FROM CRISIS TO COLLAPSE - Through the Eye of the Needle
Floods and Needlepoint with Chad Ellis
Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Friday 8 April 2022
COVID. Cancellations. Catastrophic floods. The name of Aussie metal troupe FROM CRISIS TO COLLAPSE seems oddly fitting these days. Displaced because of the floods, FCTC axeman Chad Ellis and his young family are shacked up at a mate’s place. Swatting away bugs, he plugs a straw into an Up & Go and pondered the destruction of the last few weeks, and what that has meant for new single Needlepoint…
You guys were going to tour Needlepoint. I’m going to use my deductive skills and think that the cancellations had something to do with the flood damage.
[Laughs] You’re on it! We were going to start this weekend, at Halloween Hysteria. There was also a local Lismore show, which is close to home as well – we were going to play with our mates in STEPSON. I can’t remember when that was going to be. It was going to be in January sometime, which would’ve been cool, because we know the guys really well, and [they draw] really good crowds when these sorts of bands get together locally. We were going to do that with them as a headline show before Unify, actually, and that got pushed back … it was meant to be on the Friday just gone … We were going to start touring as of the Saturday with Halloween Hysteria, and that [was] rescheduled from October last year. But yeah, the floods hit us five weeks ago, and just absolutely decimated our entire region … In my day job, I work in emergency service as well, and heavily involved in flooding and flood preparation, so it’s kind of my gig. It’s been estimated as a one-in-3000-year level event around the Lismore and Wilsons and Richmond catchment area. It’s just mind-boggling to even believe it until you’ve been to the area, but there are cities and towns that basically don’t exist anymore. It got every single property, and it’s affected everyone. Lismore, which is kind of close to where I live at the moment, the city is gone, and it’s just copped another major flood last week, that wasn’t quite as high. The little village I live in … there was about twenty houses lost in that village, including my own, so my family and I are displaced at the moment, and staying at some friends’ house, who have graciously put us up in the granny flat on their property … The reason we can’t afford to be away from home at the moment is just too many other commitments, particularly for myself. Pretty well everyone in the band was impacted in some way … My family and I are going to be out of our home for the best part of the next six months, I would think. And the scale is so insane. Obviously insurance companies and trades, they can’t keep up with the scale, so that causes the knock-on protracted event. Everyone is just getting by at the moment. It’s pretty devastating. It’s one of those things where you drive around and you walk around and you think, “How can it possibly rebuild?” Human spirit is pretty amazing though, and does have a way of overcoming adversity.
Can I ask a question that is not intended to be insensitive? Are you going to move? Are you going to stay there? Surely the area is so vulnerable, it’s got to be like building a house of cards on a fault line at this point.
Yeah, exactly right. There was a large-scale event, a record-breaking flood, in only 2017, in the Lismore area, because it overtopped the levee for the first time and flooded the entire city. That was a real big game-changer for the residents of the city. It was on the verge of recovering quite well, and property prices had absolutely boomed in our area over COVID. I’ll put it down to Chris Hemsworth being in the area, and all the celebs wanting to move up. Probably something to do with myself as well, just attracting all the people from Sydney … naturally! [Laughs] Moving from the area? Probably not. This area is just god’s country up here. For my place to be impacted … I did all the research. My place is above all flood records and building codes, everything. The scale of the event was just so astronomical, almost biblical proportions, it just got a lot of people … When we rebuild … the houses have to be rebuilt with some sort of flood mitigation in mind, or flood resilience, certainly … It’s a weird paradigm to be a part of, that’s for sure. It’s pretty mind-boggling at the moment.
The military presence has been incredible up here, particularly in the recovery phase of things … What they’re getting done, with their engineering side of the house and their logistic contribution, is something that … There are not enough resources to possibly do the job that they’re able to do. They’re doing the shit stuff as well, man. In our village, there was fifty defence personnel for two days, picking up all the flood debris that we’d ripped out of the houses, and they are ripping through the jobs, and it is with military precision. They’re doing the work that other people do not want to do, but they’re doing it bloody well, it’s with discipline, it’s really efficient.
On Needlepoint, you worked with Lucius Borich. What’s he like? And what do you have to say to the rumour I tried to start with my review of The Other Festival that he’s actually dead, and was hollowed-out by an octopus?
[Waves in front of his face] I’m getting attacked by bugs here. I think Lucius sent them! He is such a cool character. Very laid-back, super easy to work with. We’ve been talking to Loosh for a couple of years prior to working with him on this … We were going to try and schedule some recording with him a year prior to Needlepoint, and we recorded Needlepoint about a year ago as well. We’ve had a few little hiccups, but then we just sat on it as well. We’ve had everything ready for the last six months. Loosh is just such a cool guy, accommodating, very knowledgeable, and when it comes to recording with him, he’s just got this big wealth of knowledge and experience. Very open to different ideas, and he suggests a lot of good ideas as well … Particularly for the drum tracking as well. It’s pretty mind-blowing, just how easy he can make that sort of thing look and sound. So nah, he’s cool, but he’s definitely alive. We did see him plugging himself into a power point at one point in time, so I don’t know if he’s part cyborg or something, but we can start that rumour. [Laughs]
No one can physically play the drums he’s doing, while singing amazingly, while also doing programming off to the side. It’s physically impossible. I think we all know that something’s up.
He’s freakish. And you know what? He’s a hard-hitting drummer. I’m a massive COG fan, and whenever they came to Byron I would not miss them. It’s actually one of the only bands that my wife and I genuinely love together as well, and would go and see and stuff. When the boys moved to the area, I was like, “Wow, one day I’ll be playing with them for sure, or at least meet them!” They’re very average dudes. They’re really cool, very approachable. I’ve been watching Loosh for years. Aggressive drummer, hard-hitting drummer, talented dude. Like you said, he swings the mic around, does his awesome backups, moves that back, hits a gong, hits a sample pad, does crazy double-kicks without using double-kicks. But offstage, so chill – really, really relaxed. He’s a beast – such a good dude.
You also worked with DW Norton and Fredrik Nordstrum … What was it like working with those guys?
We’ve known DW for a while now. He and I have a very small boutique record label based in Queensland called Black Mountain Music that we set up pretty [much] as a vessel to release our own music easily. So yeah, we sort of struck it off, and we’ve been hanging out since we toured with SUPERHEIST and 36 CRAZYFISTS in 2019, I think it was in April/May, so DW and I are tight. DW’s standard of work is so huge when it comes to modern metal and big, big, massive tones and sounds – he’s the man. We had a bit of an idea and a plan that with the next release of our music, moving on from The Seventh Tree, that we really wanted to step up the production game and work with higher-end people in the team – people who really nail the craft – and DW was a no-brainer when it came to mixing, and helping us produce the song and come up with ideas. We were blown away with how he could transition a song from raw audio that’s been recorded to getting a first take back from him that was like, “Woah, is that us? That’s next level! That was great!” So yeah, that was really good. I said this in the interview last week: we’re not the easiest band to work with. We’re not arseholes, but we’re really picky. Like, I’m not kidding, when we listen to a mix, it could be mix #20, and we’ll be there with headphones on individually, going “Stop! Rewind! What’s that? There’s an [error] in that one little section there at 3:22.” We pull it apart. So poor DW. I think he’s used to four or five mixes per song, per band. He would’ve cracked over twenty with us, for sure! [Laughs] Lucky he loves me! We were stretching the friendship there on one phone call there, for sure. I’m pretty sure he was getting to the end of his tether. We were chasing perfection. Fredrik Nordstrum is just an icon when it comes to death metal/melodic death metal. The artists he’s worked with are just insane. I actually thought there was no way it would be within our possibility to work with him at this level, and talking to DW, I’m like, “Who are your idols in the production game?” And DW’s like, “Fredrik Nordstrum is definitely my favourite heavy metal producer. His work is just next level with everything.” I’m like, “I’m just going to reach out to him.” [Laughs] Oh mate, I can’t believe just how responsive that guy is. So approachable, so responsive, and again, just a true professional where nothing is a problem. He did the mastering, but we also spoke to him about some of the production and whatever. My god, man – working with people of his calibre is really mind-boggling … and it’s highly recommended! I do like! … We’ll certainly finish this next recorded project with the same team, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what we come up with at the end of it.
Needlepoint is out now.
Pictured: Unai Aldecoa, Ian Konrad, Angus Carter, Marco Penniello + Chad Ellis - FROM CRISIS TO COLLAPSE