New Music

Rockhampton's Affinity Minus Perfection unveil new EP and brutally beefy single 'Intention Subversion'

Oct 4, 2018

7 min read

Central Queensland is home to many beautiful things. Heron Island. 1770. ~~Gladstone~~. Great Keppel Island, and BEEF WEEK. No seriously, Rockhampton is the Beef Capital of Australia and every other town is lying when they try to claim it. But Central QLD is also known for its bands with some popular acts emerging over the years including Epidemic...Over, Ellington, Red In Tooth (RIP), You Say When, Mordecai and Enlightened By Darkness.

The next act to brutally make their way into your lives is Affinity Minus Perfection, who have announced their forthcoming, Troy Brady (ex-Amity) produced EP Passion Through Unity will be released on November 30th and to celebrate, they've put out a brand new video/single to get you keen as fuck for what's to come. I grabbed the band for a chinwag about their influences, recording process and if Rockhampton's heavy music scene improved since I used to call the town home...

Rockyyyy Represent!!! So fucking good hearing a band come from up that way, give us a rundown who makes up A.M.P?

We got Simon on lead guitar, Westy (Hayden) on drums, Matt on rhythm and clean vocals, Kyle on bass and Foley (Hayden) on lead vocals.

'Intention Subversion' is a fucking awesome song, heavy where it needs to be, brutal enough to thrash your head about and that breakdown is intense. Well done. Who would you say are some of your biggest influences music wise?

We have wide influences individually but our songs are probably influenced as a group along the lines of early Amity, As I Lay Dying, Alexisonfire, that kind of feel.

Early Amity... I see why you chose Troy Brady to produce it haha more on that soon but what's this song all about?

Basically, the song is about the torment of not achieving your dreams or taking a chance on them which we adapted from the Norse mythology of "Hel".

We've all experienced that from time to time, coming outta Rocky, from my memory of living and visiting there, there weren't many heavy shows put on, nor did heavy bands come through that often (circa 2013-2015). What's it like now?

Well, 2015 is when we started playing shows. There wasn't anything happening from what we could see and so we put the feelers put to see if anyone was doing anything, but didn't really hear of anything from it, so we started setting up shows ourselves.

We've now tried to keep gigs happening on a somewhat regular basis, but now that we are on the road quite a bit we struggle to run shows in town when we aren't here to set them up.

Affinity Minus Perfection play Rocky's Heritage Hotel Friday Night - RSVP Here

The fact you're doing that paves the way for more bands to emerge from CQ, so well done being the frontrunners for putting on shows. I see Liz and Matho at the Heritage have brought the heavy back to Rocky with your show tomorrow night, but when you're not playing venues like that, where can you guys put on a show? or do you have to travel for it?

We started setting up shows at The Lionleigh back in 2016 then branched out to Flamingoes until they shut down. Matho showed some interest. So now we have a new friend on our side. He may not be into metal but it's so good to see a venue giving us young fellas a go, doing what we love despite popular opinion.

We have definitely done lots of travelling around Queensland playing shows as well though. When you come to our shows you'll get sweaty men, too many beers, beards, breakdowns all the good stuff.

Fuck yeah, that's awesome on all counts. At least now Rocky can start to have a thriving heavy music scene again if they back and support it. Back to your music, you also teamed up with Troy Brady (who is fucking killing it in the producer role), what's something you all learned from the master in studio?

Being very open minded and accepting to experiment and change is a big one. Simplicity too. Songs don’t need 25 different riffs that are overcomplicated and showy. One good groove per song that comes back as a variation is all you need. (Patience) playing with a level of intensity while maintaining clean string muting. Plenty of good vegan snacks, dairy is bad and we should have invested in bitcoin haha and of course to make sure we have fun while doing it and enjoying our time together as we see each other's faces all the time

Yeah, we're all kicking ourselves over that Bitcoin phase.... The EP is out November 30th, what can we get expect song wise, fairly similar to 'Intention Subversion'?

We're a bit divided some of us believe it's a mix, some of us think the songs are fairly similar. Might have to pre-order the EP and let us know what you think 😉

Heyyyy I like that hahaha any tracks about beef in there?

Nah there is no beef songs on the EP, they only just missed the ‘cut’ but you can catch all the beef songs you crave on our side project ska mixtape ‘Johnny Bovine and The Rump steaks’.

I'll think about it. Any last words for new/pre-existing fans?

Go and give us a like on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, subscribe to our YouTube, come see us at our shows, grab yourself some merch and don't forget to pre-order our EP on your favourite digital outlet starting October 5th

You heard them, get behind Affinity Minus Perfection

Interview by Browny @brownypaul

Beef up your music collection by following the band on Facebook and Instagram

Affinity Minus Perfection's Passion Through Unity EP is out Friday, November 30.
Pre-orders on all good digital stores opening this Friday, October 5th.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adsVAHTJH0Y&w=853&h=480]