RATKING - King Hit
Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Saturday 11th June 2022
Perth Hardcore Crew Reveal Their Nervous Nature
Seven tracks of irate hardcore, Nervous Nature – the new release from Perth’s RATKING – is as short, sharp and subtle as a punch in the nose. I spoke to guitarist and Texas native Nic Finch about musical origins, the W.A. scene, and having a singer who may or may not be Kid Rock...
How would you describe the scene in Perth now, music-wise?
Right now, really good, actually. We have tons of big bands from here now, actually. Obviously, everybody knows TAME IMPALA, and our buddies in PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS are doing really good. You’ve got SLY WITHERS. Those are the big side of it, but in our side of it, there’s so many good hardcore bands, there’s a ton of good metal bands right now. I think it’s a really good scene, it’s just that not a lot of people know about it. I mean, even within Australia, we look at our streaming numbers, and a lot of it is based over in Perth. We do have a few people listen to us over east, but I think that Perth is so secluded over on its own, that no one really knows what’s happening even though there’s a lot of really good bands.
How long have you been sitting on the EP? Actually, first of all, how many times has your singer been mistaken for Kid Rock?
[Laughs] Oh, so many times, man! So many times. Yeah. And he wears the full tracksuits as well, so it doesn’t help.
He’s rocking the long hair and the backwards cap in one of the videos…
Yeah, that’s been his look for a while now. When we went to a [festival], I think everybody just thought we were rocking around as security for Kid Rock or something. [Laughs] As far as the album goes, we didn’t sit on it for too long … Longer than we normally do, but it was less than six months. We wrote most of it over the course of … we started around May last year. We wrote for about six months. We just got together at our bass player’s house every Friday … We have a little hang out next to his place, and everybody lives within ten minutes of each other, so we’d have a few beers, we’d go back to Tom’s, go to the studio, and we would just write music. So yeah, it took a little while, but everybody contributed on this one, so that’s why there are different sounding songs on the album. You can hear everybody’s got a different input from different people who were writing songs, so it was good. We were really happy with the way it came out, and how we kind of did it. Usually we would go into a rehearsal studio and somebody would bring an idea and everybody would just jam on it that day. Whereas this was different – we went into an actual little studio, and we could fine-tweak things, and we could work on the same song a few times, week after week, and it would just get better and better because we could hear it, and then go back and say, “Actually, this would sound better,” instead of trying to hear everything in a jam room … usually you can’t hear shit. Yeah, it was a different process, but we were happy with the result.
There was a New York rap group called RATKING. Would you guys be willing to fight them for the honour of being the first result on Google?
[Laughs] Oh my god… I mean, if you want me to go on record and say that we don’t really want to, but if things get down to it … we’ll see what happens. [Laughs]
I’ll back you guys – you’ve got the numbers! [Laughs]
Hell yeah, hell yeah. [Laughs] Man, that’s so funny.
I didn’t get to read the lyrics on paper, but of what I could decipher between screams, the lyrical inspirations on Nervous Nature seem to be floating around topics like mental health, and King Hit has a lot of references to addiction and drugs and whatnot. What were some of the lyrical inspirations that have gone into this album?
Well, Josh, our singer, writes most of the lyrics. I help out a little bit, Tom helps out a little bit, A.J. does some verses as well … But I think Josh is just getting more comfortable as a vocalist, and so the subject matter has probably become more personal with that, because he’s been angry and shouting about tons of shit for years, and now he’s probably a lot more comfortable speaking from within. I think a lot of us who have been in the band for a while are a lot more comfortable with that. Maybe, not all the time, but you still have that thought in the back of your mind when you’re writing, like, “What’s someone going to think about this?” We don’t really have that anymore. We just write what we’re thinking about or what we’re going through, and a lot of that, over the past few years, unfortunately wasn’t all the best.
On the subject of that, do you think we’re getting better at dealing with mental health, particularly with men?
Yeah, I think even the fact that you’re asking me this question shows that it is getting better. I mean, I’m only 32, but ten years ago when I was 22, we did not talk about mental health. We just didn’t. It just wasn’t a thing, you know? Maybe someone would say something about getting depressed, but it wasn’t linked with, “Oh, are you OK? Do you need to do this?” Like we are so trained to do nowadays – I think we are making strides with that. It needs to be talked about like it is now.
What were some of your formative live music experiences growing up? What were some of the gigs that absolutely blew your mind, and maybe made you want to be a musician?
I love to talk about my first “hardcore” show, because it wasn’t really hardcore. The first real concert I ever went to was GREEN DAY and BLINK 182. I was, like, twelve, and it was fucking amazing. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen. A couple of years later I got into hardcore, and it was ATREYU and C.K.Y. My dad drove me to Houston, and when we got there, ATREYU had cancelled, so I was super sad, and we went in and watched C.K.Y. anyway, because we knew that they’d probably have a good set, and some of the JACKASS guys were there. So that was really fun, and that kind of got me into going to shows, so I actually went to real shows. I think, living in Houston, I was really spoilt, because we had awesome tours coming through all the time. I had that New Wave of American Metal, which was GOD FORBID, BLEEDING THROUGH, SHADOWS FALL … all those bands came to Houston two or three times a year, so I went to so many shows growing up. But I’d say that the band that made me want to be in a band, and literally made me take the step, was TRASH TALK. As soon as I saw TRASH TALK live … I was like, “This is the best band ever. This is my favourite band ever. I’m going to start a band.” And then I moved here, and I found a band that already kind of sounded like them, which was RATKING, so it was perfect for me! [Laughs] I win! I win! [Laughs]
Who are some of the bands that you look up to in the Australian scene, and why?
Any of the hardcore bands, really, because they’re all doing it the way we’re doing it. No one’s signed, really, and if they are, they’re signed to a small indie label. They’re all doing it themselves. We love SPEED. We just went and saw SPEED and THE CHAIN play the other night … That was one of the best shows I’ve been to in a long time. Those guys are killing it, and it translates live. They can play really well. They were all changing instruments and shit, so when I get to see stuff like that, especially after playing quite a few shows, that’s the kind of stuff that makes me excited to go play. I’m like, “Fuck! I want to go impress someone like that. That was sick!” I think we’re really into those two bands at the moment. We all like PRIMITIVE BLAST, they’re a band from over east, and then, yeah, there’s quite a few hardcore bands in Perth that we’ve played a bunch of shows with. But like I said, I respect anybody who’s doing what we do, because you don’t get paid shit, and it’s fun, but you’ve got to have a tolerance for bullshit.
Well, it’s the Get in the Van thing, isn’t it?
Amen!
RATKING play Lucy’s Love Shack in Perth on the 17th of June, and Badlands on July 2nd.
Lucy’s Love Shack Tickets here
Badlands Tickets here
Nervous Nature is out June 17th.
Pictured: AJ, Tom, Josh + Nic – RATKING