Interview by Kris Peters
One thing that has always typified Australian music is the internal support system encouraged by those within it.
Band members often share their talents amongst two, three, or sometimes four other bands, with his fellow bandmates offering words of encouragement and respect rather than bemoan the fact their guitarist, or their drummer is not exclusively a part of their musical gang for want of a better word.
Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but as a whole Australian music is made up of and populated by like-minded musicians who just want to play.
Aussie rock outfit Palace Of The King is no exception, sharing its members with other bands such as Jon Stevens, The Screaming Jets and The Superjesus, an outside collective that adds nothing but starch to the Kings when all return to the fold.
The proof of that is in the band's latest single Tear It Down, a high-energy rock track done only as Australian rockers can. The song is lifted from Palace Of The King's upcoming album Friends In Low Places, which will be released via Reckless Records next month.
HEAVY sat down recently with vocalist Tim Henwood to find out more. We start by asking how Tear It Down has been received.
"It's been great," he beamed. "Because it's quite a full-on written song. I don't know if you've noticed, but we've been putting a new song out pretty much every eight weeks for months now, and I've been trying to mix it up. The last one was a bit more of a cruisy Americana, Black Crowes kind of thing and this one's much more fast, risky, kind of 70s-tinged Queens Of The Stone Age type of thing. I've been trying new stuff, so every time I put a new post up saying here's a new single fans of the band have piped up and said 'I wasn't expecting this', so I gave them a bit of a banger.
In the full interview, Tim talks more about Tear It Down and what the song is about, how it sonically represents the new album, the overall direction of Friends In Low Places, producing and recording his own music and the pros and cons involved, a brief history of the band, the album launch tour and more.