Melbourne metal legends Frankenbok have survived everything the music industry can throw at them for 25 years.
They have witnessed the birth and rise of the internet and lived through countless musical trends that threatened their very existence, but through it all have remained true to the voice of metal.
Over that 25 years Frankenbok have undergone five major line-up changes, with the only one constant being founding member and guitarist Aaron Butler, whose musical vision has evolved and changed with the times but his love for the true core of Frankenbok's music has remained stoic.
To celebrate a quarter of a century in the music industry, Frankenbok will be hosting a special anniversary show at The Tote in Melbourne on December 10 featuring members that comprised each of those five line-ups. It is an ambitious feat and one not undertaken lightly by the band who have been working on making the night a success for the last couple of months.
But, before that monumental event, Frankenbok are releasing an album comprising seven songs previously thought lost to music that were recorded by the bands original line-up of Azza, Adam Glynn, Mick Morley, Scott Lang and Tim Miedecke in 2002. This is music that was recorded over 20 years ago as demos and left in a box gathering dust until recently when the current members began digging through old material to potentially bring back to life at the anniversary show.
During those scavenger hunts the band also unearthed a live recording of Frankenbok's legendary show supporting System Of A Down at The Palace in 2002, so the man behind it all - current Frankenbok vocalist Dan McDougall - decided to join those live songs with the newly uncovered demos and release them under the name The Ex Files Volume 1.
With that set to drop on November 30 HEAVY decided to sit down with McDougall to talk about the album and how it came to life.
"It's seeing the light of day because Azza brought over a whole bunch of old memorabilia at my request," McDougall began. "I sort of said to him... initially I just wanted some old photos of the band so I could put it on the poster, and then I asked if he could bring over anything else he's got floating around that I can use to promote the show, just old stuff that we can put up. He ended up rocking up with three massive containers full of photos and flyers and all kinds of shit. He's got an amazing amount of stuff - all of the dudes do actually - in various forms of disarray. Azza's stuff was hopelessly looked after and all the CD's were scratched, the photos were a mess and it took me a while to clean all of that up. Timmy and Mick's stuff was all meticulously organised (laughs). I was just going through the stuff and I stumbled across this one CD that's got a picture of the band on the front and I turned it over and I'm looking at these song titles on the back and it's got the Roadrunner Records logo on it. I'm looking at these titles and thought I don't know any of these songs and thought what the hell is this? This is new, and I've been a fan of the band since the beginning so to not know what this was I was very curious. I chucked it in the CD player the next day on my way to work and the first song kicks in and it's a song that's off the Blood Oath record, but it's got Hutchy doing vocals. The second album had Adam B Metal doing vocals. It kicked in and I thought woah, this has got completely different vocals and it's diferent lyrics, different everything. And it sounded unreal."
In the full interview, Dan continues his story on how The Ex Files Volume 1 came to life, how the material differs to Frankenbok's current sound, how it shaped the band moving forward, the found live footage of the support with System Of A Down, why he decided to put the album together which features the original band members, his love for Frankenbok as a fan and as a vocalist, the recently released album single The Avalanche In Me, the upcoming anniversary show and what to expect and more.