Already confirmed for the 2016 Laneway Festival, Feel are now pleased to announce headline shows for Brooklyn based trio Battles.
The idiosyncratic three-piece, featuring drummer John Stanier (The Mark Of Cain/Tomahawk), bassist and sonic manipulator Dave Konopka, and multi-instrumentalist Ian Williams, will bring the noise via new album “La Di Da Di” for sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne.
If you’re are in Adelaide on Friday, June 7 then get on down to Fowlers Live where The Mark Of Cain will be performing a very rare live show in benefit of their good friend and original vocalist Rod Archer, aka Big Boss, who is battling cancer.
The Iron Shieks - another former band of Rod's that’s pictured above - will be reforming and rounding out the all-Adelaide bill will be The Plague (reforming for this show only) and Crackling Static Fuzz.
Bring your money with you as there's be merchandise and some special artwork for sale including rarities from the Cosmic Psychos. Attendance numbers will be limited to 500. Tickets are just $25 and available here. The Facebook event is here.
Ten years after their last album, to say Adelaide's The Mark Of Cain still conveys a wrecking ball punch is like saying China has a lot of people. TMOC occupies the space where hardcore, punk and metal collide and makes unique with a lyrical heaviness that makes listening to Black Sabbath a Sunday walk in the park. This is a band that projects more menace in the space of nine songs than most manage over as many albums.
Joe Lallo, Anthony Pirog and Brendan Canty. Antonia Tricarico photo.
“There’s no line between improvisation and self-indulgence!” It’s all the same thing, so just be forewarned before you come to our shows. It’s rampant self-indulgence, 100% of the time!” laughs Brendan Canty, drummer with Washington DC band The Messthetics.
Canty’s reply to my question is deliberately facetious: The Messthetics explore the jazzier side of rock’n’roll, eschewing the melodic and lyrical hook of a vocalist for an improvisational instrumental sonic aesthetic enabled via guitarist Anthony Pirog’s reedy guitar lines. But the contrast between The Messthetics’ exploratory style and the brutal discipline of Canty’s former band Fugazi is stark.
“We don’t have a vocalist, so I like to think that Anthony’s guitar lines are the vocals,” Canty says. “There are times of course when we do rampant self-indulgence but for the most part we have written music, and we try and diversify what we play and make it interesting for everyone.”
The Mark Of Cain returns to the stage this October performing their debut album “Battlesick” in its entirety.
Originally released in 1989 via indie Adelaide label Dominator, Battlesick sounded like no Australian album before or since. Tracks like “Wake Up”, “Dead Man’s Mail”, “The Setback”, “Call in Anger” and the title track addressed the fear of dreams, the threat of death, anger over disappointment and personal setbacks; not exactly the subject matter of an era when Kylie Minogue was queen and Ratcat were primed to become the pinnacle of the underground.
The Mark Of Cain - the band dubbed least likely in their high school year book - return to Australian stages this August in celebration of being the South Australian Music Awards' most recent inductee into the SA Music Hall Of Fame.
TMOC join previous recipients like Jim Keays, Masters Apprentices, Glenn Shorrock, Cold Chisel, Archie Roach, Bart Willoughby, Sarah McLeod and The Zoot. The band will accept the award at a simple ceremony on August 19 at The Gov in Adelaids prior to taking the stage for a full career spanning set.
The Mark Of Cain will also play shows in Sydney, Melbourne this August under the banner “A Different Kind Of Tension”, a nod to legendary UK proto-punks Buzzcocks and their influential third album of the same name:
They're releasing a new single, "Grey-11", from their acclaimed 2012 album "Songs Of The Third & Fifth" so The Mark Of Cain have announced their first Australian tour since March last year.
It will take in the usual hot spots and also includes a return to Newcastle (for the first time since 2002) and a trip to Hobart for the first time in almost 20 years.
Heavyweights The Mark Of Cain return to Australian stages with a national tour in November and December, including a two-night stand in hometown Adelaide to raise money for a cancer charity.
“Having lost family members, friends and work colleagues to cancer in the past, I thought it was time to personally do something about cancer - not only to raise awareness, but also to do something directly to help fund cancer research,” TMOC singer-songwriter John Scott said. “As everyone knows, cancer doesn’t discriminate and we are all potentially only a doctor’s appointment away from hearing those life changing words."