Melbourne hard rock outfit The Last Martyr are a band who is constantly aware of the ever-changing cycles that comprise the modern music scene.
While having their foundations in energetic hard rock, they have also folded in other genres steadily over the last couple of releases, further refining their sound and creating a brand of music identifiably their own.
With the release of their latest single Afterglow, The Last Martyr have covered yet more musical scope – albeit via subtle undertones rather than wholesale change.
Vocalist Monica Strut caught up with HEAVY to talk about the single and the band’s plans for the foreseeable future.
“We actually wrote this song about a year ago now,” she revealed. “We’ve been holding onto it for a while, but because of the lockdowns and pandemic we were kind of pushing back all our releases, and it’s cool to have it out there. I’m very curious what people are going to think of this one because unlike any of our other songs, we actually randomly threw in a trap part in the second verse. It’s definitely a typical Last Martyr song – we love our big choruses, and it’s very guitar driven – but with the second verse I wrote a bit of a rap for it! It was a random… not as a joke… but a random idea that we were throwing around in the studio as we were thinking about something different that we could do with this song. A few of us listened to trap then all of a sudden our producer was writing a beat and that night I went home and was walking around my neighbourhood in the dead of winter trying to write this rap and the next day I recorded it, and it’s one of my favourite parts on the whole EP, so I’m really, really glad that we just went for it.”
In the full interview, Monica talks more about Afterglow and its musical direction, the personal nature of her lyrics, the slight change in musical direction on the upcoming EP Purgatory, their big shows coming up and more.
