Interviews

Punchy, edgy and intense and South Australian, these are the easiest words to describe Adelaide’s Ice On Mercury’s sound. ‘Blind Leading the Lifeless” is their new Ep release and the Michael was online to chat about all things Geek and Music.
Hard work and a fair time in the music industry have meant that the Ice on Mercury guys have certainly had time to refine their style and their musical abilities.
“All of us have come from different bands. Nath the guitarist and myself (Michael) have known each other for 25 years (we went to high school together) Influenced, heavily by Metallica in the early years we aspired to play many of their songs. It was never serious at the time, we performed at school concerts and caught up on weekends to rehearse. Wasn’t til about 1998 when we joined our first band for a benefit concert.
This gave us the bug I guess to pursue being part of a live band. In the year 2000 we formed our first ever original band by putting a ‘hand written’ ad up on the local bulletin board at an independent CD store (Verandah Music in Adelaide) Not to long after we formed ‘Dominian’ heavily influenced by many artists such as Mark Of Cain, Tool, Fear Factory, Pantera, Metallica and Nu Metal artists.
We started writing songs, recorded and released our first ever EP ‘Enter Dominian’ We had some mild success supporting a few big names at the time (if you remember The TestEagles, we even supported the Zep Boys) and played some festivals. We spent the good part of 2004-2009 finding our sound, a few line up changes including Pat (current Ice On Mercury bass guitarist) joining the band etc.
We released an album called ‘Culmination’ in 2009. It was literally a culmination of all our best songs at the time. We decided that 2009 was the end of Dominian and formed a new band with pretty much the same line up in 2010 called ‘Ice On Mercury’ At this stage we didn’t have a lead vocalist. I can’t remember how we found Almir, I think it was on Gumtree of all places haha. We met up at a pub, seemed like a fit and haven’t looked back since.”

I was intrigued by the band name, it was, well, scientific.” Ice on Mercury, are you guys signs geeks?
“Haha, we are certainly geeks in one way or another, funny story, when Almir joined the band he didn’t like the name and there was a brief discussion on changing it. He lost that debate.”

The title of the new release “Blind Leading the Lifeless,” is very interesting with quite a few meanings possible, can you give us any hints is that what you were thinking when you came up with the title?
Kind of political, it was at the time we were voting, election campaigns etc. We were observing the lies, the slander and ‘Blind Leading The Lifeless’ is about some politicians who are blind to what the real problems are, then using social media to spread more lies and create negative hype with many buying into the nonsense. Some of our other tracks like Little People follow a similar sentiment, where as Numbers is about a close friend of the band recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

Reviews have called your music “Aggressive, Powerful, and Dark,” how do you come up with such complicated balances?
We have been asked this question a few times, it is a combined effort of music composition and Almir’s vocal delivery, we certainly aren’t trying on purpose to do it, we always just go with what feels right to us. We are not the type of band to write 20 songs and dump the ones we don’t like when recording an EP/Album, we tend to purge things we don’t like during the writing process, if it doesn’t work or feel right we leave it and move on.

Some critics have commented that your music “walks the line between heavy rock and heavy metal successfully,” what you attributed this to?
We all have many influences, ranging from Faith No More, Primus, Trivium, Fear Factory, Slipknot, Metallica and much more I could be here all day listing them off haha 🙂 I guess it is a love and true passion for many genres that makes its way into the writing process.

Managing a band in the modern era is very difficult, how do you guys balance the complexities of work music then and writing new material?
We just make it work, it would be easy to stop doing it and focus 100% on home or work life. All of us have been writing and performing music for so long to stop now wouldn’t feel right (I most certainly would feel lost without music) We have very understanding families and partners, plus any spare time is dedicated to rehearsing, catching up etc. We catch up every week for 2-3 hours and just rehearse flat out, run through the set twice and job done. When writing however we do tend to take a break from shows and focus the same time to new ideas, recording everything during these sessions, then listening back for any gems. We have always started with a chorus, get the melody right first, then comes the rhythm and song structure, vocals always last. Almir writes great lyrics and the ability to deliver the story (and vocals) brilliantly plus he has great stage presence, truly blessed to have him. The cool thing about this band is everyone plays their part and our music is the sum of all of us, no one has individual writing credits, all our songs are written and produced by Ice On Mercury (the band) When we hit the stage we are just 4 dudes living in the moment, bouncing off each others energy and putting everything we have into our performances.
Ice on Mercury have released their new EP “Blind Leading the Lifeless” last month.