After almost 10 strong years of challenging the boundaries of contemporary music together, these three Sydney punks are no strangers to releasing a damn fine record for us to colour our lives with. Whilst riding the media boat just after the release of their third album to date BadBlood!!! Semone Maksimovic caught up with Darren Cross on a cold sunny day as the wind ripped apart the outside world, to talk about the new album, pushing the boundaries, embarrassing moments, Olivia Newton John and flying kites.

First of all wow, what a great record! You really did manage to capture the live vibe very well.
Oh thanks (laughs) that’s what we were hoping to achieve.

So, how long did it take to write and record?
A bit over a year I think, we did it all at our Gerlog Studios in Alexandria which is at Troy Horse in between some rehearsal studios there and it was just really a space that we hired off them, nothing much and just the basic…. equipment we use. It was pretty cool though, I think ALexandria’s a bit of a weird area, it gets a bit nasty in those housos (housing commission flats) across the road at night, it’s a pretty interesting place all up, like the heroin clinic across the road comes in handy (only joking). It was fun, it was good to be in an environment that was really creative as opposed to a sterile environment like those big studios where people usually go and record.

And also where you’re watching the clock the whole time.
Totally, I don’t even know how people can sing in those environments, especially for me, I’ve tried to do it before in those environments and it’s weird. But if you’re just in the surroundings of your own studio, I just get in there and record it all before Burke and Presser get in there, it was so much easier and I was able to concentrate on what I wanted to do, rather than watching the clock.

Being a fan of the more old-school Gerling material, I was glad to see you pick up the guitars once again and fuse some old school Gerling with Gerling 2003.
It just felt like a logical thing to do, that part of Gerling never went away really. With the last album we really wanted to do an album like that, where with this album we wanted to go back to our roots and just get how we are live as a balance on the cd, where with WYTCTS we didn’t really care about how we were going to do it live, it was more this album of all these different songs that fit into each other and I think that was a really ambitious record, we don’t regret anything about it, but this time we just wanted to do something that we could do live, so I just decided to sing a lot more. I think when we play it live now, it sounds even rawer than the album, but it feels really good, we just played the first two shows on the BadBlood!!! tour in Melbourne and Adelaide.

How did the new material go down at those shows?
Really good and it just felt really good and everyone was still psyched, so it was great, lots of fun.

There seems to be a lot of different influences filtering through on Badblood!!! the most interesting being The Strokes-like In The City, how did that idea come about? The concept works really well and comes as a surprise to most.
That’s pretty negative, that whole Strokes reference.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it works really well on that track.
It doesn’t sound like The Strokes to me, I don’t know, The Strokes don’t use kraut rock beats and they don’t use live horns, I felt that it was more like The Saints doing a kraut rock song or something like that, or even a bit Bacharach with just the simple melodies and the whole horn section just playing in the chorus, I mean The Stroke aren’t the fucking first people to sing through distortion, I mean people should check out our EP we did 10 years ago!

People have said that the vocals on the whole record sound a bit Strokes-ish, I didn’t see the reference at all in the vox,I thought it was more just the guitars on In The City.
Yeah, maybe the guitars a little, just the simplistic indie guitars playing standard melodies, totally. I mean I don’t mind that, I mean jesus, The Strokes they’re a good band to be compared to I guess, at least they’re not saying fuckin’ .... was going to let my tongue slip a bit there, but I’ve learnt Semone, not to do that anymore… so if they say The Strokes, then they say The Strokes, I can’t do anything really to change their minds. People who say the album sounds like The Strokes, to me should just listen to some more fuckin’ music.

After such a long time after When Young Terrorists Chase The Sun, why only whet our appetites with only 37 minutes? Is that to fit in with the live vibe of the album?
Hmm, I don’t know, with the songs that we got, it felt like for BadBlood!!! that was all we really wanted to say, we just nailed it with those songs and it felt really strong to us, we’re really into strong records with no filler on it. We just thought, ‘yeah, we’ve done it, this is what we want to say, it all works’ and we like short albums as well, you know, you don’t want to put songs on just cause you can and people get bored with it.

What sort of dance music influenced you whilst recording? There seems to be this perfect fusion of dance and punk rock.
Yeah well, I guess coming from our last album where there was a few dance moments on that and coming from when we first started out all those years ago, we always had a very DIY punk attitude and I just don’t think it’s ever come out in our music or how we perceive ourselves. We’re just in a really fortunate position where now we can just do all the music ourselves and do the artwork ourselves and really just skip everyone else from putting their input in, it feels better to me. Especially when we play live, I always though Ghost Patrol had like this weird fucked up break beat in it, see we’ve always wanted to fuse Gerling with like a dance mentality in remaining more up beat, we don’t really have any slow Gerling songs and we’ve always wanted to make people dance to our music. So we’ve just taken what we can from who Gerling were when we started and I don’t think it’s like a crazy, massive departure from anyone who has seen us live, it’s still my voice aggressively shouting or whatever. Anyone who’s seen us live will understand and get into the record and I agree, it is a good balance between the two. But influences, I don’t really like to talk about influences, cause people kind of generalise what you do that way, but we have heard stuff when we were making the record and gone, ‘that’s cool’ and it kind of gives you confidence or inspiration that there’s someone somewhere else in the world doing the same thing, but I think our album sounds like Gerling, so we’re not ripping anyone off really.

Which track are you most proud of on the album, why?
Geez, I don’t know, that’s a hard one. I guess Blood On The Microphone for me, cause it really works the most at the moment but I guess in terms of technical tricks and stuff like that it would have to be ‘We Got Venom’ I think that’s a really powerful song, that was the one that Magoo added the most to and that one to me just felt really special to me when we finished it. But, Blood on The Microphone is probably my favourite at the moment, cause I just think that’s the one that sums up the whole punk disco thing, so if someone said, ‘oh what do Gerling sound like now?’ and I could only pick one song I’d tell them to listen to that.

I also noticed that with this album there seems to be a fashion coming along with it, a type of punk chic, are you becoming a fashion conscious band now?
What do you mean?

The suit jackets with t-shirts and the funky hair cuts and clothes that would go down well at a punk rock show or pass off easily on the dance floor and tends to go along with the sound of the album with the disco punk attitude.
Yeah, I don’t know, I just like wearing those clothes, why I don’t know but I don’t think it’s changed that much and fuck it if you don’t wanna brush your hair and it all sticks up, then just leave it like that. I guess it does kind of come with the music and the music you make does reflect on your character and how you feel, so if we’re feeling a bit more dark or a bit more punk then I guess that will come out in what we wear, I mean we won’t be wearing adidas tracksuits and puma hats whereas if we were doing hip hop or something like that we’d be wearing that sort of stuff. It kinda comes with the territory really, that’s probably why.

Do you have any wise fashion tips for the fashion conscious Gerling fans out there?
Yeah, buy the new Schwipe [a clothing label run by Darren and Tim Everest] Gerling limited edition t-shirt which there are only 100 of that we’re selling on tour, check them out, they’re really cool, they’ve got a massive big skull on the front designed by Rhys Lees who’s an awesome painter; so that’s about all at the moment and wear some clothes that are warm cause it’s a bit cold at the moment. (laughs)

What kinds of tricks do you have up your sleeve for the upcoming shows on this tour?
Nothing really, the music is still a buzz to us, we’ve only played BadBlood!!! and In The City live twice before and that was this weekend just gone by in Melbourne and Adelaide. They sounded really good, so we’re really excited about that and just being able to play a lot of new songs live is just a buzz to us and just playing songs you really love with guys you really love is lots of fun, so we haven’t got any trick but hopefully we can deliver a powerful performance that will inspire people.

What’s been your most memorable show and what was it that made it so memorable?
It’s probably out of two, it’s probably out of Livid 99 and it was the most people out of 10,000 that we’d ever played to before and that was just overwhelming, that was still at the Children Of Telepathic Experiences stage of our career. Fuck, that was just really full on, we weren’t expecting that at all and the other show was The Fuji Rock Festival in Japan that we did about two years ago when Oasis, Eminem and Neil Young headlined and it was the same kind of thing, we were the second band on in the festival and there was nobody there for the first local band and when we came out it was just a full tent of people, it was about the size of The Big Day Out dance tent, but the whole tent was packed with all of these Japanese people screaming hysterically and we were like ‘how the fuck did this happen?’

Did you have any idea what they were saying?
Nah, not at all, my subconscience was going ‘yeah, they really like me’ (laughs) so I was feeling loved, whatever that meant and we just played an amazing show. Usually festivals I’m not so crazy about, I’m more into the smaller venues, but those two festivals really do stand out in our career I reckon.

What are your plans for the rest of this year? Are you planning to get back over to Japan & the UK to release BadBlood!!!?
Yeah, it’s all being worked out now, so nothing’s really been confirmed 100%, so I really can’t start yapping away about it, but I think some good stuff’s going to happen this year for Gerling.

What’s been your most embarrassing moment on stage?
Um, probably at another Livid, and during Enter Space Capsule (where we don’t really do anything in that one song) I knocked out the four track, the music stopped and everybody had stopped dancing and they were all looking at me, then I saw the cord on the ground and I picked it up and just put it back into the four track and everybody started cheering and started dancing again, it was really perfect timing and really funny, but most embarrassing and I guess when my mum comes and sees us and we used to do ‘Hot Computer’ and I got the microphone as my penis and I look up and there’s my mum staring at me like ‘c’mon Darren, grow up a bit’ but those two things would probably be it.

After a day full of interview about the album, it’s always fun to pull out a few fun hypotheticals, so here goes…

If you could challenge any Australian band to a mud wrestling match who would it be and who do you think would win?
Can I kinda go back in time?

Yeah sure.
Okay, well, not Gerling, just me and I would challenge Olivia Newton John, in her early 80s phase and I would let her win, just to be in the mud pit with her, that would be cool (laughs) I like her, I love her.

(laughs) what would she be wearing back then?
Probably some kind of cool headband and I don’t know, she could wear anything I reckon, she could be wearing a fucking farming outfit and still look good to me. (laughs)

Okay, if there was one person living or dead you could fly a kite with, who would it be? Don’t ask me why a kite, that just came out…
(both laugh) Fuck, I don’t know, Presser I guess, it’d be fun cause we’d just laugh the whole time.

And lastly, if you were told you were only allowed to play one last show, where would it be and who would it be with?
I’d have to say The Annandale Hotel, cause we’ve had some of our best shows there and I really like the atmosphere and the sound onstage there and if we could get AC/DC that would be pretty cool or The Birthday Party.

Ohh, The Birthday Party, that would be super cool!
Hmm, yeah probably The Birthday Party over AC/DC yeah, we’ll go The Birthday Party.