Interview by Kris Peters
Sydney hard rock outfit Battlesnake are riding the wave of a tornado at present.
Fresh from recently completing The World Is A Vampire Festival alongside The Smashing Pumpkins and Jane's Addiction, Battlesnake have successfully taken their unique brand of music to a wider audience and not only made them listen, but also forced them to appreciate the events laid out before them.
With a refreshing zest for life glazed over by an extremely talented and committed core group of members seldom has a band unknown by so many been appreciated by so many more.
Their music alone is infectiously invigorating, blending the physchedic rock sensibilities of Black Sabbath with a harder edge bordering on metal - all the while awash with a blazoning of pink and sporting instruments such as the keytar that would normally be banished from sight and sound.
To say Battlesnake are blissfully unaware of their surroundings would be selling the band short, but their confidence and self belief also act as ally's, buffering them against the inevitable views of scepticism that generally accompany things the average person finds difficult to comprehend.
Put simply they are already a musical enigma and a welcome addition to the Australian musical landscape that has been craving a suitable distraction to the growing monotony that is gradually creeping in.
Battlesnake last week released their self-titled debut album which has made a significant impact on the scene already, with HEAVY tracking down bass player Elliott Hitchcock to find out more about the band that will soon be on everyone's lips.
"To be totally transparent I, personally, initially set out for the album to be kind of lighter, in a way," he revealed. "And that kind of didn't happen (laughs). It is a heavy album but musically the inspirations are so broad and varied. Obviously you would have heard the Spanish guitars in there, and there's some big orchestras and then there's your classic heavy metal and your thrash. There's so much going on. We really enjoyed making the album because we feel like this kind of music is the kind of music that we've always wanted to make."
The musical disparity inherent in Battlesnake's music is a melting pot of genres that shouldn't work but somehow do, coming together and lacing up the embers into a chaotically beautiful assortment of rock that seems to follow no rhyme nor reason. It's as though the band threw literally everything at their disposal into a melting pot of sin and forced themselves to work with the overlapping entrails.
"That's where you can sometimes come unstuck," Elliott measured, "when you're trying to do that. I don't even know that we did that consciously, but that's just what happens with our music. That's the tricky part; that fine line where you need to walk. You can't be too... you have to be really meticulous about it sounding cohesive, because if there's so many influences in there more often than not it starts to sound confused and can be difficult to listen to sometimes. It has to be a melting pot for us, like melting iron or gold and creating this perfect set of circumstances that turn all of these inspirations and ideas into a cohesive song."
In the full interview, Elliott goes into the album in greater detail, details the recent rise of Battlesnake while deferring to a lengthy apprenticeship, the themes running through the album, their live show, where the costumes came from and what they represent, working as a collective, being bit by the touring bug, blending humour and theatrics through their music, an upcoming tour and more.