SUPERHEIST - Go Your Own Way
Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Wednesday 29th June 2022
DW Norton Finds His Voice
When Ezekiel Ox left SUPERHEIST, in a manner that could politely be described as “less than ideal,” the remaining members had a decision to make. Do they recruit another singer and risk history repeating itself? Or do they push forward into uncharted territory and see what happens? DW Norton chose the latter, and the result is MMXX, a furious look at the chaos of the last two years – an album wrapped in bouncing riffs and dripping in nu metal sheen, which was written completely online, with members spread out across the country and unable to collaborate in person. He took some time out in his home studio to speak to SENSE …
The video for Medicated is a pretty critical response to protests over the last two years … My Roman numerals aren’t very strong, but once I whacked it into Google, I [realised] that [the album title is] “2020”. I’m assuming there’s a big concept going into that?
I wanted to write an album that had some real meaning for me, and, collectively, the rest of the guys as well. What are we going to write? Love songs? No. [Laughs] … This album seemed to call upon writing something that was relevant to the times, and everyone will agree … I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet that would [say] that the last two years have been normal, by any stretch of the imagination, right? A lot changed in 2020 for me. I noticed that the way that people communicate with each other changed, and the tolerance for opinion pretty much went completely out the window, and that was neighbour versus neighbour or government versus the people. Just the shutting down of opinion, and the crushing of free speech and free choice was a big one for me, you know? I really noticed it. I wasn’t necessarily terribly adversely affected by it, other than what I could see, and I wanted to understand where all this comes from. I did a lot of digging myself, and this is just a way for me to convey my observations of what turned in the world in 2020. I’m not preaching, by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m not a scholar on the subject. It’s just our observations and the way that we felt about things, and what we saw.
SUPERHEIST - Medicated - Official Music Video (2022)
… The thing that gets me, and a lot of the stuff that we talk about on MMXX, is [that] you’re not allowed your own opinion anymore. If your opinion varies to that of your neighbour, then you’re going to have a falling out. You can’t just learn from each other and have a discussion, have an open discussion. “This is what I think. Yeah, cool, those points are valid, and this is what you think. Okay, those points are valid. I don’t agree with you on this one and this one, but we can all work together to make that work for everyone.” Which is how mature discussion happens, right? That’s not happening. That’s been outlawed, literally. If you say your piece, and that’s contrary to the government’s line, you’re out. You’re deleted off Facebook, or you’re cancelled, or you get a fine, or you’re getting rubber bullets shot at you. It’s really bad, and anybody who thinks that it was acceptable, or it was okay, I don’t know what’s happened to those people, and why they’re like that – why they can’t see just exactly what’s going on. It’s crystal clear to me. I’m not talking from a conspiratorial perspective here. It’s just actually what’s going down, and it’s wrong. The whole lot of it was wrong, and we can’t allow that ever again, in my opinion.
You’ve taken over vocal duties. I was listening to the first few tracks … Have you had anyone make the comparison between your vocals and Jay Gordon of the band ORGY?
That is my wife’s all-time fave … she loves Jay Gordon, absolutely loves Jay Gordon and ORGY, and she would be stoked to hear that. I love his voice too, so maybe subconsciously I’m trying to do a bit of that. We’re big fans.
The album sounds great. How long were you guys working on this?
We started work on this album in late ’19. Zeke dumped us like an unwanted girlfriend, unceremoniously via email. [Laughs] But we’re fine. We’ve spoken since then. There’s no issues. But yeah, we found ourselves without a singer, and we did the obligatory ring John Sankey and see how many famous Americans might want a job in Australia to sing for SUPERHEIST, and that didn’t go very far. [Laughs] There was a few other people that we thought of approaching, and then it got to the point where we said to each other – particularly Simon and myself – “Why don’t we just have a crack ourselves?” Because if we get it right, then we’ve kind of eradicated a huge dogma that’s been associated with SUPERHEIST, and that is the revolving door of lead singers. So we had a good crack at it, and we went back and forth, and we were really honest with each other, and a few trusted friends that I let hear it and stuff, and they were all like, “Go for it. Do it. It sounds good. You’ll be fine – just go for it.” So we were very conscious to make sure that the vocals suited SUPERHEIST. If anyone’s familiar with what I do with my solo stuff, RIFLEMAN, it’s a bit softer. It’s still rock, but it’s pretty soft rock. SUPERHEIST needs to be more aggressive, obviously, but also tuneful at the same time, and it also has to have some of those hip-hop/rap elements and stuff. So we had a go at all that. I’d never done any of that before, so what you hear on there is us teaching ourselves how to sing as if we were the lead singers of SUPERHEIST, and now we are! [Laughs]
What’s it like approaching the older material? Are you guys going to be playing from the current material onwards? Or are you going to be revisiting the older stuff live?
Nah, look, we’re still going to play the favourites. But we haven’t put much thought into exactly how yet. [Laughs] We’re actually not going to play until probably April/May next year with HeistFest Part Two. We did HeistFest a couple of years ago with 36 CRAZYFISTS, and we’re talking to another American band now, trying to make that deal work, so we’ll do a HeistFest then. So we’ve got a bit of time to think about it, however it happens. We’ve had discussions with people about coming in and doing a couple of songs. Burger, for example, our original vocalist, we’ve had a chat to him. But I think we’ll end up just doing it ourselves and making it good. Just like we did with this record – just practice it until it’s good. I think that’s what we’ll do.
To go a bit deeper … what spurred on the decision to just go it alone, without a frontman? What freedom did this give you creatively?
The motivation came from never wanting to go through that again, you know? It’s horrible, man. Generally, it would be the death knell of any band, to lose their frontman, right? We’ve managed to churn through three frontmen, albeit across 25 years, pushing 30 years, right? But for some reason … If I want to give a reason as to why this happens, being in a band is like being in any relationship. It has its ups and downs, you have your high points and your low points, and some people handle the low points better than others. I think a lot of stress comes into it. Some people just don’t want the stress, and then they want to move on. That’s fine, but where does that leave everybody else? Everyone else wants to keep going? Yes, we do. OK, cool, how are we going to do that? Generally, we replace the singer. This time, we went, “If we replaced the singer now, will we be looking for a fifth singer next year, or the year after?” This way, that won’t happen, right? The four of us – myself, John Sankey, Simon Durrant and Keir Gotcher – we’re like bros, blood brothers. There’s never and issue, and we feel that doing the vocals ourselves will give us longevity. We’ll be able to put out more music, more often.
You’ve been in this game for a while now. What advice do you reckon you’d give to your younger self?
Do it myself, from the start. I may not have gotten the success or whatever, but maybe it would have been less stressful, and more enjoyable, maybe? It’s always enjoyable, but the stressful times are not enjoyable. The in-fighting, if members don’t get along, that’s not enjoyable. And now, at our age now, we’re only doing it for enjoyment, Tom. We’re not doing it for any other reason other than enjoyment. If it’s not enjoyable, you wouldn’t do it, because it just costs a shitload of money. We run our own label now, we do our own production, we pay for our own videos, we pay for everything, right? We pay for the manufacturing of the CDs. We do everything! … Yes, we still manufacture CDs … We pay for everything, right? So a lot has to go right for us to recoup that money, which is fine. If we lose money, whatever, it’s enjoyable. It’s great fun. It’s an artistic outlet, with a huge, loyal fanbase which seems to forgive us for our many lineup changes and just enjoy SUPERHEIST for what it is, and that is, a rocking band. I want to keep that going.
MMXX is out July 1st.
Pictured: DW Norton, John Sankey, Keir Gotcher, Simon Durrant - SUPERHEIST
