Squeezing in one last release before the year is out, the next record from Helm’s ALTER label marks the first release in three years from Australian punk outfit Total Control.
Entitled Laughing At The System, the 8-track EP follows on from 2014 album Typical System, with the band themselves describe the new record as an even sillier accompaniment to their previous effort.
It’s due out on vinyl and digitally this Friday, and will be available from ALTER’s Bandcamp page here.
Ahead of the EP’s release on Friday though, you can exclusively listen to ‘Luxury Vacuum’ from the record just below, and read on below that for a quick catch-up with the group.
Where would you say the new album follows on from your last, if at all?
Well the last record was recorded four years ago I think? I think one of the ideas for this record was that it was a companion to the last album and to make it more of an audio collage type thing (similar to the bonus disc that came with Crass’ Christ the Album). But I think the songs we ended up deciding on were jarring enough that it didn’t warrant any further silliness as it is already rather silly and quite different to other records we’ve put out.
The album’s title carries obvious political connotations, so could you talk us through how you arrived at that name?
I didn’t think we could get sillier than calling our last record Typical System, but this trumps that for sure. We are a stupid band from a stupid country… not really sure what else to say, we aren’t a joke band but I think we all enjoy making each other laugh.
We know you’ve said in the past that a lot of your live shows have been overseas rather than in your native country, so do you have any idea of why that is the case?
We aren’t and have never been a full time band and generally playing in Melbourne serves as a warm up for something else. Nothing in the band whether it be album titles, the way our music sounds or gigging schedules are really too well thought out, it all just kind of happens. I think we have just more shows chalked up overseas because there are many more places to play whereas in this country there are only a few cities. There is some talk about possibly doing some shows in regional Victoria with a really fantastic band from Tasmania called The Native Cats who we were fortunate enough to play with this past weekend down in Hobart.
