Cover shot LIFE PILOT
LIFE PILOT are on the road again, bringing their chaotic hardcore to Melbourne, Sydney, Woolongong, Newcastle, Brisbane and Adelaide! The lads took some time out from their busy touring schedule to chat with us about the current tour, notorious onstage antics and their latest single “Pretty Like A Pistol“.
EM: You guys tour a lot, what do you listen to while you’re on the road?
LP: We don’t often listen to a lot of music on the road. There’s usually non-stop antics and dumb conversation going down. Or the time Nick tried to kickflip a skateboard inside the moving van.
When we do crank some tunes, it’s usually something like Every Time I Die, classic Parkway Drive, or weird shit like Alan Jackson country hits.
EM: Is there an item you cannot do without on tour?
LP: Other than a few spare pillows, sleeping bags and blow up mattresses for those ever-so-excellent floor sleeps we’re accustomed to on the road, I’d say the MVP item from the last tour was this pretty hilarious mini-bmx that Angus convinced us to bring along. He ended up doing a bunch of wheelies in the mosh pit at our central coast show and it was a pretty fun thing to cruise around with.
EM: Last time we saw you live there was a lot of physical maneuvers performed. What warm-up exercises do you do before a gig?
LP: We usually do a bunch of neck and shoulder stretches to avoid the dreaded bang-over. Or ‘Taco Neck’ as we call it. It feels like your spine is made of hard tortillas, nobody wants that. You’ll see us also doing some jumping jacks and short sprints if we have room to get the heart rate up. There’s nothing worse than going on cold and shocking your body going from 0 to 100 in the first song. We get a lot of funny looks for our strange yoga warm ups at some gigs, but usually by the time we hit the stage people start to understand why we’re back there looking like the crustiest version of Aerobics Oz Style.
EM: You guys are known for your onstage antics, what sort of chaos has it caused in the past?
LP: We’ve had a few basses to faces, one in particular that Angus probably should have gone to hospital for, but soldiered on regardless. I once kicked a cymbal over not seeing our old guitar player laying underneath the drum riser and he copped a 22″ ride to the abdomen. He’s honestly lucky he didn’t die. Poor Will has copped the worst injuries of late. We split his head open jumping through the drums one night, and on the last tour there was a massive pile on in Brisbane that the poor guy found himself at the bottom of with his fingers caught in his guitar strings. If you’ve ever used one of those boiled egg slicers, you’ll understand what happened. But we only ever mess ourselves up. We want people to have fun and feel like they can get involved in the antics, not be scared away by them.
EM: You guys seem to have a lot of fun in your video clips, how do you come up with the concepts?
LP: Usually on stupidly long drives between shows. The Dark, Dark Goose video was spawned on a 8hr drive back from Melbourne where we started finding the word ‘Bin’ really funny and it all spiralled out from there. We usually sit down together and plan it all out properly once the vague concept (or lack thereof) is there. The latest video for Pretty Like A Pistol was a brainstorming session 48hrs before the shoot night. It basically went something like “Hey guys, what’s the most ridiculous stuff we can do in Angus’s house with no budget and no time… aaaaaand Go!”.
EM: Your video for “Dark, Dark, Goose” was straight-up hilarity, yet the video for “Pretty like a pistol” had a hidden meaning, can you tell us more about that?
LP: It was such a fun clip to make. Our amazing man behind the lens Alex Robertson rocked up on the night having been told nothing about it, to ask “so what are we shooting tonight?” only to be told “honestly, we don’t really know”. But we knew the message we wanted to get across was a raucous and bizarre vibe that felt like a goodbye to your youth and a reflection on your past experiences. The clip is intentionally vague and silly, but has Angus roaming around his house looking at all the strange things happening in each room, a Luchador wrestling match, a grown man in a sailor moon roller derby outfit playing bass, a dancing robot, and a demon being summoned by witches. These are all intentionally skewed and vague references to parts of our youth.
EM: What’s the music scene like in Radelaide at the moment?
LP: Adelaide always has a bunch of great bands coming up and flying the flag for our city. We’re stoked to be able to have a bunch of them on our hometown show at the end of the tour. Relapse, Alda Sky and No No No No No are all doing cool things and we’re super keen to riff out with them all at Broadcast Bar in December. One thing we have been seeing a lot more of this year in the eastern states is a big return of Chaotic Hardcore bands like us. Which we’re stoked about. For a while it’s felt like we’re one of the only ones left from the scene we were apart of when we started. It hasn’t quite picked up in Adelaide in the same way as Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane where we’re stoked to be joined by bands like Frenzy, Old Town, The Orphan – this new Gen of crazy bands. But we hope we see some new kids bringing the filth home soon!
EM: What’s your favourite city to play in?
LP: Other than our home town, we’ve always loved the Central Coast & Newcastle. Usually because things get absolutely buckwild out there and punters just seem to lose their minds. Some of the most insane things we’ve ever seen have gone down out there.
We still talk fondly of the time a guy demanded angus smash him in the face with his thongs, or the guy who decided to storm the stage and start gaff taping us to our instruments mid-set.
Gotta give an Honourable Mention to Mount Gambier as well, where we’ve been frequenting over the last 12 months. We kicked off the tour down there a couple of weeks ago with King Parrot and that place was absolutely going off. 9. If you could tour anywhere in the world that you haven’t already visited, where would it be?- We’ve been talking about getting over to Japan a lot recently. It’s a place we all want to go visit and they have a super sick heavy scene over there. That’s big on the cards for 2020, we’d all love to do it!We’d also really like to explore more of our own country. We’ve been wanting to get back over to Perth for a long time, we’ve never played Darwin or Hobart. The regional shows we play are often the most fun and rewarding for us, so we’re going to focus a lot of our energy next year on getting to more places outside of the standard “Australian tour” run that everyone does. So if anyone reading has a cool place they want us to come visit, hit us up. We’d love to make it happen!
LIFE PILOT are touring with Drive TIme Commute, The Orphan and Deadweight 80. Check out the tour dates and get your tickets here, keep up to date with the band on social media.
Stay tuned to Everyday Metal for coverage of the Melbourne show.
Special thanks to Collision Course
