KNIFE MINI INTERVIEW FOR THE MASSIVE UNHOLY GOOD FRIDAY GIG

April 01, 2026

KNIFE MINI INTERVIEW FOR THE MASSIVE UNHOLY GOOD FRIDAY GIG

KNIFE: NON COMPOS MENTIS — INDUSTRIAL SCUM RISING

Mini Interview | Massive Unholy Good Friday Gig Special

The event page describes KNIFE as "a supergroup of legends that understand what it means to bludgeon your ears with beats that stick with you." Break that down for us.

KNIFE:
Look, we'll own the second half of that description — the ear-bludgeoning is accurate and intentional. But "legends"? That reads like a hallucinating ChatGPT prompt, especially given the actual legends on this lineup. Historically, Mark and James have done time in a serious cross-section of '90s hardcore and metal bands. Meanwhile, the two resident hippies — Myles and Jeremy — have crawled through everything from crust to sludge to full-on grindcore and noise outfits. We're not the legends. We're just grateful to be in the room.

Industrial Metal — what does that actually mean in 2025?

KNIFE:
Most people land on NIN, Skinny Puppy, Ministry — and fair enough, we love those bands. But our real holy grail sits somewhere darker: Godflesh, early Fear Factory, Pitchshifter, Meathook Seed, Nailbomb, Depressor, Optimum Wound Profile, Red Harvest, Inerth. That's the lineage we're pulling from. Layer on top of that a heavy death metal influence and the DNA of UK crust punk and hardcore — Doom, Extreme Noise Terror, Amebix, Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower — and you start to get the picture. It's noisy, aggressive, riff-driven and nasty, with programmed beats doing the work where a live drummer would be.

So what is the KNIFE sound, exactly?

KNIFE:
Abrasive Industrial Death Crust. No live drummer. Peak-era ugliness delivered at volume. We will ruin your eardrums and damage your soul in the best possible way — and we make no apologies for any of it.

Walk us through the discography so far, and what's coming next.

KNIFE:
We've kept busy since day one. In 2022 we self-released our debut Wound, which then got picked up by 1054 Records, who dropped a remixed and remastered version in 2023. Alongside that we've appeared on a stack of compilation releases and put out a three-track digital live EP called Yule Crimes — which includes our cover of Godflesh's "Like Rats," because of course it does. Late last year we self-released our next EP, Non Compos Mentis, complete with remixes of every track in some genuinely weird and eclectic directions. Shortly after that we signed with Primitive Moth Records, who will soon drop their own version of the EP — and there's a lot more planned with them: split 7"s and beyond. Watch that space.

Melbourne has a reputation as the epicentre of Australia's underground music scene. Why does it earn that title?

KNIFE:
The city has always had a fierce underground culture, and when it comes to punk, metal and alternative music, Melbourne has produced some of the finest bands this country has ever seen. Depression, Vicious Circle, Mindsnare, Christbait, Arm the Insane, Warp Spasm, Bastard Squad, Hobbs Angel of Death — these are bands that genuinely changed people's lives and redirected their trajectories. Add to that the outsized influence of stations like 3RRR and 3PBS, which gave niche music a real platform back when metal and punk were considered genuinely underground. The venues are strong, the DIY scene is thriving, and whether you're into goth, darkwave, noise or any other strange flavour — Melbourne has a scene for it.

What releases are currently doing damage on the KNIFE playlist?

KNIFE:

The new Neurosis album hit completely out of nowhere and hasn't left the rotation. Same with the latest Converge record. Locally, Battlegrave's Enslavement is ferocious, and last year's Aeons Abyss album Resurrection was a serious highlight too. The new ZIVA album is amazing.Beyond that, it's the usual diet — Napalm Death, Lamb of God, Japanese and Korean female-fronted metalcore, old school crust, hardcore. Sludge and doom always in heavy rotation alongside the classics.

This Unholy Good Friday lineup is massive — how are you feeling about it?

KNIFE:

It's a genuinely stacked bill. Rare and one-off appearances from 100 Years War, Womb to Tomb and Battlegrave. Munitions and Mind Rot opening and already threatening to cause serious damage. And Beanflipper — the biggest and most justified hype of 2025 — sounding better than ever after their return last year. Then there's us: the industrial fuckwits in the corner, keeping the '90s nastiness alive. It wouldn't be a proper underground event without a nod to where this sound came from.

Any newer bands worth flagging? And who else are the KNIFE members playing with?

KNIFE:
Blood in the Champagne is easily the best gothic post-punk act Australia has produced in years. Fumigator delivers peak industrial sludge apocalypse energy. Koolooz is a brilliantly gloomy Skinny Puppy-adjacent gem. The Pass brings powerviolence-meets-sludge intensity. And the metal list is genuinely endless — Black Jesus, Religious Observance, Diploid, anything with Christoph involved: all safe bets.

On the band member front: Myles and Jeremy play in Infected Transistor, one of the loudest, bluesiest, most Melvins-indebted sludge acts going around. Myles and James — with Jeremy and Mark also in the mix at various points, because this scene keeps its bloodlines close — are in death-grind veterans Hand of Fear, plus a rotating orbit of black metal, aggrotech and grind projects that seem to invent themselves weekly. Mark has contributed guest vocals to overseas projects and runs Devil's Horns Zine. Three-quarters of us are also parents. All four of us are neurodivergent to some degree. Make of that what you will.