nebraska

Chucking a Mosh review

“In 1982, Bruce Springsteen released what many believe to be the best work of The Boss’ illustrious career. The album was entitled ‘Nebraska’ and was, for the most part, recorded acoustically on a tape recorder as a series of bedroom demo’s for what that album was supposed to be. When Bruce and The E Street Band went in to record the album, producers decided that the demos Spingsteen had recorded had far too much emotion and feel, to ever be replicated in the studio, and thus, the Nebraska demo’s were released as the actual record. There is a lot to be said about DIY recording. Music that is written and committed to tape by the writer themselves seems to often have charm and heart, that you would never find on bigger budget recording projects. There is no smoke and mirrors, the emotion is real, the passion is honest and in the case of Adelaide Scramz band Nebraska, this could not be more true.

Forming in a city where the screamo/post-hardcore scene has been considered fairly done for for some time now, the five gentlemen who make up Nebraska have risen above and released their latest 7″. A self titled, three song effort, and their third cut to date. The band take effort from 90′s DIY bands including Portraits Of Past, Unwound, Moss Icon, Indian Summer and Yaphet Kotto, just to name a few, and have shared stages some renowned local and international acts including Palisades, Capeweather, Night Hag, Nuclear Summer, Swords, Sex Wizard, Racoon City Police Department, Raein and Loma Prieta.

The self titled 7″ perfectly exemplifies what a band of this genre is supposed to be. Nebraska have a skill in building up a mood or feeling through shifting dynamics throughout their songs. Often moving from clean picked riffs laden with panicky, spoken word vocals, which still carry a sense of melody, and then building up to bigger more aggressive parts, with discordant guitars still fairly clean in tone, but played with appropriate angst, lots of crash symbol and hard drum hits and enraged screaming to top it all of. There is a striking sense of honesty and a really tense feel that weaves its way through the three tracks and it’s this that I think makes it such an exciting listen.

Fans of emotive hardcore will be thoroughly impressed with Nebraska and their latest 7″. In an offshoot of hardcore that can often come off sounding pretty contrived and lets face it, pretentious (thanks, Against Me!) it’s good to see a band on our own home soil bringing a bit of originality to the table, and beats back to the heart.”

http://www.chuckingamosh.com/2012/05/06/review-nebraska/

7” review in Collective-Zine

“Now here’s a seven inch from a new Australian band that show a smart talent for some interesting ‘mo. First song “Bump” chimes into earshot with some very disconcerting sounding guitar and hefty bassline, a little reminiscent of Indian Summer perhaps, but done particularly well here. The song builds up from this and the insistent, panicky spoken vocals into shouted vocals and a powerful finale. It’s that brand of moody, mid 90s emo that doesn’t get old when done in the right way, and Nebraska are well and truly on the right track here. It’s followed with “Twenty-Three” which flies off the handle pretty quickly after a pretty intro that actually sounds a bit like Your Neighbour the Liar. The final track is “Low Tide” which fills a whole side of the record, and therefore makes plenty of time for softer twinkly bits with plaintive vocals. Again, these bits reminds me of YNTL. They surround those parts with noisier outbursts that you’d expect from this style.

Good start here, look forward to hearing where they go with it.”

Reviewed by Andy Malcolm

http://www.collective-zine.co.uk/reviews/?id=8467

Interview with Everything you touch turns to gold Zine.

Hey guys, I recently did an interview with James, a good friend from Adelaide, for Everything you touch turns to gold zine which is run out out the UK.

You can find more about the zine here at: http://lityerses.tumblr.com/ or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Everything-You-Touch-Turns-To-Gold/163797940322593?sk=info

J: Hi, if you would like to introduce yourself and your role in Nebraska? 

M: Hi, my name is Matt and I do the singing in Nebraska.

J: Who are the main influences when creating the nebraska sound?

M: We take influence from a lot of bands from the 90’s, stuff that was put out by Ebullition, Repercussion and Gravity Records like Portraits of Past, Policy of 3, Still Life and Yaphet Kotto. That mixed with moody, 90’s alt rock stuff like Codeine, Red House Painters and Bedhead. We are all really happy people.

J: Were there any themes or ideas for the new 7inch(NEBRASKA S/T)?

M: Not really musically or lyrically. We focused are artwork around this hometown mystery called the “Taman Shud Case” or “The Mystery Man of Somerton Park” which is the case of unknown British traveller who died on Somerton Beach in 1948 due to unknown causes. I won’t go into too much detail but it is interesting due to his personal effects he had on him such as mystery codes in segments from Persian poetry, a lack of identification and the mystery of possible that surrounds the story due to the early Cold War culture that it was born out of. Look it up, a lot of research has been done on the case. It is by no means a concept album though haha.

We also featured artwork from a book called “Chariots of the God? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past” which was written by Swiss author Erich Von Däniken and was published in 1968. Däniken claims that the technologies and religions of many ancient civilisations were learnt from ancient astronauts or aliens who were welcomed to earth as gods. The book was rejected by scientists and historians, claiming that his conclusions was drawn from pseudo-science but it is still a good read and I think it blends thematically well with Taman Shud in our artwork.

J: Has the 7inch been well received in the rest of Australia and internationally?

M: It has been received really well, a lot of people from our hometown, the rest of Australia and around the world have been saying some really kind and humbling things about it. Internationally, I personally have been baffled at the places it has gone to. The power of globalisation is pretty scary, even in a punk community.

J: If you could tour anywhere right now and had a choice of who to play with, where would you go and who would you tour with?

M: That is a hard one because most of our favourite bands are deceased haha. Moss Icon are doing a reunion show at Chaos in Tejas this year so it would be pretty cool if we could hook up something with them ha. We would settle for some cool bands coming over to Australia but to answer the question my answer is playing every city on earth with Portraits of Past and Moss Icon reunion shows.

J: What has been your most memorable show so far?

M: Our 7” launch in March was pretty memorable. Emo and screamo has been a pretty dead thing in Adelaide for the past few years and I guess it felt like a pretty important moment for the community, at least to us. There was a real great vibe of positivity between us, our friend bands who have worked so hard with us over the past few years and all the people who continually come to see our small group of bands. It had real cool vibes.

J: Being from Adelaide do you think its hard for Adelaide bands to get recognition in the rest of Australia?

M: It isn’t something that specifically effects us because I think the national community of bands who play music akin to our style isn’t large enough at the moment to form that sort of geographical isolation which is a good thing in many ways. For hardcore, I would say, definitely, Adelaide has two of the best hardcore bands in the country in Search and Destroy and The Weight who are barely recognised out of this state, unfortunately for whatever reason, Melbourne and Sydney seems to control the monopoly of hardcore in this country. This isolation doesn’t only extend to Adelaide but to Brisbane, Perth as well. I suppose it probably comes down to population at the end of the day.

J: Who are some local adelaide bands to look out for? 

M: Some of the best bands coming out of Adelaide include Weightless, Raccoon City Police Department, No Action, The Weight, Search and Destroy, Starvation, Rule of Thirds. Bitch Prefect were my favourite current Adelaide band but I think they moved to Melbourne or something.

J: Finally is there anything you would like to say to the readers of this zine?

M: Thanks for reading and keep watching the ski’s.