CHILDREN COLLIDE New Beginnings

CHILDREN COLLIDE

New Beginnings

With their third album Monument just released, Melbourne grunge gods Children Collide have to regroup before taking it out on tour. Vocalist/guitarist Johnny Mackay and bassist Heath Crawley sit down with MATTHEW HOGAN.

A band you can usually always see listed in X-Press Mag’s Tour Trails, Children Collide are currently out of action as they search for a new drummer.
    The remaining members seem confident the Sword To A Gunfight Tour was a fitting send off for long term drummer Ryan Caesar. “Last night was crazy,” exclaims frontman Johnny Mackay about their show in Adelaide. “There was heaps of crowd-surfing going on … two guys injured themselves and each other. Probably not the best way to start talking about the tour! There was one in Wollongong that felt like it was over-sold. It was so packed. The crowd was right in our faces. Every time I’d get in there I just got scratches all over me.”
    The band pulled no punches when they originally announced the departure of their drummer, who has played on all three of their albums. They simply attributed the split to the “disintegration” of Mackay and Caesar. “It sounds harsh and it is,” admits the man in the middle of it all, Heath Crawley. “He’s one of the best drummers in the country and a fucking great dude. We’ve been having a great time on this tour. But after five years together, in any kind of capacity or job or role will create a relationship where you’re under such close quarters, under duress at times. You know, sometimes things come up and you shouldn’t necessarily be in partnership anymore.”
    With their debut album The Long Now and sophomore effort Theory Of Everything recorded in Hollywood, the trio decided to keep things closer to home this time. They holed up in Red Door Studios in Collingwood with Paul ‘Woody’ Annison. “He toured with us for years and recorded 99 per cent of the demos and we’ve always wanted to do a record with him, and it just kind of aligned,” says Crawley. “He set up a studio with his wife, who is our manager, and a few other people.”
    There’s also a hint at a new direction on Monument. Their rougher rockier songs seem to progressed into more complicated jams. “The main difference is that in both of our last two albums the songs were from throughout our main existence,” says Mackay. “Songs from when we first started writing together right up until the album came out. And then we had an abundance of these songs; piles and piles to choose from that we had to refine. The new album is all new. There’s only one that we wrote years ago. It’s evolved but it’s us where we’re at now.”
    One of the highlights from Monument is Black Lemon, a song in a similar vein to last year’s single Loveless, and Mackay agrees. “Most of that song was written in my sister’s house in Coffs Harbour that she hadn’t moved into,” he says. “It was completely empty and I was up there just writing by myself in the middle of this empty house, which was really eerie, especially at night when there’s no furniture. That’s where most of that song came. Then I pretty much put a chorus in and everyone chose which chorus they wanted. There was about three or four choruses floating around.”