Wicked Sisters- Wired_ Backwards (and a remix EP also!) and sensational interview.

 

Wicked Sisters- Wired_ Backwards (and a remix EP also!) and sensational interview. 

FFO: Industrial gold-Ministry,Skinny Puppy, NIN etc to harsh noise brilliance and varied heaviness in the flavour of Napalm Death/Godflesh and even some Doom and gothic sprinklings.

Every year I come across many bands, but Wicked Sisters is definitely one of my favourites. The key reason is that too many bands mirror musical trends and emulation is so flawed with danger. The danger is in terms of being dull washed-out versions of already generic bland expressionists. 

Hate to rant, however, music needs to be an unequivocal spark from a creative place. It should drip in passion and push back against the musical norms. Otherwise, just make general-purpose music, please!. 

Wicked Sisters are an intense act from Sydney who has changed from a more gothic and early NIN style to a much more abrasive soundscape. There is hard, noisy electronic sounds, but alluringly combined with frentic industrial species, in the vein of Author and Punisher and so on. Their two latest EP's are colossal in the ground they cover. And the colour, tone and depth of their creations. Why go black and white, which is very splendid in certain aspects when you can dive into the technicolour of cult film-like Manga-esque.

D.O.G kicks off the EP and it is aggressive and biting. Tons of very gloomy tone, but also some melodious aspects. I dig how it is catchy and demonic at the same time. This leads into the noisefest of straightrazor which is morbid interlude that warms my soul, like all the fucked up weirdness of Dark Mofo festival contained in a mini audio episode. Not easily achieved my friends!. All these tasty gems to the unforgettable feast that is Advanced Delusionary Schizophrenia. This tells you this band has arrived and they need your attention. This contains remarkable dark tone at war with extreme metal (and hard edged industrial electronics), but weirdly and pleasantly so sounding quite hardcore. Still not sure how they actually did this so damn well. On their Bandcamp, they note: use headphones for the best experience-take this technical advice as a necessity. Everything is sonically well constructed and it dives into that filthy, unpleasant and repugnant zone that extreme music aficionados crave. Accompanying this out of this world release is a movie that is a direct intrepretion of the EP; of course it's grim, it comments on how far technology has gone and has a strong Japanese cyperpunk/horror vibe; which you have to pay kudos to. It's beyond sensational.

The very cool thing if you are unaware of this band is they also released a solid and beastly remix reworking of the EP called reWired and it goes nuts on electronic boundaries. Some are more darker, some dancier, some just messed up. But all are stellar and it ticks so many damn boxes for me.

The peak industrial/gothic dancefloor moments when you hear a magic song at the right moment on a huge night out vs just crushing moments of heavy, pulverising evil industrial noise that just suffocates you. Also how futuristic this all sounds, in a Bladerunner manner. It is all cultish as fuck and makes me feel like I need a shower. Wicked Sisters, I applaud thee. The torture is now waiting for a full album from this band.

The audio torture which I deem essential is available here:

https://doublecrossed.online/album/wired-backwards

The fantastic movie of the EP is here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uab7mH7mQHY

I was lucky enough to interview the band and too often, and honestly 90% of the time bands give lame, vague and boring answers. It shows when people such as this band actually take the time to answer questions well and are dedicated to their craft. This is a fucking solid interview.

Interview with the unholy Wicked Sisters:

Could give me a brief history of your band, it’s name and tell us about your current release?

Sam and I (Brandan) had been making music for almost ten years together but we could never get a lineup together until Jem came into the picture, so each of us have been working on music or jamming but it wasn’t until 2016 or so when we decided to move it out from the garage and go public with our noise pollution.

 Naming the band was easily the hardest task to do, we didn’t want a name that was going to give us a certain vibe or typecast us into a style, but after months of terrible names, we ended up going with easily the worst name ‘Wicked Sisters’, a terrible name for terrible music. Jem was packing the dairy at Coles and saw the Wicked Sisters desserts and it had a cool Faustian devil tail on the  logo so we went with it and regret it every day. Sam will beg to differ.

In August we released ‘Wired Backwards’, which was initially intended to be an aural experience but after certain events that transpired earlier this year, we thought we would make our own visual interpretation to the music, because we are self loathing workaholics.

Tell me what inspired both the songs on this EP and the visual orgasm that is the movie for it..it was incredibly grim,yet beautiful.

There were a handful of different visual, aural and thematic themes, but basically our music is always just about people and how depraved and disgusting we can be, except this time, rather than hiding the idea with lyrics on ghouls and ‘spooky’ themes, we mixed it with another idea that has been shoved in our faces every day for the past decade and that is the obsession everyone has with their pocket Jesus and how we’re glued to the screen constantly, we are addicted to media and how we are perceived ‘online’ with people spewing their bullshit opinion and hiding behind their Instagram mask. It is basically cynicism from one persons perspective, but realism from a cynics perspective. But visually and musically, 80’s body horror films were a massive inspiration, stuff like Tetsuo, The Thing and Videodrome. Particularly Tetsuo, the idea of man and machine being moulded together, we wanted the music and the film to sound and look like some organic but mechanical abomination. It seemed fitting with the technology concept, if you love your phone and yourself so much, why don’t we turn you into it?

What drew you to hardcore/punk/metal (etc) and what is it such a rewarding and sustaining genre of music to you? And more so tell us about the progression of your sound as Wicked Sisters has evolved quite massively already.

Growing up, I always loved the darker side art, whether that be music or films, so I think it was only natural that metal and I would eventually meet, that, and going to catholic school does wonders.

From the beginning of the band, we never wanted to set boundaries for ourselves creatively, we just wanted to make honest music and take it wherever we wanted. Different elements of the music represent each of our personalities whether that be for better or worse. In terms of where we are currently at, I think the electronic/industrial influence was always immanent and it is only going to get more intense and chaotic from here, it is only a reflection of the emotional state within the band.

Have you guys played in other bands, because not only is the writing very sharp,it has nuisances of being in many different genres bands.

Thank you for the kind words. This is the first proper band that any of us have played in. In the past, we have tried to start bands that just never worked out or there were musical or personal differences, I think we’re all just big lovers of different types of music and we’re really good at stealing ideas from people. We like playing riffs, melodies and beats forwards, backwards, sideways and contorting into we are somewhat happy with the result. Peter Steele once said ‘Good musicians write original music, the best musicians steal music’ so I have lived by that mantra for quite some time now.

Devil’s Horns firmly believes that music and art is the best crossover in the universe , how does that work for you as a band? You certainly made this intersection brutally obvious with the recent video document that was connected to your current release

 Watching a film like Terminator 2 or Event Horizon isn’t the same without the sound effects and the music and the same goes for bands like Kraftwerk, Skinny Puppy or even Neurosis, it wouldn’t be the same experience without the visual element, whether that is with artwork, how they dress or even live visuals, the two go hand in hand, so we wanted to do something that would marry the two together. Eventually, I would love to get to a point where there could be a visual experience that is played along with the music in a live setting, maybe some strobes, maybe some chains dangling from the ceiling, like some kind of bastardised child of the Matrix rave scene and the BDSM room in Hellraiser.

Live how does your music translate?, do you have a message or what rewards you as a artist collective?

When we’re in the studio recording or demoing tracks, how it is going to be presented live is rarely a concern as we like the idea of having a different experience of how you would listen to the release live, and how you would listen to it on headphones or speakers. I don’t know how long this band is going to last so we try and leave no idea, no matter how ridiculous, left out.

Live is a whole different ballpark, only recently have I moved away from doing lead vocals because I wanted to focus on doing the guitar and the sampler/electronics so we held a gun to Sam’s head and made him do vocals because he doesn’t suffer from intense stage fright like the rest of the anxious wrecks in the band.

The days of intense social anxiety on the days leading up to the show are agony but totally worth it once you get up there and you hit the first note, it all goes away. Most times we play, a majority of the audience kind of looks at us with this inquisitive look on their face, almost in disgust, but the few people that are banging their head or dancing along to the music make it all worth the while.

Any plans for future releases that you would like to tell us about?

To buy us more time until we have to release new music, we are going to be releasing a remix EP towards the end of the year titled, (re)Wired Backwards. The release will have Jem and myself  along with three artists (Ealing, Sondail and Luxul) who are way more talented than us, providing their own perspective of Wired Backwards. I have just always thought the idea of someone doing your music in the way they would with only the elements of your song/s was interesting but like most of the releases we have done this year, it started off as some drunken joke then ended up happening so I think the universe is trying to tell us something. Other than that, we have been demoing some new tracks which are looking to be some of the least worst songs we have done so far.

Are you releasing this yourself or aiming for a label?, because in Australia besides No Names from your state are the only solid industrial bands I remember in quite some time

Back in August when we released the EP and the film, it was released totally independently onto Spotify, Bandcamp and other streaming sites that have totally crossed my mind, however, we got in contact with label from Melbourne that releases some sick hardcore bands, Best Wishes Records. They are going to be helping us release the EP and the remix EP on cassette tape as one bundle.

What are the highlights for you as a band so far?

Going head first into unknown territory and making the film for sure. We had no clue what we were doing and having something that started out as intoxicated rambling come to fruition was certainly a personal highlight for myself, especially with all of us figuring out different filmmaking techniques like film editing, costume design, camera work, set design, animation and lighting, it was very creative learning experience that I think will help us with future visual elements.  On the other hand, earlier this year we played a mini tour and became friends with the dudes from Usurper, we got to play shows in Lismore, Brisbane, Sydney and Newcastle and that was cool as fuck even though Lismore was easily the worst show we have ever played, it was like watching a car crash.

On the flipside, the struggles and challenges? Covid-19 being the most obvious one for 2020.

The most obvious challenge was not being able to play shows for pretty much the whole year. We are firmly believe that Wired Backwards was easily the best music we have released so far so it was difficult to try and promote something we felt so proud and strong about to pretty much no one, and anyone that knows me knows that I am not the most optimistic person but it was also this same struggle that forced us to make the film and everything that came with that.

Any favorite current artists or particular albums you have on rotation?

I have to shout out our brothers in Usurper from Lismore, those guys are super talented and are making some really heavy, dark and brooding but emotional music, the kind of shit you feel in your chest when the riff hits. I also have to make mention that one of my favourite Aussie metal bands ,The Amenta, has made their presence known again and are gearing up to release some new music which gets me excited for 2021.

I am always listening to different stuff but right at this moment, I have been listening to the Morbid Angel ‘Formulas Fatal to the Flesh’ for the trippy death metal fix ,the first Portishead record ‘Dummy’, lots of John Carpenter soundtracks, and the usual suspects, Nine Inch Nails.

What are the future plans for this incredible band?

We are planning to play as many shows as possible next year as this year was a complete write off in terms of the performance aspect, but we also have some ideas for new music and how we want that music to be released so lets see if that happens, we try and think ten steps ahead with whatever we do.

Any final words or messages?

I just want to take a moment to sincerely apologise to anyone that listens to our music. Hail Carpenter, Hail Reznor and Hail Steele.