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Interviews : “We’re definitely excited” – An Interview with Mick Jeffrey (Aversions Crown)

By on January 24, 2017

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When a band replaces a member, and especially a frontman, the band’s fans often start to feel a little insecure about who the replacement will be, how different they will be from the member they replaced and so forth. From an internal perspective however, bringing in some fresh blood often gives a band an injection of energy and creativity, and generally shake things up a bit. Brisbane-based extreme band Aversions Crown replaced their frontman Colin Jeffs in 2015, and according to drummer Mick Jeffrey, speaking from his home on the Gold Coast, new singer Mark Poida has brought a positive new vibe to the band.

“We’ve got a new vocalist in the band, Mark Poida,” Jeffrey says, “he’s been in the band for about two years now, but this is going to be his first album that he’s released with us. It’s really good having a fresh input on things, on the themes that that band has covered previously. It kind of felt like it just brought a whole new life to the ideas that we’ve used before, and given us a new perspective on things.

Poida has apparently also brought a whole bunch of new ideas with him, with regards to the band’s lyrics and imagery, and that has come across strongly on their brand new album Xenocide. “We just let him run loose on his take on what he thought the lyrics should be. He’s come up with a whole collection of songs, it’s almost like a whole concept that runs through the lyrics and the songs. Each song stands alone as well, but I think people, once they read through all the lyrics and understand it, they might be able to recognise and follow a bit of a concept that does flow through the songs.”

Xenocide is out now. It is an absolute crushing beast of a record, and one that should please existing fans and garner them many new ones across Australia and the globe. Jeffrey and the band are more than happy with what they’ve come up with on their third full-lengther and can’t wait to hear the fans’ feedback.

“We’re definitely excited,” he states, “we’re starting to get a few reviews come through and starting to see some reactions from people to the new songs, so we’re keen to see what the vibe is when the whole thing is released.

“We’re pretty confident with what we’ve put together, we feel that this is the strongest material we’ve ever had as a band, we feel like we’ve put everything we can into this album.”

Their other big hope for the new record is that it broadens their current profile and notoriety across the planet. “Like any band, we hope that every record you bring out expands our fanbase, you’re hoping to get it across to some new people as well as keeping the old fans on board. I don’t think we’ve strayed too far from the path of what we’ve done previously, so I think anyone that’s been a previous fan of our band will find something that they really enjoy on this album, but I think we’ve touched on a few new sounds as well that will get noticed by some other people. And obviously the more touring we do, the more we’re going to spread the word too.”

Speaking of touring, nothing has been officially announced at the time of writing, but the band actually have massive year of traversing the nation and the globe coming up in 2017, and they hope to let the fans know all about it very soon.

“There’s a bunch of touring stuff that we’ll be announcing quite soon,” he foresees, “the details haven’t been released yet, we’re just waiting on a few final confirmations and stuff, but we should have a bunch of tours announced soon. It’s been a little while since we’ve done an Australian tour, so we’re ready to get back on the road and do a proper trip around our home country. But we’re also going to head back over to Europe later in the year, and we’re just trying to get a few things organised to get our first trip over to the States as well.”

Longer term, the band would love to quit their day jobs and do Aversions Crown on a full time basis. “At this stage, we also work day jobs. The band isn’t a full time gig for us at this point. That’s the ultimate goal, we’d love to make it a full-time job, where’s that’s all we do, we just tour, write music, record music and we don’t have to work day jobs in between.

“But no matter what happens, we love making music and touring, so that’s what we’re going to keep doing.”

The new album Xenocide, out now via Nuclear Blast Records.

About

Rod Whitfield is a Melbourne-based writer and retired musician who has been writing about music since 1995. He has worked for Team Rock, Beat Magazine, themusic.com.au, Heavy Mag, Mixdown, The Metal Forge, Metal Obsession and many others. He has written and published his memoirs of his life and times in the music biz, and also writes books, screenplays, short stories, blogs and more.