Since entering the music world back in 2017 Melbourne rock outfit Bad Juju have been steadily honing their craft through a couple of EPs and countless tours.
The fruit of those spoils began to ferment last year with the release of their first single from their debut album Blue Heaven titled Misery Sticks To Me. This was followed up by The Other Side before Nothing To Give and Raincoat rounded out a diverse selection of brutally raw and honest singles that perfectly encapsulate the feelings conveyed on the full length.
“With the singles we wanted to give a strong representation of what the band is.”
Abe Miller
The underlying theme woven throughout Blue Heaven – which will be released on July 21 – explores the observation of Earth from afar; portraying how the planet appears peaceful and calm, yet at closer inspection, the complexities and struggles of life become more evident. It is a deeply personal yet cathartic view of the world we live in and one delivered with far more maturity expected from a band releasing their first ever album.
HEAVY caught up with guitarist Abe Miller to go even deeper.
“We’ve been working on it for so long that it’s great to finally get it out,” Miller smiled. “We have heard the songs a lot (laughs), so we’re pretty keen to get it out of our heads and get it into other people’s and have them start listening to it.”
We press Miller to describe the album musically.
“I would think it’s maybe a bit more of a cohesive body of work for us,” he measured. “It’s a bit more thought out than our two previous EPs. We really tried to focus in on what our sound was, and develop our sound from our last EP and make a body of work that we’re proud of. Musically, being a guitarist, the tones are much more… I guess… similar to each other. There’s a bit more fuzz and that sort of thing. It’s something that we’re proud of and something we hope people can listen to start to finish and get what we were going for and then when they get to the end hopefully repeat and feels like it was meant to go again.”
In the full interview we discuss what lessons learnt from their EP’s that Bad Juju took into the debut album, the singles released and how they represent the album, featuring on Channel 7’s Friday Night Footy and what that meant for the band, conveying emotion through their music, the underlying theme of Blue Heaven and how difficult it was to portray those feelings, live shows and more.
