A Surf-Punk band blended with a Geelong Rock band from down-under come to sin and play loud. Let’s see what makes them tick. Maybe, they’ll tell us if toilets flush in the opposite direction from the US!
The Blistered Minds are a three-piece political surf-punk that meets Geelong Rock from the northern beaches of Sydney, Australia. They formed in mid-2018 with Geelong born-and-bred Brent Blister on vocals/guitar and NS-Welshman, GG Quinn on bass, and Flynn-meister on drums. The Blistered Minds started turning heads from their first live show and have developed a reputation for amazing live performances. They released their first EP, Sin, in 2019 and are giving it away to fans on their website.
First off, what’s the story behind the name?
We were struggling for a name, and then we thought, ‘why not try the old trick of using one of our favourite bands’ song names for our band name?’.
Bored!, one of our favourite bands took their name from a Destroy All Monsters song, so we started listing all the Bored! song names we liked, and ‘The Rocket Rides’ and ‘The Clear Attics‘ made the list.
But we also started looking at The Cosmic Psychos, Motorhead, and finally God songs as well, with Blistered Mind being one of my favourite God! songs. Tim Hemensley sings that song and the lyrics are amazing, and the band that Tim and John Nolan from Bored eventually started, The Powder Monkeys, are such a huge part of my musical upbringing, having seen those guys play so often, that just seemed to pop out as a little tip of the hat to the late great Tim Hemensley.
The Blistered Minds also resonated with the mind blisters that often burst and become our songs. These are political, social, or even personal issues that can fester and become an obsession, so to get them out there is a good thing.
How would you describe the band’s sound?
High energy, straight-up punk, rock and roll. We play bloody loud as well! Our drummer Flynn-meister hits so hard that we need to turn up the amps to be able to hear ourselves, so we aren’t loved by sound engineers, but that’s part of our sound…loud!
Which bands had the biggest influence on the band’s sound?
Those bands I’ve already mentioned, with The Powder Monkeys being probably the biggest influence. All those Radio Birdman / Saints and beyond bands that are on the must have compilation “Do The Pop” were big influences on us, especially The Hard Ons, Lime Spiders, and Hoodoo Gurus, but that comp has so many amazing bands.
We all listen to so much music and different styles from Beethoven to Slayer. Turbo Negro, Electric Frankenstein, Warped, Off!, The Hip Priests, Rage Against The Machine, Grind House, Rollins Band, Rocket From The Crypt, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Fu Manchu, but probably The Celibate Rifles and the God/Bored!/Powder Monkey’s ‘Family Tree’ is the biggest influence on our sound.
What’s the last song you listened to?
I’ve been listening to news radio a lot of late, which has music interspersed, so I’m sure there have been a few others I can’t remember, but the song qued on my phone now I’ve opened it is ‘Oh F_Ck, My Face’ by Clowns.
What’s your source for hearing new music?
Often mates will send me stuff, streaming playlists, but a few FaceBook groups I’m on are a good source of new music.
We will be on Sal from Electric Frankenstein’s compilation series, ‘Fistful or More Rock and Roll’ Volume 14, andI make sure I get all of the volumes of those which has given me some new gems as well.
I try and listen to independent radio stations, especially PBS in Melbourne. Their shows, ‘Sunglasses After Dark’ and ‘Shock Treatment’ have featured our EP a fair bit, and you can stream PBS from anywhere in the world, but I’ve been listening to PBS for years so still try and listen in even though now I’m in a different state. They’ve introduced me to so many great bands over the years.
What led you to music, and what motivates you to keep making it?
My Uncle probably led me to my first real music, introducing me to Midnight Oil and The Cure at an early age. Seeing live performances on TV was always fascinating for me, especially Peter Garrett performing the way he does. The power of the message of Midnight Oils songs really struck me early, that you can have your say on an issue through your music. The Cold War had a major impact on me as a kid, and I feared a bomb would come sooner or later, so to hear bands like The Dead Kennedy’s, The Celibate Rifles talking up on issues led me to want to say my piece.
I just love playing live. Such a cliché, but you really are in that moment, locked in with your bandmates. Recording is a process I love as well. I know now after quite a few recordings with previous bands how I want to do it, which is basically live without a click track, with limited overdubbing, or scrutinizing every drum hit so that for me is really enjoyable. We really want to capture a great performance rather than engineer the soul out of our songs.
Tell us about the songwriting process. How does it all come together?
It can happen in a variety of ways. Probably the most common way is a quilt type approach. I often record a riff that pops up in my head or through just fiddling at home onto my phone. I’ll send that to the guys or play it at rehearsal. GG Quinn, our bass player, comes up with riffs as well. One of his songs is going to be our next single ‘Wall of Sound,’ but when I came up with the lyrics for that song, I swapped what he thought was the chorus to the verse and vice versa, which he really liked, so we jammed on it from there, added an intro, middle 8/lead type bit, and that was it.
We’ll jam on separate riffs as well, which often produces additional riffs or parts. I then try and get onto Pro Tools and record and arrange it into a song, add some lyrics, upload it onto our DropBox, and then we start developing it up and practicing it in rehearsal.
Vocal hooks that pop into my head can be another start point for songs, but a couple of our songs have literally been me spewing out ideas in a 1-2 hour session with my acoustic guitar and notepad, and it all comes out in a song that I record. It’s nice when that flow happens, but usually, songs are pieced together over months.
If you could write one more song, what would it be about?
That’s a tough one. We just had a funny idea for a song based on an imaginary confusion when I told the guys I’d ordered a Big Muff distortion pedal, but the imaginary part was from when GG said, “Be careful! You might end up with a sex robot!” so that could be a funny last song to write.
What’s the one story you want to tell the world through song that you haven’t yet?
There was a guy in Australia from the early 1900s called Abel Hoadley, who invented the Violet Crumble, which is honeycomb covered in chocolate. It was probably an Aussie kids version of a Hershey bar in America, but unlike a Hersheys bar, it was delicious! I reckon that would make a great song, and he was a pretty out-there type of a Willy Wonker kind of character.
How do you connect with your audience? What is the easiest way for them to connect with you?
Social media and email on our mailing list. On our website is a contact form, so when our audience has seen us live, they often go on there and fill out the contact form, which gets them a free digital copy of our EP ‘Sin.’ Our email is all over our different platforms as contact buttons, etc. So just say hi. We love to hear from anyone who likes our stuff.
Connect with them via their website, Instagram, and FaceBook.
Sin – The Blistered Minds from The Blistered Minds on Vimeo.
You guys are from Sydney, Australia. What’s the scene like there? How has the scene received your sound?
The scene in Sydney is a little bit hit and miss. Amazing bands are performing Wednesday through to Sundays all over, but it seems that punters that may have gone to see bands any night of the week ten years ago are on the couch watching Netflix or scrolling social media now. It seems like there are so many other forms of entertainment so easily accessed these days, that band audiences have been affected.
There is a lot of talk about the lockout laws in Sydney (clubs not allowing entry after 10 pm) and how they have affected the scene, but I still go out and see amazing bands, especially in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, and it will often be only me and members of the other bands watching. There are gigs there! People just need to get out there and see some amazing shows!
Your logo is pretty rad. Want to tell us who made it? What was its inspiration? Do you feel it embodies your band’s image well?
Cool. Thanks. Yeah, I sketch that up based on our name.
At first, I did a rough sketch as a briefing image that I sent to the legendary Ben Brown of the Hellmenn, who’s become a fan of ours. He is an in-demand artist for some of the biggest bands in the world, such as QOTSA, Foo Fighters, The Pixies, Pearl Jam… the list goes on. He does amazing posters and his Pixies ‘Aqua Man’ poster from a couple of years ago takes pride and place on my living room wall.
When I sent him the original rough sketch, he wrote back with his price but said to me that it was “sick” and that I should just keep working it up. He basically said it’s way more punk if you do the artwork yourself, so that gave me so much confidence to sketch up a better version.
To be honest, I’m not sure it does embody us. It’s probably come from our younger skate years listen to Suicidal Tendencies, The Hard-Ons, and a lot of the skeleton type imagery in RnR like the Misfits famous image. Do you think the image and our sound go together?
You guys are giving away your music for free on your website. What made you guys do that? Have you made any fans from that?
It’s something I’ve read about as a bit of a strategy for your first release. We’ve definitely gotten fans from that, but often it’s from gigs, and we ask people if they want our EP emailed to them, so we take their email and send MP3s or BandCamp codes to them. I really wanted vinyl 10-inch records for the launch of the EP, and we tried to get a crowdfunding effort up, but it didn’t happen, unfortunately. 10” are expensive, so maybe we’ll try and get a 7” release up as our songs are pretty short so the EP can fit on a 7” pretty well.
Also, with streaming services, you are generally giving it away for free anyway, at 0.005c per stream. A release needs to be played 10,000 times before the band even breaks even on their digital distribution cost alone, let alone recording, mastering costs, and any advertising you decided to pay for.
To cover recording and mastering costs as well, you’d need to be at 300-800,000 streams depending on how much you spend on those things. Buying a band’s merch though has a major impact on a band. 30-40 tee shirt sales can cover a day in a recording studio.
Your song “Not Welcome” seems to be about its namesake, people not being welcome. Want to tell us what the song means and what made you guys write that song?
That song came from a complex web of stories and feelings.
The first was the Australian Government’s treatment of asylum seekers, and there has also been a rise in Nationalism in Australia which has started to influence or actually be involved in mainstream politics.
In recent years, a judgment of sorts has started to pop-up as well of being “Australian” or, more often, “Un-Australian.”
For instance, I hate Cricket, and I let it be known, and I’ve had the comment “Mate. That’s just un-Australian!” Really? What about my idea of what being “Australian” means? The true sense was here 50,000 years before any of us were even here!
But, taking it on the post-European Settlement basis, for me, being “Australian” is the rock and roll bands like the Easy Beats and AC/DC coming out of the Villawood Immigration centre where my Dad had been through 10 years earlier.
The Hard-Ons are my ideal of what being “Australian” is. 3 “New Australian” kids from the Western Suburbs of Sydney, doing their own album art and playing punk rock that spread around the world!
Ultimately, stories of my family arriving in Australia and being told to “Fuck off back to where you came from,” and thinking where are those people who said that and their families now? Have their attitudes changed or are they part of this rise in racism again? What have they given to Australia in the last 60 years compared to so many other immigrant families that they did not welcome?
How many incredibly driven people, ready to make the most of a new start in a safe country, are sitting idle in those processing facilities or now simply let out into very unsafe places?
So the lyric, “It’s your kind that’s not welcome here” is to all those that have treated new arrivals so badly, the Politicians who listen to the haters and have little compassion, and that Australia would be much better off if we swapped those haters with the asylum seekers stuck offshore in limbo.
“Click Whore” is an interesting tune. What’s it about to you? What made you write that song?
It’s about my social media addiction.
I’d like to be all high and mighty on this, and say it’s me up on my high horse tut-tutting at people, but I’m terribly addicted and waste so much time on my phone. I hate it.
I think when I could be doing creative things, sitting on your phone is such a waste. I did the sums, and say over 40 years of future phone use, if I replaced 2 hours a day of my scrolling with say songwriting or drawing, that’s 29,200 hours! Imagine if you replaced 1 of those 2 hours with earning extra money somehow. At $25/hour, that’s $9k a year. Not a bad budget for a holiday! Even just getting outside for a surf, skate, run, whatever you like to do, would make such a difference to your and my life.
Despite all that logic, I still have to lock my phone in the car, I turn on the grey filter to make it less appealing, which surprisingly helps, and I listen to the radio and records. It’s a struggle, and somedays the hours seem to rack up still somehow, but I’m getting better.
What’s next for the band?
We have a few gigs coming up over the next couple of months. We are booked in to record our next three singles with Jay from Frenzal Rhomb at his Pet Food Factory Studio in late January, which we will then go back in to record the rest of the album over six months. Hoping our first single will be out in March, April-ish, which we will then hopefully tour interstate. Another video clip for one of those songs is also on the cards. Maybe we’ll do two clips, we’ll see.
Anything else you’d like to add or let us know about?
Our debut video clip for our song ‘Sin’ is on our Vimeo page, featuring footage provided by pro-surfer Ry Craike. Check it out as it sums up the song pretty well. Check it out.
Review: The Blistered Mind’s Sin EP is a hard-hitting and fast-pounding storm of madness. The raw energy they put into every track can be felt easily through your speakers and will have you headbanging along in no time. Sin is what happens when you mate Sydney’s Surf and Punk scene with Geelong rock. It becomes this chimera of sound that fans of The Rifles, Lime Spiders, Bored!, and Warped would love to have on their playlists. If you haven’t gotten the EP free from their website or put their EP on your playlist, what are you waiting for? Do it!
