Hailing from Wollongong and recently catching the attention of (and ultimately signing with) UNFD, metalcore five-piece Alienist relentlessly enamour with modern flair and infectious design, wielding elasticated riffs, soaring melodics and ambient gloss offset against beast-mode breakdowns, caustic grooves and fiery sonic chasms.
Alongside their key sonic influence Wage War, Alienist have fused their burgeoning trademark sound with nods to I Prevail, Bring Me The Horizon and Polaris. Swiftly storming the heavy scene in a remarkably short space of time, Alienist have chalked up triple j airplay along the way as well as supports alongside Northlane and Gravemind, an appearance at UNIFY Off The Record and an almost sold-out national headline tour in a mere two years, not including the pandemic pause.
Most recently unveiling a brand new single, Prisoner Of You, to close out 2023, and primed for a huge year ahead, guitarist and vocalist Damon Renes takes us through the past, present and future of Alienist, aka a group of five high school friends who have catapulted into the heavy spotlight. Who is Alienist? Let’s dive in.
EARLY DAYS
We played a lot of things in high school, we did covers of Parkway Drive and all that sort of stuff. But besides our drummer and our other guitarist, we never really did “proper band” stuff. I was almost 24 when Alienist started. All of us had fallen out of playing music, and all of us missed it and we wanted to do something. So we started writing original music, and then we got asked to play our first show, I think it was a Halloween Youth Centre show - and it was awful. We couldn't play in time and we were terrible. But something clicked because people seemed to react reasonably quickly, and only a few shows later we were playing with Northlane.
THE ROAD TO SUPPORTING NORTHLANE & UNFD
We went to the studio and we recorded our first single, Social Faker, and we popped it onto triple j Unearthed. We then entered it into a competition for Northlane, and it happened to be the winner. It was extremely out of left field getting a call from triple j at the time and being told that we had won, because of course we all looked up to Northlane, we've all listened to Northlane for a long time. And then after that, unfortunately, COVID hit, so we were having some sort of upward trajectory and then everything sort of went on pause for two years. But in the meantime, we just kept writing music. And then as soon as that was over, it was just constant writing, constant shows, constantly trying to get our name out there and pushing and pushing until we sort of sat back down and looked at the music that we had and the new direction that we wanted to go. We then started writing what the music is now, something a little bit more modern, something a little bit more accessible, something that we thought was a little bit more mature and a little bit more nuanced, and we changed our producer to somebody who would fit that style. We went back into the studio, and it was a game-changer for us. And then we sent it to UNFD after we got our Unify Off The Record offer. And thankfully they liked it. We all grew up idolising UNFD bands, so it’s been completely surreal to be part of that now.
CRITICAL THINKING
We always say to each other that we are probably one of the most critical bands of our own material. We have scrapped easily over a hundred songs because we don't want to put out anything that we don't think is good enough at the time. Of course, as time goes on, you start to hate all the stuff that you've made before. And I'm always excited for the next thing, I'm always most excited about the newest stuff we've made. But we are so overly critical. It’s like a balancing act of being ultra-critical. But at the same time, with the music that we're trying to make, I'm not trying to make something that's overly complicated or overly multifaceted. I don't want to try and make something that is trying to impress a particular crowd or trying to impress with crazy intricate guitars or anything like that. I just want to write music that brings metalcore back to the basics, but also still allowing it to have a modern twist and be as accessible as possible.
BEHIND THEIR LATEST SINGLE
We released Prisoner Of You as our first single after signing with UNFD because it covered every single base. It’s a summary of our new sound where it has the clean vocals and it has the more poppy choruses, but at the same time it also kept the breakdowns and it also kept the heavy parts and all that sort of stuff. It felt like a no-brainer to us that this song was the best way to launch this new chapter because it showed every single aspect that we can excel at and what we can explore further in other songs. We can go further into those clean styles or we can go further into heavy styles, it allows us to go in so many different directions. For the music video, besides the fact that it was shot in a warehouse on a 35-degree day in Brisbane on a 95% humidity day, and every single shot we had to take a break and wipe ourselves off with towels - it was also an amazing experience. Colin [Jeffs, Ten of Swords Media] is such a professional and it was our first time working with somebody on such a professional level where he knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, there were always complications when it came to organising locations and all that sort of stuff. But we just wanted to keep the music video simple. We just wanted to keep it performance-based, so that it just focused on all of the band members. But we knew if we kept it performance-based, we needed to go to somebody who could make it interesting to watch without having a narrative or without having actors or whatever it may be. And Colin did a great job with that.
THE 2024 BUCKET LIST
Our intentions in 2024 are to tour as much and play as much as possible. We would love to play festival slots and we would love to definitely…conquer might be a cringey word, but we want to conquer Australia first and then see where we can branch out from there in terms of our audience and our demographic. Right now, the US is a huge audience and Germany and England are big audiences as well. So of course I want to try and figure something out for international tours, but it's all kind of up in the air right now. We have to wait and hope that everything gets in front of the right ears, and I can say that Prisoner Of You is not the last you’ll be hearing from Alienist in the very near future.
THE ALIENIST MODUS OPERANDI
We’re just a band just chasing our dream. We love music and we love metalcore and we just want to spread our own personal stories through the music. But at the same time, we want to use it as a platform to spread awareness about a lot of different things. That's why Prisoner Of You is about abuse and why we have songs about a lot of different complicated things coming. We want to make sure that we can, if possible, advocate for a lot of different things, whether it be mental health, or whether it be cancer, or whether it be toxic relationships or abuse or multiple different things. And we want to use our music as an opportunity, when we're playing live, to spread awareness there too.
Listen to Prisoner of You on our METAL MANIACS playlist
