SIT DOWN IN FRONT // As Punk As Can Be

The punk spirit is alive and well in Sit Down in Front, and we couldn’t be more stoked about it. Since joining forces in 2017, the New Zealanders have set out to revitalise the scene, putting a youthful spin on an old favourite sound.

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And despite their age, they’ve managed to release two cracking LPs, tearing up both the stage and the halls of their high school. Now, they’ve unleashed their Fuelling My Rage EP, their first under the Best & Fairest banner. We caught up with frontman Corey Newman to chat about it.

Hysteria: Congratulations on the release of Fuelling My Rage! Considering you’ve been a band for a few years, how’d you find it differed from some of your earlier work?

Corey: It was very different from our Red Light Runner album but similar to the Confessions Of A Pie Thief album. We’d go into the studio with our producer Greg Haver and just churn it out. It was cool.

With everything going on in the world, we’re sure there were loads of places for you to draw your inspiration from! So what shaped Fuelling My Rage lyrically?

So with tracks like Don’t Drink Bleach, it was the usual. Giving Trump the middle finger when he does or says something provocative. It was the same formula on Don’t Push the Button. But Don’t Drink Bleach was just three minutes of me flipping him off for suggesting the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Bleach kills viruses, but it kills you as well if you ingest it. It’s for surfaces, not for internal use.

Hey, with him coming back and doing rallies again, there may be inspiration for another album or EP.

I’ve largely been keeping out of his way! (laughter)

What was it like working with Greg Haver?

It was an amazing experience. He brings so much and comes up with all these cool ideas in the studio on the fly. He knows how to take things and make them sound better. He layers things and gets people to try different ideas, and he adds percussion to things. He’s a really good percussionist, and he finds ways to add it in to support and beef up Rikki’s (Noble) drum tracks. I love when he puts gang vocals on things, it makes it sound so good and gives us this tag we can use to engage with the crowd. With Don’t Drink Bleach, there’s a gang vocal saying DRINK BLEACH, and then we scream DON’T DRINK BLEACH! It’s hilarious; we can get a crowd screaming at us to drink bleach.

There’s all that, but he’s just such an amazing soundboard and a nice, down to earth guy too. He’s not the big shot producer one might imagine. We might have been starstruck when we first met him, but now, we just see him as someone we work with and as a friend and equal. He is the coolest dude. I would happily make half a dozen more records with him.

We are not a band that takes ourselves too seriously. We want people to rock out and have a good time while listening to us.
[Corey Newman]

Tell us more about playing the tracks live.

We had the launch show on Friday! The crowd was on their feet all night, singing along to old and new songs. It was so much fun! Taking our first song, How Mean Would It Be, and getting the crowd to sing along on the chorus… I wrote that song five years ago before we broke out. So it was amazing to get the crowd, for the first time, singing that chorus back to us loud and proud. In front of a home crowd that watched us grow up made it extra special too. It was a real full-circle moment for me. Worth waiting five years for!

I feel like I haven’t spoken enough about our new tracks though. Taking Out The Trash was a reference to the whole Peter Dutton immigration thing about the 501s from last year when he was calling Kiwis trash and referring to removing people who in cases might’ve just stolen a bottle of bourbon or received a speeding ticket. He was sending them to these borderline concentration camps and then kicking them out, even though they were born in New Zealand but then moved to Australia as tiny babies with no real link to New Zealand. I was horrified. To me, that was the definition of injustice. I felt like I needed to rage and write another political activist anthem.

Get Off The Stage, or Stage, is just a hilarious, fun, punk-rock party tune. We had someone jump up on stage with us while doing a gig with a big New Zealand band that shall remain nameless. It was about 18 months ago; this random old dude had too much to drink. Apparently, there was a fight going on in the front row, which I hadn’t seen, but he snatched the mic and started mouthing off about it. He was freaking out about it, the bar owner told him to settle down, and he was escorted off stage and allegedly thrown out of the venue and banned for life. We turned that into a fun party tune with a whole bunch of soaring guitars and an amazing solo that I would regard as some of Jack Clarke’s (guitarist) best work. The whole GET OFF THE STAGE gang vocal shouted through the chorus was so fun too.

How do you balance the band and school?

We’ve all just finished our last year of high school, and we’re about to start university. We were in school whilst working on Fuelling My Rage, which was tricky. Balancing recording, video shoots and insane last year of school work – we were very busy, but it was heaps of fun.

What’s one thing you want people to take away from the EP?

There might be some serious political anthems on this record, but that’s not the tone we want people to take away. We are not a band that takes ourselves too seriously. We want people to rock out and have a good time while listening to us. We have called out social injustice on this EP. Pixie Caramel was inspired by my mate who had bullies steal the last Pixie Caramel out of the shop before he could buy it. But we’ve also covered political injustice on Don’t Drink Bleach and Taking Out The Trash. At the same time, we write in a very tongue-in-cheek way that’s lighthearted. We want people to actively call out injustice, but we also want them to have fun. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword this record.

One other thing. With the song Person Of Interest– our long term fans may be aware that Rikki is a classical pianist. He was doing that before he played the drums for us. We actually have piano at the end of that song as a little Easter egg for all the fans who know that. It was a sneaky way of saying thank you to our original fans who’ve stuck with us for this long, but it was also fun. We’ve been talking about incorporating it in our sound for years, and then with some guidance from Greg and my dad, the band manager, we managed to make it work. It’s something different too; even the diehards wouldn’t have seen it coming. It fits beautifully, but it almost shouldn’t, and that shows what an amazing musician Rikki is.

In that same way, the solo in Stage showcases Jack’s amazing skills. And Person Of Interest showcases Rikki’s drum skills too. There’s a wide range of patterns there. I’d like to take this opportunity to say I can’t believe how incredibly fortunate I am to be backed by such amazing musicians and good dudes. Shout out boys; you are awesome!

We’re sure they’d say the same!

I just show up and Barnsey scream! I don’t even do that; I’m not that good! I look bad next to Rikki and Jack. They’re next level talented. Jack is a young Angus Young, and I don’t even know how to describe Rikki. He’s just that good.