Interview to SHARPSHOOTER (Australia)

1. Hello my friends, pleasure to have you on Rotten Pages ´zine. How are you doing today? Let us set the scene first. Where do we find you right now? Please describe your surroundings.

Jess: I am at my dining room table, looking out onto my backyard. It’s a relatively sunny day for Adelaide in the dead of winter.

Kieran: In a computer room shrouded in darkness with a coffee as black as midnight.

Max: I’ve just gotten home after band rehearsal, had a shower, and am diligently answering my interview questions before bedtime while a small fan heater warms my feet!

2. This is a new band with a debut single 7”, so let's start at the beginning. Sharpshooter is based out of Adelaide, Australia. Were the three of you friends or colleagues growing up in the same town? Had you known each other prior to Sharpshooter?

Jess: I’ve known Kran since I was 16; we used to go to all the same concerts and would see each other and chat when lining up at shows early to get to the front row in the mosh. We lived one suburb over from each other and would even see each other at the local mall buying concert tickets. I didn’t meet Max until he answered the ad to join Lucifer’s Fall.

Kieran: Jess and I have been in bands and known each other for about 20 years now and grew up around the same metalhead groups so we’d always see each other at shows and lining up for tickets back when that was a thing.

Max: We were all members of our previous band; I hadn’t met Kieran or Jess before that. I joined Lucifer’s Fall in early 2019. But yes, we did all grow up here in Adelaide.

3. Ahh.. OK, all of you are ex-members from former Doom band Lucifer's Fall. Why reason you leave it and what motivated you to start making music under the name Sharpshooter?

Jess: Lucifer’s Fall dissolved after Phil decided he didn’t want to make music as a band anymore. Kran, Max and I didn’t want that to just be the end, so we decided to forge on with a new project.

Kieran: Lucifer’s Fall ceased to exist basically once Phil (Deceiver, vocalist) lost interest in playing live and being in a band setting and we didn’t want to continue with a different vocalist so rather than form another band in a similar vein to Lucifer’s Fall, we decided to channel our faster influences and start a band with that in mind.

Max: Phil did give us the option of carrying on Lucifer’s Fall without him, but that didn’t seem right to us since it was his band and his vision; plus he did a lot of the behind-the-scenes managerial stuff; so we would have been replacing a lot more than just the singer / lyricist.

There’s no lingering bad blood between us and Phil. He’d been in bands for a long time, so his position is understandable, even if it was disappointing for us. Nowadays he actually helps out with various aspects of what we’re doing. He comes to the shows often, too.

4. Growing up and beginning to listen to heavy metal, what were the bands and albums that really influenced you the most?

Jess: When I first started listening to Heavy Metal Metallica were number one in my heart, and their first three albums ruled my world. Lita Ford was a huge inspiration as well. I also loved a lot of Melodic Death Metal, and Children of Bodom were a big influence on me as a guitarist.

Kieran: When I first started listening to faster bands in my very early teens Metallica and Sepultura were at the forefront of my awakening but bands like Slayer, Mercyful Fate and Death really changed the way I looked at music, especially creating it myself and writing riffs and songs.

Max: I have seven all-time favourite bands: Judas Priest, Van Halen, Slayer, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Entombed and Mayhem.

There’s many more, but over the years I came to realize that it narrowed down to those seven – and as well as being my favourites just to listen to, they’ve all had a pretty big musical influence on me too, in quite distinct ways. There are plenty of others that I wouldn’t count as my absolute favourites but that still qualify as being very big influences on me – Darkthrone and Bathory are examples. But those Top Seven - I can talk about how great they are for hours. I read as much information as I can find about their history, how they made their records, etc. (I’ve gotten the chance to see all of them live at least once, too.)

It sounds weird to say this, but I’m actually quite proud of my tastes. All seven of those acts are highly-respected, proven innovators in their particular niches, who have contributed a lot to heavy metal overall. You’ll notice that all of them are regarded as having put out several definitive albums in a row.

If I then had to narrow it down to just one, it’s probably Slayer. Dave Lombardo’s work on South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss taught me almost everything I ever wanted to know about metal drumming. Paul Bostaph is a fantastic drummer too. In my own playing I consciously rip off both of them – albeit inadequately – and I’m not even ashamed of it. I am proud to be nothing more than a pale imitation of the Slayer drummers. One of the joys of SharpShooter is that it’s the first band I’ve played in where I really get to lean into that.

My fixation with Slayer goes beyond the drums, though. I’ve always paid a lot of attention to the production values of their records. By trade I’m a sound engineer myself, and I use Slayer records as a benchmark for what I consider good sound; so that’s another pretty massive aspect of their influence on me. I still listen to Slayer records even though I’ve worn out the songs, simply because I like the way they’re produced.

5. Being from South Australia, is there a pretty good music culture out there? Has that culture influenced you all in any way and if so, how has it influenced you all?

Jess: It’s not bad for one of the smaller cities in Australia; most of the international tours stop by. There are lot of cool local bands in Adelaide as well. I wouldn’t say that the local underground culture itself inspired me though. It was just a place to come together with other like-minded people.

Kieran: The scene here is pretty good and diverse, there’s multiple metal festivals that get held every year; but the culture has had no impact on me. Like all scenes though, there’s truly great bands and truly terrible ones too.

Max: Adelaide is a decent-sized city which does have a reputation for being culturally boring, but I have always thought that reputation is a bit unfair in some ways. Anywhere looks boring if you’re comparing it to New York or Los Angeles or London, but we can’t all live in the entertainment capitals of the world. And if we’re feeling bored living elsewhere, then it’s up to us to make it exciting.

It’s certainly a place that people move away from if they want to make a career in music – usually they go to Melbourne. I’ve never felt the need to do that. I see it like this: If the musicians who birthed grunge all thought they had to move to Los Angeles to make it, there would be no Seattle, and probably no grunge scene either. No Nirvana or anything else.

And that’s not an isolated case. Particularly in America, rock’n’roll is littered with examples of vibrant regional music scenes; you just need the talent and willpower to start them. Metal has this too: Birmingham, San Francisco, Tampa, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Oslo. Australia’s a bit different to America because we’re more sparsely populated, but I’ve always believed something similar could happen here.

I take inspiration from an alternative rock band called The Mark of Cain, who came from Adelaide. The Australia I grew up in always lagged behind the rest of the world with musical trends and whatnot. So our music could be derivative, because it was already dated by the time it emerged. And it was harder for true innovators to get noticed when they did crop up; because it’s a smaller market overall.

But The Mark of Cain was the first band I ever heard where, even though they were from Adelaide, what they were doing sounded world-class and even a bit ahead of the times in their genre. And they were always firm about representing Adelaide; they never moved away. Granted that’s only one band and not a whole scene; but to me it proved: It can happen here.

As far as the music circuit in Adelaide goes – ie: how many venues there are to play, etc – no, it isn’t healthy at the moment. But every city in the Western world is having that same problem right now; even the New Yorks and Londons (and Melbournes). Gentrification, cost of living pressures, noise pollution curfews, etc. I have it on good authority that in the 1990s, you could actually play original music – not covers – almost every night a week around Adelaide and earn a modest living from it. These days, I don’t think you could even play four nights a week doing cover songs, and no way would you be earning a living doing that.

But again – it’s up to the people to rectify that. Moving away doesn’t. Complaining about lack of venues doesn’t, either. Make venues. Punk rockers used to put on gigs in squats; ravers put on dance parties in abandoned warehouses. Hardcore bands put on all-ages shows in record shops. Hip hop DJs performed at block parties. People need to lose the mindset that there’s no venues for rock just because the last hipster pub left with posters of Bon Scott and Jim Morrison in the toilet cubicles has finally closed.

6. Let´s talk about your debut single - musically, these both songs are packed with phenomenal riffs, incredible solos and some very speedy guitar work. How do you go about picking and creating the guitar parts for each song?

Jess: Kran comes up with that speedy goodness, and most of the time there is nothing to pick – because it’s just like “fuck that’s awesome, lets go with that!”. Sometimes I ask Kran, “can you play something that sounds like (insert idea)?” and somehow whatever I am trying to explain, he is able to convey to his fretboard! Max works his magic to make all those riffs come together through his drum work, and spends time considering the overall composition.

Kieran: Cheers mate! Honestly I just play and jam until I hear something that I like and record it for later until I can work it into something and play it for Max and Jess, then we decide whether it’s a yay or a nay.

7. How do you create and maintain the sound qualities that captivate listeners, and how important is it for you to evoke a specific mood or feeling through your music?

Jess: I want to be captivated by the sound myself, so we just keep working until the song sounds like something we want to put on the stereo and enjoy ourselves, and hopefully that translates to the other listeners.

Kieran: The only mood I’m interested in evoking for listeners of SharpShooter is headbanging fucking mania! There’s no formula to it though, if we think it sounds killer we think others will too. If they don’t, too fucking bad!

8. What are the most challenging aspects when writing a song and how do you go about the approach?

Jess: I think song writing in general is challenging, and the most challenging part of being a musician. So far, I’ve only contributed to songs lyrically. My approach there is to just always be collecting ideas, any phrases or words that I hear or come across I write down, as you never know what you can end up using. The lyrics for Pissing on the Ashes were already written before the idea for the song itself came about, and it was a lucky accident that the lyrics I had fit the song structure perfectly. So, there is not any one approach that I take, other than to just keep collecting ideas.

Kieran: Making sure the riff police don’t pay me a visit because I’ve nicked a riff from somewhere without realising, haha!

Max: I don’t find it too challenging at all. I do struggle to come up with riffs and don’t play guitar very often like I used to. But in this band, Kieran, our actual guitarist, comes up with most of the riffs anyway; and as soon as he’s got three or four that work together thematically, I usually take his recordings of them and figure out what the actual composition will be, which I put together in Reaper.

I sequence some programmed drums and bass behind that riff composition, and send it off as an .mp3 to the other two, who might suggest their own ideas. Then, we practice from that composition in the rehearsal room and tweak it depending on what issues or further ideas occur to us. A lot of that will depend on what Jess comes up with for lyrics and vocal lines, which is entirely her domain.

For me, the main considerations of song-writing are:

Making sure it’s not too long or short to get its point across;

making sure it features at least one riff, vocal refrain, rhythm pattern or melody that gets your attention and keeps it;

making sure it doesn’t tread the same ground as the last song you wrote ideas-wise;

making sure it sounds sufficiently ‘evil’ or ‘dark’ somehow, in line with our band’s ‘musical identity’.

9. When it comes to your lyrics, what are some of the key themes you’ve chosen to focus on in Sharpshooter?

Jess: So far, a key theme for SharpShooter has been struggles in life and overcoming those struggles. The idea behind Pissing on the Ashes, was not only to just burn the past and move on, but to then piss on those ashes and extinguish any smoulder, to ensure its end. Another theme has been bad characters in the world, as explored in Satanik Skumfukk.

10. What are some of your best moments during the live shows? What are some artists that you have been privileged to work with in the past? I´ve seen you shared stage with Mournful Congregation lately.

Jess: The best moment during a live show is when I am in a state of flow, when I am not thinking any thoughts, and I am truly in the moment. That is when I both perform the best, and feel the best. It is also great to see the crowd enjoying what you are doing, and feeling their energy radiating from the pit, I feed off that energy, and it gives me strength to perform even better. Rote Mare and Lucifer’s Fall played with so many great local, interstate and international bands, but my career highlight so far was opening for Uriah Heep with Puritan. Hopefully SharpShooter will be able to top that!

Kieran: Puritan opening for Uriah Heep some years back was eye opening for me and Jess. We were also lucky enough to play with some truly killer bands in Lucifer’s Fall like StarGazer, Cauldron Black Ram, Stalker, Charnel Altar, and Eldritch Rites to name a few. Funnily enough Mournful Congregation was the first band we ever played with LF too so it was a whole coming-full-circle moment when we played with them again.

11. Playing live is a totally different beast to studio work. How does your music work in a live environment?

Jess: I think our music feels completely natural in the live environment. There is a quality about Heavy Metal that just can’t be recorded, and you only really get to feel the true power in the live setting. I love it when I see a band and I think “holy shit, this is even better than the record!” I hope that’s what we can achieve.

Kieran: Our music is designed to be played in a live setting and be played even faster than the studio versions, as most great live bands do.

Max: Most of the songs are a bit faster than on the recordings, although I’ve gotten better at keeping the tempos in line. (We don’t play to a click track when we’re onstage.) At the risk of contradicting Kieran, I’ve always really hated listening to live recordings where a band completely rushes the tempo and kills the feel that I got used to from listening to the studio album; so I try to avoid that.

They’re also definitely a bit ‘looser’ with hopefully not too many fuck-ups – depending on whether we’re having a good night or not.

Probably the main difference is that since we’re a one-guitar band, the live arrangements can be a bit sparse because we often arrange and record as a two-guitar band.

I’ve often pondered that eventually we might recruit a second guitarist just to fill out the sound somewhat and make the live interpretations more faithful. But we do like being a three-piece, and it’s always much easier to reach intra-band agreement when there’s only three members negotiating with each other; so it’s hard to let go of that.

12. Being a Australian band, what sort of marketing ideas do you use to get your band's awareness in places like the US or Europe?

Jess: Mainly all social media outlets, Bandcamp YouTube etc.

Kieran: Social media works wonders for that, plus radio stations, online reviews and good old fashioned word-of-mouth.

Max: From what I’ve learned, there’s a decades-long tradition of Australian bands doing quite well in Europe, to the point where some of them get more successful over there than they ever achieve at home. From a ‘marketing’ perspective, being so far away from Europe perhaps makes us exotic somehow. Cultural isolation works both ways: I mentioned above that Australian music can be behind the times because we’re isolated; but sometimes that also means Australian music develops in ways unique from elsewhere, and people overseas definitely notice that.

In terms of national character, Europeans often perceive Australians as being a sort of ‘rough and ready’-type people, and that’s a stereotype that might even help in a context like rock’n’roll. Maybe that’s why so many Australian bands report enthusiastic crowds when they tour France or Germany. I do know that metal remains way more popular in European countries than it does in the Anglosphere; especially Germany; so any metal band from elsewhere is at least more likely to have an audience ready to welcome them, I guess.

SharpShooter is just starting out, and whether those kind of factors would ever apply or help us in a place like Europe, I don’t know. I’d like to think so; because if there’s one place I’d love to tour apart from Botswana, it’s Europe.

For America, it’s a different matter. Nobody can teach Americans anything about popular music because they literally invented it. Theirs is a culture saturated with entertainment, fame, extroversion, self-belief – basically all the things that make up rock’n’roll; which they also invented – along with all the other genres that led up to it, like jazz, blues and country. So I gather it’s much harder for bands from elsewhere to prove themselves in America. I reckon it would be as tough a nut for us to crack as it would for anybody. But touring there would be a real adventure, for sure.

13. With so many metal bands coming up these days, how do you manage to keep your material relevant? How challenging is it to come up with newer material?

Jess: My philosophy around this is that Heavy Metal has been through so many cycles, over so many decades, that even pursuing the idea of being relevant, is irrelevant. Heavy Metal is part of me. When I listen to true Heavy Metal it’s like I can feel it coursing through my veins. For me it’s about ensuring that we continue the legacy and keep the Heavy Metal flag flying. I just want to play music that makes me feel good; music that I want to hear and feel passionate about, and if that feeling reaches anyone else, it’s just a bonus.

Kieran: By being true to ourselves and what we represent and what we like to hear and listen to - everything else is irrelevant. Creating new material is as challenging as you want it to be.

Max: That’s up to the listener, I feel. There’s no point trying to second-guess trends or popularity cycles anymore. Everybody likes to have an audience, but I think most bands with enough self-awareness realize that you’re better off simply playing what you enjoy and trying to be good at that, rather than forcing anything unnaturally for the sake of popularity or relevance. The stakes in underground metal are so low anyway; you may as well just do what comes naturally and hope that chances are someone else, somewhere, will like it too.

In saying that, I’d love to be one of those bands that go down in history as having started a new sub-genre – to me, that would be the pinnacle of artistic recognition. But let’s be honest – there are a lot less bands making that sort of impact today. And I don’t think anybody’s listening to SharpShooter’s output so far and thinking we’re breaking any new stylistic ground like Carcass or Mayhem did.

I don’t even know if we aspire to that, honestly. I don’t consider us to be drastically original. I’m sure we remind you of plenty of other stuff you’ve heard. We do aspire to have our own musical identity, but that just comes with practice and development at its own pace. We do sound quite retro by 2024 standards, I think. But, we like what we do. And if listeners like it too, isn’t that enough?

14. What’s your view on the value of music today? In what way does the abundance of music change our perception of it?

Jess: Music still holds a lot of value and is a part of most everyone’s lives. The abundance and ease of access is fascinating in many ways, both positive and negative. There have been so many technological advances that have made music easier to create and get out to the world, as well as easier to access as a listener. I love how easy it is to access almost anything you want to listen to in any format, but I wonder how this abundance affects how people actually digest what they have consumed.

Kieran: I think music still has its place in society with relatively high standing. The ease of streaming applications such as Spotify or Youtube is a double-edged sword in that you can listen to whatever you want when you want with so much choice - sometimes it’s too much.

Max: Music has gone from being over-priced to being under-priced. Speaking as somebody who’s old enough to remember music before the internet, I can say that seeing how much is available online right at your fingertips, all basically for free, is really stupefying. And yes, the abundance does change our perception of its value. It’s made everything much easier to find, but it’s also much easier to forget what you found.

I wouldn’t go back to the way it was, though – having to decide which CD you’d buy out of the two you were interested in because you only had enough money for one. I used to walk into record shops wishing I had a magic power where everything in the racks would glow a level of brightness depending on how much I would like it if I listened, so I could collect music more efficiently.

In the absence of that magic power, I bought many, many albums that kind of sucked, simply because they’d gotten favourable reviews or were given ‘for fans of…’ status.

Whereas now, it’s all right there online. The challenge now is not personal budget constraints or critical gate-keeping, but time. How many hours in the day have you got to wade through vast troves of music? For the amount of metal that’s being released each year, to stay on top of it you’d have to listen to at least ten albums a day. You wouldn’t have much time to enjoy whatever you found that was good and let it grow on you.

15. What sorts of things do you lady and gentlemen enjoy outside of the musical realm? What are some things about you that we would never guess otherwise?

Jess: I enjoy spending time at the beach (when it’s hot!), cooking, and analogue photography. I’m also into cars, and enjoy cruising in my 1979 Trans Am.

Kieran: I enjoy lifting weights and going to the gym, physical strength helps improve mental strength which improves metal strength to create riffs, at least to me…

Max: Nothing really! I have no hobbies or interests outside of music and sound production. I have no children, no pets and no close friends. I like walking and reading every day; and going to the movies sometimes, but that’s about it. The more band-related stuff I have to do, the more I enjoy it. I’d gladly rehearse seven nights a week if the others were willing to as well. I am very one-dimensional.

16. That's all the questions I have for you guys. I'll let you have the final words by saying whatever you'd like to our readers and your fans out there.

Jess: You have the strength inside yourself to CONQUER HELL!!

Kieran: Buy our shit or fukk off!

Max: Thanks for having us! Hopefully my answers weren’t too boring! \m/

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