Frenzal Rhomb: The Punkest Band in the World

The self proclaimed 'punkest band in the world', Frenzal Rhomb, will be hitting Melbourne to launch their much hyped album 'Not So Tough Now'. After a tricky battle with Telstra refusing to believe he was who he said he was I spoke to 'mild mannered' front person Jay, about recording companies, track listings and the band's new guitarist.

The CD 'Not So Tough Now' follows up their debut EP 'Coughing Up A Storm', which had the band touring with US maestro's NOFX, and their single 'Run' featuring on the latest Fat Wreck Chords compilation 'Survival of the Fattest', released world- wide. With such a killer track record topped by their latest CD (and having a South Australian race horse named after them), it's not surprising that Frenzal Rhomb have wild rumours circulating about them concerning record company interest. At the moment, however, they're keeping kind of quiet about it all.

'Shock distributed our last record,' says jay, 'and we were kind of in a bit of a quandary about what to do with this record, whether or not we'd try to do it again ourselves or get some...ummm...financial assistance. So they gave us a really good deal, there's no publishing involved or anything, they seem pretty cool down at shock.' The band are actually on Shagpile, through Shock, a label that boasts the Cosmic Psychos and the Melniks, just to mention a few. Shagpile, says Jay, 'seem to be doing good things as far as overseas stuff is concerned.'

Frenzal Rhomb have already had a taste of 'overseas stuff' dating from their travels with NOFX. Survival of the Fattest 'came out earlier this year, but we did a tour with NOFX last year and they ended up releasing a seven in single with five songs on it from our last record 'Coughing Up A Storm', and now they seem interested in wanting to do the next one as well. And we've had other offers from Epitaph.'

So what's happening? 'Well it's pretty weird. We're just kind of waiting for the proposals to come through at the moment and see what we want to do. Our main aim is to get overseas as soon as we can, obviously like any band, but yeah, it looks like that should happen before the end of the year which should be good fun.'

The first single from the album is the very catchy 'Parasite', which Jay, master of the understatement, says 'seems to be doing OK. [It debuted on the alternative charts at number 12] Triple J seem to be playing it which seems to be pretty silly, considering that they haven't supported us at all...until now.' ( It would now be easy to get into a discussion concerning the apparent difficult of everyone's favourite 'youth network' to recognise that bands without distribution and/or record deals could do with a bit more airplay, but we won't indulge.)

The 53 track listings on the CD doesn't exactly scream 'radio friendly'. 'Well, you know,' Jay explains modestly, 'we are the punkest band in the world.' Fair enough. 'Um,' he subsides, 'when we were mastering the secret track and we thought that secret tracks are such a wank that we should at least list the secret track. And then the guy that was doing it said 'why don't we make it that people's CD players just flick over every four seconds.' Do we decided to name all the secret tracks as well, so there are actually53 named tracks on the record.'

'Not So Tough Now' will e launched in Melbourne this Friday, which as well as being the first shows of the tour, will be Frenzal Rhomb's first shows with their new guitarist, who has only been with the band for about a month. 'He's replacing our other guitarist Ben,' explains Jay, 'his dad told him that there's no future in punk rock and that he should give up and go back to university, and he said 'Dad, you're not so much my dad, but my Best Friend, thanks.'

by Beth Proudle