The Bible Bashers

Fri 16th Dec, 2011 in Features

If rock music is officially dead in Perth, then the Bible Bashers are screwed. They just spent a bunch of money to record a new single and they can most likely kiss it goodbye. But they’ve been screwed since the day they formed in 2008 and they like it that way. The band’s music continues to be as attractive to hip live venues as what the Pacific Motel wreckage is to Harold Street in Mt Lawley. Case in point:

It offends innocent passers by.
It attracts an intimidating number of filthy characters.
You may be attacked if you approach it.

It’s a wonder the Bashers still get booked after three years. There’s not many suitable venues left – and willing – to regularly book a band with this kind of mission statement: “To take the piss, steal your fans, knock up your sisters, break into your house while you’re sleeping and rub our genitals on your fine china,” frontman Laith Tyranny slurs to Faster Louder.

“We want to infiltrate and appeal to the same group of people we target for satire. Are we playing your anthems or holding a mirror up to you in disgust? Either way, everybody is getting fucked after the show.”

But unlike the abandoned Pacific Motel, which has finally been boarded up properly after years of crack-squatter-orgy horror stories, no one gives enough of a shit about the Bible Bashers to muffle them. Most people in Perth have never even heard of the band, but that’s ok Tyranny claims:

“We’re not under any delusions of grandeur – that there’s some mass market or we’re
going to be the darlings of any radio station. The pop in pop music stands for popular and popular translates to lowest common denominator entertainment.”

So Laith, let’s get this straight; you’re calling pop music lowest common denominator? This claim seems a bit rich coming from the frontman of a band who says the main reason they started out was “to fool around, piss, spew and fart”. A band that has promoted their material with pictures of Austrian sex monster Josef Fritzl and has plans involving a lollipop handout at private girls’ school Mercedes College.

“We want to do a photo shoot out the front of Mercedes College, on motorbikes handing out lollipops. I think that’s hilarious; saying that we’re after jail bait,” Tyranny boasts.

“It’s the age-old argument… does shock have artistic merit? Or is it lowest common denominator entertainment?

“It’s a fine line between shocking people, offending people, not caring and making a social commentary… but you have to make it clear to people… otherwise you’re going to come off as being sexist or misogynistic… the kind of stuff you don’t want your band associated with.

“I shouldn’t complain, I’m secretly hoping someone does take offence because the only way we’re going to get out of this shit-kicking, shit-heel town is if we offend people enough to get noticed.”

The Bashers’ vile persona might indeed be lowest common denominator entertainment, but Tyranny says it’s all part of their lowbrow theatre. Part of performing in a way that “plenty of mild-mannered, well-behaved indie rock bands” in town aren’t. It’s a case of reckless abandonment that has had them at odds with venues in the past. According to Tyranny, management at The Bird told him they liked what he did, but he “obviously had no fucking respect for the venue” because of the way he treated the equipment at a show earlier in the year. He touts The Bird as a “great venue” and one he loves playing at, claiming the band never “breaks shit intentionally”.

“I’ve never gone out of my way to break equipment, it’s part of a rock performance that you get into it.”

Tyranny might be the voice of the band, but the dark undertones are the tidings of lyricist and drummer Jon Schmidt. The Bashers’ latest ‘prayer book’, released earlier in the year, is filled with morbid newspaper cut outs of everything that’s fucked up in the world. Schmidt gets off on real-life tales about Cambodian crematorium cannibals and a Papua New Guinean gouging out a fellow villager’s eyes and eating them. He keeps a tattered scrapbook full of these treasures, much like a small child keeps schoolwork pastings to proudly show his Mum.

It’s the so-messed-up-its-laughable elements that Schmidt brought to their first self-titled release and brings again to their latest release, the double A-side single Cray Bait/Swan Dive. Chatter of road kill and whore houses, you know, the usual stuff. It’s a slightly rockier direction than their crunchy first release. Tyranny even ventures out of the guttural registers and into the Bon Jovi ones. It was recorded with Al Smith at the famous Bergerk! Studios.

“Al Smith was incredible to work with, I’m amazed at how focused he was and helped us get through the work without ever getting off track. Normally we’re pretty aimless in the studio and tend to just get smashed and waste time,” Tyranny cheers.

“ Max Ducker felt the pain of the last one, it was like polishing a turd over and over, trying to re track and salvage our shambolic nonsense… no fault of Max’s of course, he’s a legend.”

With the single running at just over five minutes, Tyranny hopes sex partners will be able to listen to it at least a couple of times before finishing up.

“Five minutes is probably enough to get most guys off, but we’d like to encourage all the guys who listen to our music to remember it should always be ladies first… It’s very important to let her hit you in the face, closed fist, while she calls you names like ‘Peter’, ‘Byron’, ‘Llewellen’, ‘Laith’ or ‘Jon’.”

Back to this rock is dead in Perth thing, is it dead Laith?

“If rock n roll isn’t dead, then it is certainly burying itself further and further underground..but that’s ok,” Tyranny says.

“Bars are a lot more high class now… we’re not talking about the Hydey 2002 – bare chested Mohawk men jumping off couches. But I’m in no way complaining.”

The Bible Bashers launch their new single tonight at the Rosemount.

Never seen the Pacific Motel? Take a look at it here