiration, create ideas, you write your own music and that spawns sections or folders that are Karnivool and we bring it back and we sort of … interrogate it, beat it up, put the spotlight in its eyes and see what we can turn it into. So yeah, when we disappear and no one hears from us, that’s generally what we’re doing. Its been a pretty intensive process for us, we don’t write albums quickly, we’re semi unapologetic about that, but it sort of needs to take as long as it takes sometimes for us, which is infuriating when all we want to do is tour and play [laughs] and you know, attack the world [laughs], but some of this music is a bit intense and a bit stringy so it takes a bit of time to pull it together sometimes.”
We have periods of, ah, dissection, we’d call it, each doing our own thing, and that’s not necessarily not doing Karnivool–sometimes doing your own thing is Karnivool–you go away, you get inspiration, create ideas, you write your own music and that spawns sections or folders that are Karnivool
[ Mark ‘Hoss’ Hosking ]
That iconic Karnivool sound is quite multifaceted, drawing from a range of influences. On how this eclectic bunch piece it all together, Hosking says “We all have such different tastes in music that when it comes to writing songs, pulling these influences and pieces together is half the challenge sometimes because they are so different and you don’t want a song to sound misguided or strangely cross sectioned like some kind of half elephant, half monkey, half winged, I don’t know, hawk or something, so often the challenge is to take those influences and twisting them and turning them til its kneaded out into some kind of dough that’s ready to be cooked, and I think we all feel like we’re about ready to be cooked [laughs] so pop us in the oven, we might go out and do some touring for a while.”
So, there is a new Karnivool album in the works, and Hosking is certain that Karnivool has many tricks in the bag for us. “The one thing with this band”, he states “is that it has promised itself to never to do the same thing twice, just repeat something for the sake of success, or keeping something working, we always challenge ourselves musically, I guess mentally from that perspective, but I think for us there was a lot about Asymmetry that did work, and some that didn’t, and that’s okay for us, that’s the album we needed to release. I think there’s been some lessons learned, some areas concentrated on from that process and the reason perhaps partly, why this album has taken so long is I think the lessons we learned we tried to overcompensate for, and that’s sort of created some discontinuity and disharmony which is not what we’re looking for, but part of the process was realising that wasn’t the answer, unravelling and then pushing back again. So, this album is a recreation of those feelings and those emotions so that’s kind of exciting for us in a way … it’s a strange process.”
On whether we can expect to hear any of this exciting new material on The Praxis Tour, Hosking is undeniably psyched to hear what Karnivool’s fans think of it.
“We are always a band that loves to trial stuff on the road. Some of the stuff we have already played live has completely changed from how we performed it last time so, yeah, I am very very excited for presenting some new material and getting some crowd feedback and crowd reactions.”
It sure seems like we are in for an exciting show. Hosking enticingly promises a night to remember. “We’re going to try different things as we tend to do” he laughs, “Obviously the songs that people want to hear will be in there, with a few changes, and then we’ll be road-testing some new material via a high energy, high emotion Karnivool show.”
Karnivool The Praxis Tour 2019 dates:
PERTH // Thursday 16 May // The Prince of Wales Hotel
DARWIN // Saturday 18 May // BASSINTHEGRASS Festival
SUNSHINE COAST // Saturday 25 May // Big Pineapple Festival
BRISBANE // Sunday 26 May // The Triffid (SOLD OUT)
BRISBANE // Monday 27 May // The Triffid
BYRON BAY // Wednesday 29 May // The Northern
NEWCASTLE // Thursday 30 // The Cambridge Hotel
SYDNEY // Friday 31 May // Roundhouse
CANBERRA // Saturday 1 June // Kambri at ANU
WOLLONGONG // Sunday 2 June // UOW UniBar
MELBOURNE // Wednesday 5 June // The Croxton Bandroom (SOLD OUT)
MELBOURNE // Thursday 6 June // The Croxton Bandroom (SOLD OUT)
MELBOURNE // Friday 7 June // Flanagan’s Pier Hotel (SOLD OUT)
FREMANTLE // Saturday 8 June // Rock Rover (SOLD OUT)
FREMANTLE // Sunday 9 June // Rock Rover
