VIOLENT SOHO JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE OFFICE
Our story begins at the 2017 edition of Australia’s biggest regional touring festival, Groovin The Moo. Headlining the mainstage is post-grunge powerhouse Violent Soho, still riding high on the waves made by their monolithic fourth album, WACO. For a post-internet music scene that seems to churn through a new set of obsessions every other week, that WACO was still on everybody’s lips a year after release was no small accomplishment for the Mansfield foursome. But as far as they were concerned, WACO had run its course – Groovin would be the last distortion-slathered nail in its coffin, and the band were eager to give it one hell of a send-off.
“It was more like a party than anything we felt obliged to be at,” describes vocalist and rhythm guitarist Luke Boerdam. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, we’ve never taken shows less seriously than this.’ And we were headlining!”
The grand crescendo was their hourlong onslaught in Western Australia’s idyllic port city of Bunbury, where after the last rasping guitar wails of “Scrape It” rang out, the band channelled their inner ‘90s rock dogs and beat the everliving shit out of their equipment. Tuning pegs bounced off amp heads when Boerdam tested the strength of his axe against the foot of the stage (spoiler: even the firmest of fretboards burst when you put enough muscle in it), and then bassist Luke Henery took the amp and smashed that too, because f*** it, why not?
“People have sent us photos of the bits of drum kit and they have in their lounge rooms – one person even has a quad box framed up,” chuckles lead guitarist James Tidswell. “Life itself was pretty hectic for everyone, so we were just blowing off a bit of steam.”
It was a well-earned capstone for Soho. When the era kicked off, they were comfortably selling out thousand-cap theatres and ringing in the sunset at boutique festivals like Mountain Sounds. By no means were they a ‘small’ band, but there was no reason for them to be overwhelmed by their popularity, either. But not even Soho – who’d already seen their hype boom once when “Covered In Chrome” became an overnight hit – could predict just how fervently crowds would leap the hype train for . It spawned six lucrative singles – more than half
