As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special. …
If you stumbled across Sugar Spine’s, debut EP Mirror Talk, you’d most likely think that you’d just discovered Sydney’s newest up and coming death metal outfit.
MORE: NORTHLANE: From the lyrics to the avant-garde inclusion of trance and DNB elements, Obsidian truly showcases a new era for Northlane. REVIEWS: KORN: Requiem // GHOST: Impera // PUP: The Unraveling Of PUPTheBand // CANCER BATS: Psychic Jailbreak // OCEAN GROVE: Up In The Air Forever // SUGAR SPINE: Mirror Talk
What you probably wouldn’t expect, is for the technical and rapid-fire output of the group to actually just be born out of the mind of one man who was bored during lockdown.
“In August last year I arrived back from the Netherlands into Australia, and of course, got put into a mandatory quarantine,” states the brains behind the operation, Josh Muncke.
“I guess when you’re sitting in a room for 14 days, a lot of people definitely don’t enjoy that experience. They find it very reminiscent of Groundhog Day. And it’s kind of like what I do today. So you check Facebook and see that people are posting ‘today I made 56 gingerbread men out of paper’, and that’s cool that they are spending their time doing something productive.”
“I was lucky enough to have a friend drop off my guitar and interface so I could record some stuff, it was just the perfect timing.”
“At the start I was just kind of just riffing for fun. But when you have to isolate, you do have a lot of time to get further invested in stuff in the social media and just kind of get completely lost and overwhelmed. I guess at that time, all I saw was horrible stuff. And I guess I was angry about it. So I just started writing an angry song about it. And then that’s essentially how Sugar Spine kind of started.”
Having released his first single Go Outside to a positive online reception, Muncke decided to push the project even further, compiling an EP of song’s solely written and performed by him, (with the exception of percussion as he “doesn’t own a kit.”)
I think that’s kind of how my mentality shifted, as I was writing the music I went from, you know, ‘your horrible, f**k you’, to like, ‘nothing’s going right’, to, ‘hey, this is what’s going on … This is wrong, and, you know, hopefully, this is going to provide some insight into what you are doing and how you may not see that it is wrong.
[ Josh Muncke ]
“I think that’s kind of how my mentality shifted,” he states, “as I was writing the music I went from, you know, ‘your horrible, fuck you’, to like, ‘nothing’s going right’, to, ‘hey, this is what’s going on.. This is wrong, and, you know, hopefully, this is going to provide some insight into what you are doing and how you may not see that it is wrong.”
Expanding further on his lyrical content and how they shape the overall structure of his project, Muncke said, “I think the lyrics are, for me, the most important thing about the music.”
“I mean, there’s a lot of stuff out there, but you know, people will kind of just write lyrics without much thought behind them, and in no way am I throwing any shade or dismissing any of the words that other people put down, but sometimes I feel like certain certain artists or certain bands would kind of just write the lyrics because that’s what they think their contribution to the band should be. And, like, if that’s how they want to do it, more power to them. But I hold a lot of value in the lyrics that I write.”
With Sugar Spine’s debut EP Mirror Talk set for release tomorrow, the world will finally be able to hear the extended vision of Muncke’s project. Although, as Sugar Spine is currently a one man show, it may take some time until we can witness it live. But for Muncke, that’s the next thing on the agenda.
“One of my colleagues at work said that his roommate is a weapon on guitar and that he loves the music that I’ve put out so far and wants to be in my band. And I was like, Okay, well, firstly, I really appreciate that. But second, there’s no band yet. You gotta, you gotta hold back a second.”
“So I mean, if I feel like there’s enough time and resources for me to do it, and people that I can kind of trust to kind of get behind it and play it the way that I’d be happy to, then I’d love to do it live.”
“But I’ve got control issues when it comes to my music as well. Like, I guess, when I’m writing my own stuff that I’ve obviously got complete control over, relinquishing that to a band can be hard. But I’m sure it would be fine. There’s always that little part of me that might be like, I still want this to be within my own thing, but I’m sure I’ll get over that super quick.”
“At this point though, the plan is just to kind of push the music out and see how much of an audience I can reach. I’d like to play it live, I think it’d be so much fun to play it with the energy of a crowd in a venue.”
Purchase and stream here.
