The rise of Australian band Deez Nuts has been nothing short of phenomenal. As if releasing five albums over twelve years that have all charted is not an amazing enough feat, last year the band found themselves on stage alongside acts such as The Amity Affliction and Motionless In White as they were asked to join the exclusive Vans Warped Tour.
When HEAVY Mag gets a chance to chat to JJ Peters about what the band has been up to he hasn’t been back to Australia in two years but is eagerly anticipating the release of their brand new album You Got Me Fucked Up which comes out this week.
“Obviously we have been rightfully touted as a party band over the years,” says Peters when I asked him about the fun vibe that seems to shine through on You Got Me Fucked Up. “Obviously when the band started we were a tongue-in-cheek party band cross with hardcore so even when the band matured out of that lyrically and even musically we still kind of had that attached to us so what I wanted to do was to bring that fun vibe back without having to rely on singing about drinking and smoking and whatever. Not that isn’t something that we do or isn’t fun to put in songs but we have definitely covered that ground ten times over. So I wanted to do something original but still have that fun energy, I wanted to bring that to our live shows and also bring that to our album.”
“I wanted to do something original and still have that fun energy,” he continues. “We wanted to bring that to our live shows but also bring that to our album but I wanted to have something different content wise. I actually found out that easier because on the last couple of albums when I did touch on partying I started to find that it a felt a bit redundant and I hate anything that feels forced. I didn’t want anything to feel fake or too convoluted so it was actually more fun to be able to bring that party vibe without having to rely on party lyrics.”
With so much talk on the lyrics and wanted to do things differently this time I ask Peters did they change the process he went through to write the lyrics this time. “I just reflected,” he explains. “I have always found that honesty creates the best music and that will give people the best chance to connect to it. Because if you’re writing stuff from an honest place then people might not have had the same experience as you but that honesty resonates and they attach that honest to something in their life, especially if you have things like that are too specific to yourself and not open to interpretation then people can’t relate it to themselves. So, I just reflected on things from the past couple of years, things that pissed me off but where I found a way to inject more party was through the melody.”
“You’d be surprised how easily you can change the vibe with melody,” he continues. “If you deliver an aggressive lyric in an aggressive way then it is just going to confirm that, but if you can do something that is pretty pissed off but do it in a melodic way then it makes it fun to sing along to. You still get your message across but it doesn’t put people in a bad mood, it makes it fun to be caught up in that aggressive energy but it still gives you that fun energy that you want to sing along to at a show or you want to sing along to on your way to work… whatever. Yeah, so I just experimented and found a way to do it through melody rather than through lyrical content.”
You Got Me Fucked Up is out now through Century Media Records.
