MONSTER TRUCK // Breakfast in Australia

Jeremy Widerman from Monster Truck is hungover today.

His choice of how to spend his time off on tour – and his love for Australia – becomes a whole lot more apparent when his penchant for excess comes up in conversation. “Today we’ve been doing what we always do: find a good coffee joint and a good breakfast place. Which was actually one of our favourite things to do in Australia because the breakfast there is fucking out of control! Your eggs? Fucking amazing!”

 As honest as the guitarist is about how much he loves breakfast, he’s equally as candid about how Monster Truck aren’t trying to pretend they’re perfect everytime they go on stage. Premiering material from their new album Sittin’ Heavy the night before, he makes it clear that there’s a big jump from the practice space to performing.  “It’s been years since we debuted new material, so there’s still a little bit of dust to shake off. We ended up doing well in the first show, but there’s going to be some growing pains. At the same time I think the crowd were digging it and the reception to the record’s been great.”

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“You can’t just play 90 minutes of rock songs or you just end up beating people over the head too much.”

[JEREMY]

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Since they’ve extended their set times from an hour to an hour and a half, the extra amount of material has been long overdue according to their fans. “The crowd were calling for an hour and a half last record cycle and we were like ‘uhh no?’” he laughs.. We’re not going to do 90 minutes because we weren’t there yet. We didn’t have all the necessary elements, the ebb and flow. You can’t just play 90 minutes of rock songs or you just end up beating people over the head too much.”

Calling their latest “a full album with slow jams and more rock songs”, the album has given the band an opportunity to play around with fans expectations. In saying that however, Jeremy affirms that it’s the band who ultimately have to play the songs each night, and if they’re not happy with the end result, it’s likely the fans won’t be either. “There’s not a song on the record that I’m not excited about playing. Hopefully that translates to the fans, it usually does. The fans reciprocate the enthusiasm back to us. That’s what served us so well in the beginning. What I wanted to do stylistically is what the fans want. That’s why I feel like we don’t have to try and compromise on what’s going to do well or with our fanbase. It’s not combative to what we want to do as musicians, and it’s really truly about doing what we want to do.”

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LISTEN: To single The Enforcer from latest album Sittin’ Heavy

Sittin’ Heavy is out now.