Close Your Eyes and Fall to the Beast

Written by: Tom Wilson – Sense Music Media

Sounding like a bareknuckle fight between POPPY and ARCH ENEMY, the new single from THE ATOMIC BEAU PROJECT is as gritty as the graffiti-covered railway carriages in its music video. Pairing ballistic riffs with Emma Beau’s crooning, and some savage guest vocals from Max Van Heusden, Fall to the Beast has to be heard to be believed. I thought that was the perfect excuse to have a chat to Emma and drummer/founder Andy James.

Pardon the stock-standard music journalism bullshit question, but how would you summarise the band’s existence to this point? Is it my understanding that The Other Festival was your second gig?

Emma: It was our first proper gig, yeah.

Andy: End of 2019 was our first gig, and then 2020 was just a write-off. You couldn’t really organise a gig. So even though we released a couple of tracks last year, it was all kind of online promoting and stuff like that. So when 2021 came around, that was our first proper gig, at The Other Festival. We’ve done a few local gigs this year. We’ve done a few gigs down in Brisbane, supporting lots of cool bands, but to date, our existence has been … it’s changed over time. We started off … it was almost like a duo project. Me and Beau would record the tracks basically at home. Beau would sing, I’d do all the production, and maybe we’d get a guest guitarist in to do some of the guitar parts. We did that for our first few tracks, and then we started to expand at the end of 2019. That’s when we started getting more into an established band. We’ve got a bass player on board, Luke [Woollett], and a guitar player on board, Jack [Gardiner] … At the end of 2019 was when we really kicked things off as the band THE ATOMIC BEAU PROJECT. Ever since then, it’s just been like releasing tracks and playing as many shows as we can during COVID, basically … as much as we can do.

Emma: We really want to travel, so it’s been a bit hard [in terms of what we] want for the band. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

Andy: Ideally, we’d be going to the States or Europe sometime this year, but we’re probably going to postpone that to the end of next year at this stage.

The reality is, if you’re fully vaccinated, you can go to the U.S., but the logistics of then trying to organise any kind of tour …

Andy: I know, for sure.

Emma: We looked into it, but it just hit the too hard pile for now. Getting back and having to quarantine and not being able to work and all of that as well … We’re still doing some cool things, and we’ve got some tracks coming out after this one, like a cover, and just keeping things interesting I guess without a lot of shows. It’s hard though.

What’s the cover? Are we allowed to know yet?

Emma: Nah. [Laughs]

It wouldn’t happen to be any song from this band, would it? [I tilt the camera down to focus on my DEFTONES Around the Fur shirt. Their eyes go wide.]

Andy: I’m not going to confirm or deny. [Laughs] What can we do?

Emma: How does he know this?

Andy: He’s definitely psychic!

Well, you guys did play My Own Summer (Shove It) [at The Other Festival], sans screaming, which I thought was interesting.

Andy: Yeah.

Was the screaming something you kind of shy away from vocally in that song? I’ve never heard the song performed like that before. Was that intentional?

Andy: [To Emma] You don’t really do that style, do you?

Emma: No.

Andy: We kind of did our own thing. DEFTONES stuff, all the verses and that are quite low-down, in terms of the style that he’s singing, and we kind of stuck with that for the whole track. But fortunately, we’ve become really good friends with a vocalist who features on our newest track, Max Van Heusden his name is. He’s a beast when it comes to those screams, so we’ve kind of incorporated him a lot more in our stuff, so he may even get a feature in the cover too.

He featured on Fall to the Beast, which comes out today. How long have you guys been working on it?

Emma: This one took us longer than we wanted it to take.

Andy: Yeah. We probably wrote it towards the start of the year … We’ve been writing heaps and heaps of tracks, and this is kind of the start of when we’re bringing these tracks out now, so there’s this whole backlog of songs that we’re going to start to release, and this is the first one. So even though we’ve had it in the bag for a while, it’s taken us a while to release it.

Are you guys still planning on releasing an EP or an album? I’m going off information I had when you guys played The Other Festival.

Andy: It’s kind of a weird thing to know whether to release stuff at the same time, or whether to trickle it out … The way streaming stuff works now, it almost seems like it’s advantageous to keep releasing singles over the course of a year, rather than a whole album that you would traditionally do. It’s something we’re still talking about.

Emma: Without the shows … I think a lot of albums and merch sell at shows, but because we’ve had limited shows, we’ve been more interested in doing singles for now. But once the shows come along, I think it’s great to have physical copies still. I’m still old-school – I believe in it.

Andy: I really like albums. When there’s an album that’s released … I don’t know if you’ve heard BLACKBRIAR. They’re a band from The Netherlands – a female-fronted heavy band. They released an album last year, and that’s just been on repeat. I really like when albums are released, but it’s kind of like tossing up having the big push for your album and then you don’t have anything for a year or so, or do you just keep releasing singles, and keep that momentum going?

It’s interesting that you mention that. With a lot of my favourite bands, for example, DEFTONES … They released Ohms last year, and there is so much coming out, so often, that I’ve only listened to it maybe five or six times, and they’re one of my favourite bands.

Andy: For sure. I know. There is so much music at the moment, everywhere.

Emma: Especially now. Everyone’s been writing.

Another beautifully stock-standard music question: what are some of the major influences that shaped THE ATOMIC BEAU PROJECT?

Andy: I guess the idea for this band was originally … We both grew up playing a massive range of styles, you know? I listened to a lot of heavy stuff growing up, but I’d play jazz stuff and then rock stuff, folk stuff … Beau actually used to play … a lot of her stuff was almost folk-y kind of music. THE ATOMIC BEAU PROJECT was really just trying to bring together a lot of these styles, but with the emphasis on the heavy part. So we wanted to retain Beau’s folk-y vocals, but have that massive heavy element behind it. Our inspirations come from everywhere, hey?

Emma: So many things.

Andy: Like, in the heavy realm, BLACKBRIAR is the band I’m really into at the moment. SPIRITBOX, I’m really into at the moment … [To Emma] What are you into?

Emma: MUSE, DEFTONES … I don’t know. I was really into emo bands back when I was a teen, I loved that shit! [Smiles] There are probably all those things thrown in, I think.

Andy: I like to define it as almost “post-genre”. I like this idea of music that doesn’t have as many boundaries as it used to, which is hard in heavy music, because people like to define the style of heavy music. Either you’re djent, or power metal, or prog metal. They like to put you in a box, whereas I kind of like to dip our hands in all different areas.

I’m noticing bands like DON BROCO sound like a thousand different bands. There seem to be no walls with some of them. The other thing that I have noticed is oh my god, MESHUGGAH should have patented their guitar tone, because I swear to god, everyone uses it now. Have you noticed that?

Andy: Yeah, it’s like stock-standard, low-tuning, chugging away. For sure.

One of my favourite interviews was with a woman named Michele Madden. She was the frontwoman for an Australian metal band called TOURETTES … The reason that I bring her up is that she said she used to hang up on interviewers when they’d ask her who her favourite female vocalists were … She was like, “Would you ask Chris Cornell who his favourite male vocalists were?” I laughed at the time, but then I thought, I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Having a female vocalist … A) it’s not as common, particularly in heavy music, and B) I genuinely think they sound different. What are your thoughts on that, as a woman who sings?

Emma: Each to their own, hey? If that’s her vibe, then that’s fine. I get that. Personally, I don’t mind it. It’s a question that does come up in every interview, and I’m fine with that, yeah. Maybe she just wasn’t vibing that, and that’s cool too.

Andy: I think I hardly listen to male vocals anymore. Maybe that’s just because I play in a female-fronted band.

Emma: Probably! [Laughs]

Andy: All my favourite bands are female-fronted bands.

Emma: You’ve been very influenced by that now, I think … I think there should be more female-fronted metal bands as well. It would be a good vibe … At lots of festivals, it will be just a sausage-fest. We need more chicks in there!

Fall to the Beast is out now.

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