REPRIEVER // This 'Grim' Reality

Sydney prog-metalcore outfit Repriever have just dropped their latest single, Grim – and it’s pretty grimy.

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Diving headfirst into extremely personal lyrical themes dealing with familial domestic violence, the track conveys an important message, delivered by a powerful and ferocious sound.

Since the single’s release, Repriever have gained a lot of traction. “It’s gone pretty well,” says vocalist Josh Stewart. “I was very nervous about the release for it–we’d been sitting on it for a while after we initial wrote and recorded it–I was sort of going through something so I didn’t feel I performed as well as I could have.

“The whole time we were sitting on it, that’s all I could think about, how I could have been better and how it wasn’t going to go well. But it’s gone much better than I could have expected!”

These feelings of apprehension, Stewart says, are part and parcel of what it means to be a creative type, that there will be moments of self-doubt when it comes to bearing their art for all to hear. “It seems to be pretty common,” he says. “I tend to get in this position where I’m good at being bad at things but then I’m good at over criticising myself. Then I’ll question, ‘Am I being bad at it, or myself?’”

Following the release of the band’s EP Idle Minds two years ago–just before Stewart joined the band–Grim is a standalone song, born of necessity. Repriever needed to establish their identity with this new line-up, particularly as Stewart says, people haven’t been able to tell the band has a new vocalist. “I’d get people be like, ‘I listened to the EP, your vocals sound sick,’ and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, that’s not me, sorry.’ Because they [Repriever] never played live shows with the old vocalist, quite a few people don’t know it is a different vocalist.

There’s a lot that I’m working on where I’m actually focused on more social issues and things that matter a little more to me than these problems I’ve faced in the past–but I also feel it would be wrong of me to disregard those things completely and not address them.
[ Josh Stewart ]

“We also weren’t really sure what we were going to be doing EP-wise–a three-track, five-track, seven-track – now we have decided.

“We’ve written a lot of new material through lockdown and figured let Grim come out and let it be its own thing.”

Testing the waters with this new identity Repriever have already got new material under their belts. “The actual lyric-writing style, I write a little differently. It wasn’t really reflected on this [Grim] and I intend to write some bouncier stuff. There’s not really any pressure.”

Coming from a family who dealt with a lot of domestic and emotional abuse, Stewart poured his own experiences into this new-found style of lyricism. “Negligent parenting, stuff like that. I took a long time to break away and heal myself mentally,” Stewart says, frankly. “It was like a solid ten or 15 years of making mistakes.”

“I had no direction, no one pointed me in that direction. [Because] what I learnt from my parents–well, not on my mother’s behalf, she’s an absolute angel–was, you know, anger and drug use and violence.”

Stewart’s account is as unbridled as Grim itself. Heavy, personal. And it never received a negative reaction or was removed of support when Stewart took this story to the rest of Repriever and suggested it be the focus of their new song. “I had mentioned previously that I wanted to get a lot of this heavy stuff out in the first few songs then focus on something a little more positive.”

“Over the ten or so years I’ve been in bands, I’ve always sung about how I’ve got poor mental health or have this problem, or all this emotional baggage and I’m just done with it. But there’s still so much I feel like I need to say because it shaped me so much as a person.”

“There’s a lot that I’m working on where I’m actually focused on more social issues and things that matter a little more to me than these problems I’ve faced in the past–but I also feel it would be wrong of me to disregard those things completely and not address them.”

That gives Stewart not just his own healing experience, but an opportunity for listeners to realise that they are not alone. “That’s exactly what it is,” says Stewart. “By being a vocalist and have lyrics that get put out in the world and get read by people or get listened to, you have a platform that you are wasting if you don’t use it to help other people.”