WINDWAKER // Lip Up Phatty with Liam Guinane

It’s been a wild couple of years for Windwaker. Their debut album, Love Language (2022), went absolutely gangbusters–skyrocketing the Melbourne metalcore outfit to international stardom as lead singles Beautiful and Lucy found their place atop Spotify charts and in large-scale video game soundtracks (NHL ‘23).

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But while their star soared, the band found themselves struggling with personal demons. By the close of 2022–amid announcements that the group had been booked as the main support for tours with Northlane and Enter Shikari–Wil King announced his departure, leaving the upstarts’ in the precarious position of being signed on for their biggest tours yet, without a vocalist.

Luckily one of the group’s ex-members, Liam Guinane, was happy to step up to the plate, jumping on as the group’s vocalist before immediately heading out on a national touring schedule. As you can imagine, it’s been “a lot” for Guinane, who’s either spent the last few months on the road or in the studio.

When he jumps on the Zoom call, he’s quick to admit that he’s feeling “half-fried” from everything the band has going on, but that doesn’t stop his enthusiasm for their upcoming projects.

“We shot a clip for a new single a couple of days ago, which I’m looking forward to you all seeing.”

“We’re  also definitely working towards another album,” he says,  “At the moment we probably have an album’s worth of material, but we’re going to try and extend that into two albums worth of material and then cull it down to the best of the batch.

“But yeah, it’s been a lot– ‘Left in the Dark’ was like the first of three singles that we had ready to go. And since its release we’ve been having writing weeks where we’re coming out with three to four songs each time. So there’s a lot of new music sitting on harddrives.”

When asked about the sound that the group’s new material is gearing towards, he pauses before “I think it’s the best we’ve ever sounded in all honesty.

At the moment we probably have an album’s worth of material, but we’re going to try and extend that into two albums worth of material and then cull it down to the best of the batch.
[ Liam Guinane ]

“I think we’re really starting to find a formula that works for us, while still keeping it interesting and exciting. It’s not just the same ideas over and over again, we’re challenging ourselves in a lot of ways.”

“I guess the best way that I can describe it is– it’s a more refined, mature version of what we heard from Love Language. There’s still a lot of that eclectic sound and drawing from different influences, I think that’ll always be the nature of Windwaker.”

“But it’s also certainly a new band in a way. It’s a lot darker, and it gets quite heavy, but then it’s also some of our catchiest choruses yet.”

But the excitement doesn’t stop there, with Guinane confirming that fans will be delivered a new single before Windwaker embark on their biggest headliner run to date, the ‘Love In The Dark’ Australian tour. And when we say ‘biggest’, we mean in terms of venue and production value– with the group investing serious time and resources into making this tour their “phattest” yet.

“We’re working really hard to build a proper show for our audience,” says Guinane.

“Anytime we do a headline show, we want to provide a proper show for people, and these are the biggest headline shows that we’ve done. So we’re reprogramming all our lights, we’ve redone all our music and equipment setups and all that kind of stuff and I’m pretty excited to showcase it on this tour.”

“It’s basically going to be the best that we’ve ever been up until this point.”