PREMIERE: Infinite Exile Invoke Mayhem on 'Chrome Shadows' feat. Floyd Barber
As Australia's newest generation of heavy acts climb the ranks, undoubtedly achieving success across the country, Perth is hot on Melbourne's tail for the title of Australia's arts capital as they produce acts such as Make Them Suffer, Saviour, Patient Sixty-Seven, Pincer+, Darkmatter and more in quick succession. The latest to join this gang of elite heavy acts from the world's most isolated city is Infinite Exile.
The quintet have spent the few short years they've been active refining their sound and finding their groove. Now that they have discovered what works for them, they are ready to burst your eardrums with their latest track 'Chrome Shadows' - a ferocious display of modern metalcore with all the hallmarks and a guest vocal collab with Floyd Barber.
To learn more about the group, how they came to be, and what their next move may be, we grabbed guitarist Sam Walker-Smith for a chat...
For those discovering you for the first time, tell us how Infinite Exile came to be!
A few of the guys in the band actually came across from another project that had run its course prior to Infinite Exile being formed. Shannon, Fabian, and Josh were all a part of Human Effigy. Shannon and Josh had been in Nucleust for a few years before that band too. Things fizzled out with Human Effigy and they decided to reform as Infinite Exile.
They found Kallum to play drums and started writing a setlist worth of songs together, which would eventually become our first EP The Path Of Most Resistance. They played a couple of shows together running one guitar and realised they needed a second guitar on stage to round out the sound. I had been introduced to Fabian a few months before by a mutual friend, and he hit me up one day asking if I wanted to come along to a rehearsal and hang out with them.
Nobody ever actually invited me to join the band, I just hung out with the guys and started jamming with them and playing shows. After about a year I had to clarify with Josh that I was actually a member (laughs).
Unfortunately, just as you launched, COVID hit. Has that slowed the trajectory of your band or given you time to hone in on your craft?
Covid was hard for us once things really started kicking off. We wrote and released a couple of singles but would struggle with gigs being repeatedly cancelled, bands being forced to pull out of gigs last minute because members had fallen sick (including ourselves), and then when everything finally started reopening struggling to get people to come down to gigs because they couldn't afford a week off work if they got sick at a gig on the weekend.
We spent that whole time writing and working on new music, but it was definitely disheartening at the time to put in so much work and have so many things fall through for us and everyone else in the scene.
We've lost a handful of venues and bands here in Perth as they just didn't survive Covid.
Originally, Infinite Exile was a thrash project. What was it that drew you to the metalcore sound we are hearing today on 'Chrome Shadows'?
The big change came from a couple of different elements. As we worked on more and more music, the way we wrote and the level of input everyone had in the songwriting process began to change.
On the first EP, Fabian had written all of the music and the lyrics were done between Fabian and Shannon. When that music was written, Shannon was the only one doing any vocals, and Fabian was deep in a 90s thrash metal binge. As I started contributing to some of the lyrics and phrasing, I brought in some ideas that were totally different to what the boys had been writing previously. Introducing a second (and later third) set of vocals also opened up a heap of new ideas for us. We started to write songs where you could bounce two or three sets of vocals off each other, and tuned our guitars down a step to get a heavier sound.
In that same timeframe, Fabian started to expand into new genres of music he hadn't been into before. Over the last two years, he's written dozens of songs, some of which we had fully completed and even had mixed, and then never released. Fabian has worked on his songwriting non-stop, and would just wind up writing better and better music. We couldn't release anything when we knew we had better music ready to follow it. We're finally at a point with the new tracks where what we're putting out is a reflection of who we are as a band at our full potential.
These days, Fabian will write the bones of a song and send it through to the boys for their input and for Josh to write his own bass, and either Shannon or myself will flesh out a first draft of lyrics and do a demo with ideas of vocal phrasing. Once the structure of the song is locked in, Fabian, Shannon, and myself will catch up and stitch together the last twenty percent of the lyrics and phrasing. We'll chip away at any last minute ideas for a few months before we send the tracks off for mixing, and Fabian will tinker with any final elements/synths/tones he wants to hear in the track.
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‘Chrome Shadows’ is your new headbang inducer. It ticks all of the boxes for metalcore fans everywhere – well-defined unclean vocals, a heavy drum presence and plenty of shredding riffs. Tell us about the track's themes, inspiration and creation process.
'Chrome Shadows' was the first of the new tracks to be completed. I think we've been sitting on the demo for nearly a year at this point. Some tracks are a labour of love, but 'Chrome Shadows' came together super quickly. Fabian had sent us through the demo for the song and said "I like the name 'Chrome Shadows' for this one, sounds like it would be a sick line in a song!". I wrote the first draft of lyrics and recorded vocals for it by the end of that day based off of his 'Chrome Shadows' prompt. Over a few weeks of jamming the song together, Fabian changed a couple of the riffs and samples in the song before he settled on what you hear in the final version. The idea for the trap beat also came from Fabian, and he wrote the lyrics to go with that section before the breakdown. He sent us through demos of how he heard the vocal delivery in that section as well as where he'd gotten the inspiration from, and it was pretty clear to the rest of us that it would sound best with him doing it on the track.
These days we write lyrics that are more introspective, and we'll write a lot about things that have happened in our lives or how we feel about situations outside of our control. 'Chrome Shadows' is just a pure and simple track about anger, and being pushed to your breaking point. Everyone is sick of being lied to and stepped on, and everything is shit at the moment. People are doing it tough, everyone is broke and feeling the squeeze, quality of life is getting worse and people are sacrificing more and more just to have what they had just a few short years ago. Something needs to change, but everyone is waiting on someone else to light the powder keg. Nobody wants to make the first move, and things won't change until someone does. The lack of action is as good as digging our own graves. At the same time, the whole situation feels futile and outside of our control.
There's a bit of projection in there, but the lyrics can be applied to any outside situation a listener is going through where they feel like they're being wronged and pushed to their limits.
Floyd Barber definitely added his own flavour on top of your sound. Where did you find him and why was he the perfect guest collab for this track?
Floyd has been around since day one, having met Fabian online a couple of years ago and bonding over their shared love of Machine Head. Floyd was one of the first people sharing our music and wearing our merch, and featured a few of our songs in his Instagram videos. When we played in Brisbane last year, he and his wife drove a few hours to see us play and even jumped on stage to perform 'War Is Here' with us, complete with multiple shoeys on stage that inspired a couple copycats in the crowd.
We talked for ages as a band about getting him on a track but wanted to make sure it wasn't forced in, it had to be something where it felt like he elevated the song to another level. When I wrote the lyrics for 'Chrome Shadows', I'd written his part originally for myself. The idea was to have a second vocalist conveying a different emotion to what's heard through the rest of the lyrics in the song. We decided to send it through to Floyd and ask him if he was interested, and he absolutely nailed what we were going for.
When it came time to schedule filming the music video, we found out Floyd was going to be here in Perth with Machine Head on their latest Australian run. We had one date where we could make it happen, and everything just timed up perfectly.
Fun One: On the subject of your band name, who are three musicians you'd endure Infinite Exile alongside?
Oof that’s a hard one, the answer would probably change every time you ask me. I’d have to go Parkway Drive, Korn, and Dead Kelly. I reckon a few of the other guys would probably want Machine Head, Limp Bizkit, Sleep Token, or Architects out there with them.
You have an upcoming EP launch show on July 12th at the Four5Nine Bar, Perth. How will this new song translate in a live setting and what can we expect if we want to come down to throwdown?
This song and a few other new tracks you'll hear on the night have all been written with a live audience in mind. A couple of the songs have been road tested and tweaked, and we're pretty confident we've got them locked in now. We've recently changed over to a digital rig with an in-ear system, so that we've got the cleanest live sound we possibly can get. No cabs fighting for room volume over the PA, no fumbling through a gig with no foldback because the venue wouldn't hire someone to run the mixing desk but instead asked someone's unqualified mate to do it.
We've given everything we can to make our live show as good as it can possibly be. We just need the audience to do their part, and send shit flying when the breakdowns come in.
We've got a couple of killer bands joining us on the night, with a few different sub-genres of metal for everyone that wants to come down. Grab your tickets here.
As the band grows, will we see you heading back over to Australia's east coast?
Definitely. We had a little taster last year and we're keen to go again. We'd like to hit Sydney and Melbourne next time, and possibly make the trip back to Queensland if it lines up. Hopefully for our next release we can make it happen. East Coast promoters, reach out to us if you want to see us at your gigs!
Perth is becoming known for its strong local scene, with big names such as Make Them Suffer, Darkmatter, Pincer+, Saviour and Patient Sixty-Seven being a few go-to Perth acts. As an up-and-coming act from the same city, are there any other locals you’d like to share the stage with?
We're so lucky here in Perth, there's so much killer music coming out of this city at the moment. We've played with some killer bands that are really putting the work in lately (shout out to the boys in Our Demise), and aside from all the bands on your list, it'd be cool to play some shows with Liveconformdie, Sedative, and Daybreak.
I take it this isn't the last song you'll release, what's on the horizon?
We've got another track called 'Silhouettes' following 'Chrome Shadows' on the 28th of June, rounding out this release. We've got a handful of new tracks written and nearly ready to go, but couldn't wait any longer to get some new music out into the world. These tracks are a taste of what's coming next, and we promise it won't be another two year wait this time.
Hopefully we can do another release this year, with a few extra tracks, and play some supporting shows outside of Perth early next year.
Interview by Adam Rice
Infinite Exile is Shannon Marston (Vocals), Fabian Vacca (Guitar and Vocals), Sam Walker-Smith (Guitar and Vocals), Josh Fox (Bass) and Kallum O’Regan (Drums).
Pre-save/stream 'Chrome Shadows' + follow the band's socials here
Infinite Exile - Sold My Soul For Another Roll EP tracklisting
1. Chrome Shadows
2. Silhouettes
