Interview with BT of Demolition and Taipan

Originally published in Hoodwatch magazine issue 2 By Daniel Drazetic

I daresay that most of the people that are reading these words won’t need any introduction when they hear the names Demolition and Taipan. But to those of you that may not be familiar with the legendary status that these guys have attained, let this interview with BT, drummer of both bands, fill you in on why they have come to be regarded as the ground zero and numero uno of Australian underground music.

It is hard to gauge the aftermath that Taipan has left behind them, but their collateral damage had an impact on other big time heavy hitters like Perth’s Suffer and Melbourne’s Rort. They set a bar that was far beyond the reach of all the naval gazing and sexually repressed individuals that all too often dilute the underground community.

The evolved equivalent of this legacy is Demolition. Serving as a reminder to Australia, and the world, that the hardest and grimiest of this kind of music is still in the possession of those most genuine to it. Their first release Under Blackened Mountains is a thick tar of deluded atrocity lurking at the outskirts of society. As a concrete part of Australian underground music, their music and presence will continue to speak for itself.

Ey bah, first things first. Who are ya? Where ya from? What bands are you known for?

BT: My name is BT, I am a fat old man desperately clinging on to my youth by behaving badly and being a continuous fart cloud hanging over the Sydney punk hardcore scene. I reside on Dharawal country and badly play drums in Demolition. I don’t know what bands I’d be known for being in, however I played drums in No Jazz Before The Rumble, The Faux Hawks, the first era of White Male Dumbinance, Taipan, sang in Fattura Della Morte. There’s a longer list of bands I’ve been kicked out of also. I’m probably more wildly known for being a pile, but that’s a process I’m working through.

How did Demolition start? And what other projects or bands are the other members of the band involved in or have been known for?

BT: Garry (Taipan, Oily boys, Rapid Dye, etc) and I were always talking about doing another band. Drew from Oily Boys and CCT was going to sing, but as most things we do we procrastinated for 3 years without doing something and Drew moved away. I ended up buying another drum kit as part of my mid-life crisis and Garry and I wrote the songs for the demo pretty quickly and asked Josh from Rapid Dye to play bass and Danny to sing. Originally it was just meant to be a series of demos with Garry and I without playing any shows, but we have crew all over and didn’t take long for us to want to jump on shows.

I struggle to categorise the whole package of Demolition. To give it box or a label just doesn’t seem right. A thick heavy footed beast with an aesthetic that suffocates day to day life. To me, it has those black death elements Taipan had, but meatier and less forgiving. How did you guys get your sound?

BT: We wanted to do a darker sort of hardcore band. Taipan elements are there for sure, but that was probably more punk/traditional PV influenced minus the Of Death riff. Demolition, we draw more influences from black metal stuff like Bone Awl and Darkthrone for our faster riffs. Bands like Unruh, Magnacite, our friends from Perth in Suffer and Gaoled, Mind Eraser, Think I Care, d-beat shit, and 80s bone head slamming hardcore. Whatever is good at the time. It’s all been done before. We aren’t really trying to create something new. We probably draw more influence from the people around us who are doing mad shit in music, living outside of society, basically just being a massive worstman. Danny’s lyrics pretty much cover all aspects of that sort of outsider culture I guess. Demolition exists more so in our own circle of friends than it does in the punk or hardcore scene in a weird way.

Demolition is the one band that has managed to capture that feeling that painters, crusties, and homeless people get. When I look at the art, when I hear some of the samples laced throughout the release, I feel like I’m out somewhere that isn’t on the map. You know, like painting a tunnel or a sewer, alone with not much money and slipping on some muddy bitumen. Could you unpack and tell us about the energy that makes up Demolition?

BT: Hard to explain I guess. Maybe a it’s a realistic view into a lifestyle that is probably pretty foreign to most people. I was kicked out of home at 16, homeless for different periods of my life jumping from couch to couch etc. Always chose drugs and alcohol over most shit. Shoplifting and getting involved in petty crime almost my whole life. Through these channels I met nearly all of my friends and crew who came to Sydney and lived the same sort of lifestyle. We would all rack food and cook up together, share booze and drugs, paint whatever we had picked up during the day. We all sort of functioned together that way. Maybe that dependant shitty lifestyle translated well into music. It was always more about the people is playing the music than the actual music. Did that unpack anything? Life is hard man, you need to have an outlet and music is a good way to potentially keep people out of jail.

You’ve mentioned that Taipan took quite the toll on you and that by the end of it you were burnt out to excess. How did it start, how did it end, and what the fuck was that thing?

BT: For sure it did man. I don’t think it was just Taipan, but the whole lifestyle which Taipan was a big part of. I think Taipan were together for ten years, during that time I was hardly working, choosing to make money from other means. We were partying just about every night, playing every week, touring whenever we can, and basically just getting into trouble all the time. When you are so blatant with that sort of behaviour it just sticks to you. It can’t be switched off. There’s no break from being an animal all the time. We would have friends coming from everywhere just ready to party every day. I lived in a place that was pretty famous for non-stop living. It was known as 55. It was the most insane place I have ever lived. 24 hours a day there was shit happening. Those who had been there know that that’s no exaggeration. 24 hours if you rang the doorbell some cunt would be awake in there ready to do something. It was sick, for a long time it was fuckin awesome. We all had the energy for it. But ten years is a long time and you gotta sleep at some point. My now wife had to pick us up a bunch of times hiding in yards or under cars and shit so I’m sure that was a big part of why I tried to reel it in a bit so to speak. I’m still friends with everyone 100%, but I don’t have that kind of stamina for it these days. Nearly everyone has a few stories about that house though. Everyone remembers the mad shit, but not the coming down for a week, crying, watching We Are The World on Rage, for no reason, and trying to pull yourself together enough to go steal some orange juice and rice.

Some people I have spoken with have agreed that there was something in the air around the time bands like Taipan were around. Bands like Mind Eraser, Cursed, to Trench Sisters, and more, were all a part of this darker and pessimistic era of underground music. Do you agree? Where was Taipan coming from? Is there a noticeable difference today?

BT: The darker hardcore scene was fucking awesome at the time, there was lots of shit happening. Lots of bands touring together, lots of good records getting released and lots of venues willing to endure it. Mike from Crime Spree and Rick Dagger hit me up to start a band like Siege with them. We originally had Luke from The Faux Hawks singing and Mike playing bass. Luke didn’t like the style, so Mike started singing and Rick played bass and Dizzy guitar. At the time I was living 5 minutes from Mike and 10 minutes from Rick. This created the power triangle of misbehaviour. This is what started it all for Taipan. We were called Spin Kicks For Jesus originally for our first show and changed later on to Taipan. The hardcore scene in Sydney is definitely a lot different from then. Or maybe we are just older, I dunno. You gotta behave to a certain degree now. Back then not so much. We were bringing dead animals to shows, cunts getting set on fire, someone got stabbed with a cordless drill. People at that era were itching for it. It really brought all the cretins out of their masturbation chambers for some evil activities. I doubt that hardcore in Australia will ever put up with that sort of bullshit again. I’m glad I was there.

There was an incident tied to you guys relating the night at the Landsdowne Hotel? What happened that night? What had Taipan as a band become at that point?

BT: Man, there was a lot of incidents that night. There was lot of drugs being eaten by a lot of people. There was some metalcore show up the road. Like a big band, I can’t remember who. But it was huge, and we were playing just after it finished. Everyone was primed. I think we got halfway through our set and played Khanate. People were just beating the shit out of each other. Not in a hardcore sense. It was just a fight. I looked over and saw Doug choking a security guard. Adrian was in a fight with another. Chairs and pool cues fuckin flying everywhere. Glasses smashing. Keep in mind we were all buckled on drugs so obviously this was sick. They cut the power to the amps and tried to shut it down. But you know we weren’t stopping, so I started playing Nightstalker on drums. All the Canberra skins were happy to turn the heat on. More fighting. More chairs. And eventually the police tried to get in, but the venue was so packed with sexy metalcore hotties that we were able to pack up and leave. The manager there came outside to scream at me with his final words being “live like a cunt, die like a cunt” which was the basis for the song about that night. He also later told our friend Kate that I was a bald little cunt and he hoped I was having a shit life.

As a punk grom that wanted to paint, the one thing I value most that I learnt from your angle of underground music, hardcore punk, whichever name you call it, was the bridging of graffiti and hardcore as a single thing. You guys managed to capture this in much of what you do, in your aesthetic and overall delivery, so that it wasn’t separated. How and why is your graffiti and punk thing so close?

BT: In no way were we the first to bring that to the scene, just about every Westy hardcore band from Sydney, thrash band from Hornsby, had writers in the band or graff logos and shit. I grew up hanging out with guys from Hornsby, and they were a big influence on writing and also that it was sweet to be like that. If you don’t care what people think, you can do whatever the fuck you want, right? So what, I’m a piece of shit. The Hornsby crew were all maniacs man. That one suburb of Sydney is probably responsible for most of the best bands of that era. If you didn’t like them they didn’t care, if you didn’t like their bands they couldn’t give a fuck, if you wanted to say something about it you’re gonna get bashed. For years I was walking around with Luna and Nofun before I even thought about catching a tag. For anyone who has never found the Violent Hornsby Straight Edge cd comp, you need it. It explains a lot about that era of hardcore. We weren’t the first, we were just ready to carry the burning shit log of bad behaviour like those before us. Like I said earlier, it was never really about the music. It was the people. The parties and the bad behaviour that was responsible for the music.

What does the crystal ball have in the future for you? Any last words and shout outs?

BT: Fuck, probably just as shitty as the past. It just keeps comin man. Our friends getting locked up. People we know dying. People getting sick. It’s the normal everyday shit that is the most crushing. But alas we must continue to wade through it. Release a 12′′, do a split with Gaoled, we are playing The Real Dark Hardcore festival in January with all types of bad motherfuckers.

We will continue to exist within our own circles until we don’t. We’ll shout it strong, shout it loud, we are the ugly and proud, and if you don’t like what we say then you pay us no mind and stop wasting my time. But like it or not we are here to stay!

Thanks for the interview my G, respect.

BT

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