Frankie’s Pizza has quickly become the city’s prime provider of late night rock’n’roll decadence and pizza slices. Naturally, the venue’s comprehensive platter of delights will soon include its very own beer. The 6.66 per cent Satanic Swill Blood Red Ale is officially launched this Sunday, and the venue has assembled a carnivorous lineup of heavy rock bands for the bloodsucking celebration. Melbourne metal stalwarts Blood Duster will headline the event and they certainly know their way around a beer.
“We’ve pretty much surrounded ourselves with beer and beer culture most of our adult lives,” says bassist and founding member Jason ‘PC’ Fuller. “I couldn’t be happier to help launch a beer – especially one that’s higher in alcohol content.”
Blood Duster have been making grinding metal since the early ’90s and maintain a reputation as one of the country’s most dangerous live acts. It’s safe to say that beer has significantly influenced their onstage domination.
“The policy was always get as pissed as you could before we played,” Fuller says. “It’s only recently that we try not to get too wasted, but it’s not like we’re not going to have a fucking drink. We started the band because we like to party. If you take the party out of it, what’s the fucking point?”
Blood Duster’s impact hasn’t only been felt in Australia. European audiences have savoured several doses of the band’s intoxicated venom. Now, if there’s anywhere in the world that prizes beer and metal as much as Australia, it’s the Czech Republic. Fittingly, that’s where Fuller’s ultimate beer drinking experience occurred.
“We were in a little village and we found a pub and it was full of thick-fingered, forester kind of dudes,” he explains. “They were all speaking Czech and it looked like former Soviet anger in their eyes. They had a sink full of soapy water and it was like one guy was finished drinking, a quick rinse and then they’d fill it up. We ordered four beers and I was like, ‘This is going to be fucking horrible.’ But it was the best beer I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
The rise of independent craft beer companies means Blood Duster are happy with their options at home nowadays. “20 years ago you drank what the big companies gave you,” Fuller says. “Now it’s opened up – there’s so many good beers. If the beer’s good I can put up with anything – even some weird-fringed, neck-tattooed emo fuck serving it to me.”
Ah-ha! There’s that derisive severity Blood Duster are so renowned for. The band’s latest LP was perhaps the harshest statement of its career. A protest against the miserable condition of contemporary music consumption, 2012’s KVLT was actually physically unplayable. It seemed doubtful the band would issue any further releases, but Fuller reveals there’s still some subversive revolt to come.
“Making that record was as anti-music as we could be. It wasn’t until a few months ago that the other guys were like, ‘Nah, we’re not going out like that.’ So they want to do a new record and they’ve convinced me that it’s a good thing.
“I’ve always said that I want to ride [Blood Duster] into the ground and make sure everyone fucking hates us. I don’t have any desire to have some endearing legacy. I’m thinking that we should go really bad Euro techno, to make sure that no-one could get into it – even if you’re into really bad dance music. We’ve got time to run this ship aground a little more.”
Blood Duster will be playing at Satanic Swillfest at Frankie’s Pizza on Sunday May 25 alongside Killrazer, As Silence Breaks, Bastardizer, Recoil, Sumeru, Gutter Tactic and Steelswarm.
