When people were leaving Progfest this year a lot of people were talking about one of the bands on the bill that hailed from Ballarat in rural Victoria – Ebonivory. For some they were not an new expierence as their 2015 album The Only Constant is now considered a cult classic. For the newcomers to the band though this was a pivotal moment, they had just discovered a band that promises to be a staple on the national and international scene for a great many years to come. Now, while working on new music, Ebonivory are gearing up for two tours as they support Dead Letter Circus and Circles and again they are going to wow a great many prog fans.
“It was unreal,” says founding member Charlie Powlett as he reflects on Progest to HEAVY Mag. “I can remember when Skyharbor released one of their first albums, it really gelled with me musically. It was such a great blend of physicality and accessibility so being in the same venue and playing on the same day as them was just unreal… especially because we come from Ballarat where there isn’t much opportunity to play with international acts so yeah it was kind of surreal. But then you realise that big acts like that came from being smaller bands and working their way up to there, so that made it really inspiring to share the stage with them.”
Our talk turns to what it is like for a band like Ebonicory playing before a band like Circles and Dead Letter Circus and how it is a great opportunity for them to introduce even more people to their music. “Everyone there is there for progressive metal and progressive music,” Powlett explains. “So the main aim is to impress people that are there and hopefully they make a connection with us and search us up afterwards and try to listen to our back catalog of music and hopefully it will gain us some really hardcore fans. We’ve been rehearsing a lot more, practicing smart. We rehearse like we would play live and have made sure everyone has the sample tracks of our songs. But yeah we have just been trying to recreate what it is like on stage at our rehearsals. So to our fans though I would just say come and see us live and come out to see us just to hang out with us. We all love music and we all love to hang out, we’re all extremely personable so we are just keen to see how it all goes and we want to give an absolute kick ass performance.”
You can see Ebonivory on tour with Dead Letter Circus and Circles during 2019.
