“It’s amazing how in sync we were. It was a lot of fun. It feels like a Karate class, just somewhere to go once a week and let out some aggression.”
Hutchy
Back in the Summer of 1997 the seeds of a band who have thrived over the ensuing quarter of a century were sewn from humble beginnings.
When guitarist Aaron Butler returned from Florida armed with a bunch of TASCAM 4 track recordings and a mind recently blown by the music coming out of the scene he had just left, the initial strands that were to become Frankenbok DNA had begun to fester.
The musical inspiration brought home from the US was the catalyst for a band that this year celebrates 25 years of music, and one which was set to redefine the way heavy metal music was played in this country.
Along with vocalist Adam ‘Hutchy’ Glynn, Butler began scheming and manipulating an idea, in the process setting off a chain of events that will manifest at The Tote in Melbourne on December 10 when Frankenbok play a special anniversary show featuring each of the five major incarnations of the band from their 25-year history.
Original vocalist and fellow founding member Hutchy embraced Butler’s early eclectic vision, veering off in his own unique sonic tangents and giving voice to a form of music that until that point was the sole domain of international superstars and visionaries.
It was a form of rap, metal and hard rock given a uniquely Australian fabric and one which was to revolutionise many aspects of the Australian heavy metal scene.
Hutchy went on to record one album (Greetings & Salutations) and an EP (The Loopholes & Greatest Excuses) before leaving the band just when the toils of their hours of hard work and dedication were starting to bear fruit.
It was the first sign of fracture in Frankenbok’s fledgling journey, but one which was to be repeated a number of other times over the ensuing years.
Each time a member left another folded into their place, with the Frankenbok faithful welcoming each new addition without question. But it was the departure of Hutchy – who at the time was integral to the sonically diverse nature of Frankenbok’s music – that caused the biggest and most lasting ripples.
That’s not to say incoming vocalist Adam B Metal wasn’t equally as important in the continued evolution of Frankenbok, but it was the sporadic experimental techniques that Hutchy brought to the table that formed a massive part of Frankenbok’s core sound.
After deliberately moving in different directions to his former friends and bandmates for a number of years, Hutchy finally rejoined what has been dubbed the “Frankenbok Family” earlier this year when the ambitious decision to attempt to reform each significant Frankebok line-up for a one-off celebration recognising the entire history of the band was floated.
It was a suggestion that at the time seemed almost too left of field to stand a chance of succeeding, but now, less than two weeks out from the show, the planets have aligned without dispute and all of the past and present members of the Frankenbok Family are ready to once more flex their musical muscles.
HEAVY sat down with Hutchy for a frank and open discussion about his time in Frankenbok, the factors that resulted in his premature exit, what to expect from the anniversary show and much more.
We start, of course, with the start…
“I remember hearing from Azza’s fiance at the time, Sonya, and she rang me, and we caught up, and she told me that Aaron was coming back,” Hutchy recalled. “I was very excited because when I first met Aaron all those years ago he was playing in bands with Tim and I just really liked what he did. I knew him throughout high school, and he was just one of those guys that stood out and I always wanted to approach him back in the day when I was younger and less confident and hit him up to do something. He came back, and he had these tapes with the recordings he had done – it was quite different to what he’d previously done – and at the time my band Bacterium was on the way out, so I said to him I’d love to do something and would you be open to me putting vocals over this stuff, and he said yeah sure. He said what do we do for a drummer (the recorded tracks were all done using a drum machine) and I said you have the drum machine so let’s just start from there and build.”
Despite the excitement that inevitably surrounds any new band project, Hutchy says the aspiring revolutionaries still had a semblance of a musical vision from which to mould this new beast.
“My old band was a bit more Mr. Bungle influenced,” he recalled, “so lots of metal crossed with funk jazz combinations, so I wanted to be a brutal death metal band. I was really into Damaged and Napalm Death and Bloodduster, so I didn’t really want to sing clean at all. I just wanted to do growling and screaming all the way through, so if you listen to the earlier stuff that’s where the vocals kind of were. The drum machine gave it a kind of quirky edge to it, a really tacky, tinny, casio sound and sound and that inspired some of the vocals as well, in the sense of the weird stuff I was doing back in the early days.”
In the full interview, Hutchy gives a comprehensive look at his time with Frankenbok, the problems that led to his departure, other musical projects, reconnecting with the band and much more.
