By Rod Whitfield
This long running American punk rock four piece are about to make what their frontman Nuno Pereira believes to be their third or fourth trip to Australia for a tour. He and his band are very excited about coming back, but his greatest memories of previous Aussie tours all appear to centre around his health and life being in danger and the receiving of much personal injury to himself.
“I remember them all,” he states, “let’s see, I’ve had my teeth broken out, I fell 15 feet off a rail at the front of the stage, I almost drowned swimming out to some islands, that was a good time! That was in Byron Bay. We’ve had some adventures man! It’s all fun, that’s why we go out there, to push limits!”
Luckily, the closest he has come to being bitten by some of our world famously dangerous native fauna was an overindulgence in some of our local amber product, of which he subsequently still became a fan, despite its after effects.
“No, thank God, no!” He exclaims, “I did get really hungover once, that’s about it. That infamous 12 pack of Coopers came back to bite me in the ass. Yeah, it’s so good, can’t wait to crack a few when we get down there.”
The band have been around since the late 90s, and have released no less than six full length album. Pereira tells us that that they will be covering their entire recorded history on their own headline tour of Australia, when they get to wind out and play for a good hour plus. And to that end as well, they have something quite special happening for their Aussie fans.
“We try to do a really good mix of all the records. It’s fun for us, and I think our fans, I think they’d kill us we just played new shit,” he laughs, “so we always try to keep it as a good mix, and we’re pulling out a couple of things, we’re adding a few ‘request shows’, so people can log on and vote on what they want to hear.
“That’s fun for us too, because inevitably there’ll be a song we haven’t played for several years. So we’ll see how that goes.”
It’s been almost a year and a half since the band’s last album, Partycrasher, and he informs us that they have some new material on the way, which will become A Wilhelm Scream album number seven in the not too distant future, although at the same time they are in no massive rush to get something new out there.
“There’s songs the we demo’d and stuff, that we never got around to finishing, for whatever reason” he reveals, “Trevor and I were just talking about going over some of those songs once we get home.
“We like to take it easy, we don’t like to pressure ourselves over it,” he goes on, “we don’t like to create for creating’s sake. So we’ll definitely get back at it, everyone’s kind of scattered, once we’re off tour everyone’s got their own lives to get back to, so it’s been tough to give a lot of time to that. But we do have some songs there that we’ve just got to tidy up and they’ll be done. Hopefully we’ll be able to release some of those songs in the next year or so.”
Some of the members of A Wilhelm Scream have been playing together for almost 20 years, and the band itself formed in 1999, and Pereira tells us that he’s feeling every single one of those years.
“Oh yeah, it definitely does (feel like more than a decade and a half),” he admits, without hesitation, “Sometimes it feels like double that! But what we have going on is a very special and a very rare thing, and we all appreciate it and none of take it for granted.
“We’re not driving around in fancy cars and living in big houses because of the music we play, we all have side jobs and stuff, things like getting to tour Australia put everything into perspective and make it all worth it.”
Tour Dates
Saturday April 25th – Riot, Adelaide 18+
Tickets available at the door
Sunday April 26th – Crowbar, Brisbane 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au
Monday April 27th – Newtown Social Club, Sydney 18+
(PUBLIC HOLIDAY)Tickets available at www.newtownsocialclub.com| www.oztix.com.au
Friday May 1st – The Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au
Saturday May 2nd –The Brisbane Hotel , Hobart 18+
Tickets available at www.oztix.com.au
