Interview by Ali Williams
Some interviews kick off with grand statements about art and purpose. This one started with me trying to bully the internet into a split-screen format while Matt from Grim Rhythm sat there, politely hungover and fully accepting his fate. The reason for the state of him? The band’s second album had dropped the day before, which apparently required a studio party that ran all the way to 2am Aerosmith karaoke. Classy behaviour. Very rock’n’roll.
That album title, Forever Eating Shit, is exactly what it sounds like and also not what it sounds like. Matt explains it as the unglamorous reality of being a working band: six-hour drives to play to five people, swallowing the grind for the chance that one out of twenty shows is the one where everything clicks, sells out, and reminds you why you bothered in the first place. It’s crude, it’s honest, and it’s weirdly uplifting in the way only musicians can manage, turning misery into momentum and calling it “the pursuit.”
From there, we slid into a love letter to venues and the people who keep them alive. Being Melbourne-based, Matt doesn’t pretend the city isn’t spoiled for choice, and he shouts out the kind of owners who aren’t sitting in an office counting profits, because there aren’t any. He namechecks Shane and Leanne from The Tote and Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar, the lifers who pour beers, back young bands, and do the daily grind because they genuinely want the scene to survive. That thread keeps running through the chat: community over clout, sweat over “strategy.”
We also got into the slow, messy death of the big Australian festival era. Matt’s not mourning the corporate bloat of it all, and he reckons the decline has pushed people back into “real venues and real gigs” for the right reasons, not just a weekend bender with a wristband. The upside is a return to sweaty rooms, proper bills, and crowds that actually remember what they saw. It’s not a nostalgia trip, it’s more a recalibration: bands building followings one room at a time, and venues becoming the heartbeat again.
That DIY spine shows up everywhere in how Grim Rhythm operate. Matt is blunt about the old dream of getting signed: for bands at their stage, it’s often a shiny badge with a bill attached. Instead, they record their own music, produce it themselves, run their own label, and treat the band as its own business, so any money made goes straight back into the machine. He’s not anti-label in a preachy way, he just calls the modern reality what it is: companies want product, and if you can do it yourself, you keep the control and the payoff.
There’s also a very human reset in the story. Between the first record and this one, the band stepped away for a while and Matt openly references getting into trouble with substances. Coming back wasn’t forced or deadline-driven, it happened naturally, helped by having their own studio and a crew who stay busy across other projects. Once the momentum returned, the album came together over roughly a year and a half, without the pressure-cooker vibe that can kill the fun.
On the nuts-and-bolts side, Matt talks recording approach too. The first record was tracked live; this one was built for tightness, with click tracks and obsessive attention to detail to nail that classic heavy metal precision. The studio situation is both blessing and curse, because unlimited time can turn into endless tinkering unless you know when to walk away. Also, for the record: Matt’s a bassist, which means we briefly bonded over the sacred duty of being the reason the crowd moves while guitarists soak up the spotlight.
Even though Grim Rhythm are instrumental, the band isn’t short on voices. Matt and other members sing in their other projects, they just choose to keep this one wordless, and it works because the focus is pure muscle and movement. When we touched on fanbase, Matt didn’t pretend he’s above it all either: validation matters. One person coming up after a set and telling you it ruled can be enough to fuel the next round of “eating shit,” and he calls out the “we don’t care” crowd as liars. You don’t have to be an egomaniac to want your work to land. You just have to be human.
To top it off, the band’s not sitting still. They’re launching the album in Melbourne on 4 April, then heading up for shows on the Gold Coast and Brisbane, with more dates and festival slots in the mix, before a proper two-month Europe run. They’ve done a handful of U.S. shows previously, but this is framed as the first real European tour. And because sleep is clearly optional in this camp, Matt’s already booked in to record another album in June and says they’ve got the next one written. No eight-year wait required this time, apparently.
And that’s the thing with Grim Rhythm: beneath the hangover, the Aerosmith karaoke and the gloriously blunt album title, there’s a band that’s stubborn in the best way, choosing the long road because it’s theirs. Forever Eating Shit isn’t a whinge, it’s a mission statement, and Matt wears it like a badge earned the hard way, one six-hour drive and one sweaty room at a time. Now they’re taking that DIY engine on the road, launching in Melbourne on 4 April, then heading up to the Gold Coast and Brisbane, before disappearing into Europe for a couple of months and somehow still finding time to book the next record in for June (because apparently sleep is for people with hobbies). Catch them while they’re in your city, in your favourite room, with your favourite sticky floor, and do your part to prove the grind pays off.
