As Thornhill’s Ethan McCann hops on our name, there’s an air of victory in his tone. Regardless of it being late in Australia, he’s cruising in on a excessive, having overwhelmed his frontman to the submit.
“Is Jacob not right here but?” the guitarist smirks, elevating a glass of purple wine to his lips. “So uncommon of him to be fucking late.”
It’s a playful dig that displays the band’s dynamic – Thornhill is the product of a rock-solid friendship. “It’s a brotherly relationship,” Ethan explains, getting just a little sentimental. “Jacob’s my oldest good friend, and he’s develop into household. He can’t eliminate me now.”
When Jacob Charlton makes it onto the decision, the floodgates burst open. The pair bounce off each other, balancing brotherly bickering with sarcasm. It’s an power they admit can typically give off the fallacious impression.
“Internationally, Australian humour can get misplaced in translation,” Jacob admits. “Generally different bands don’t catch the joke and suppose we’re conceited.”
He highlights one case in 2023, when the band have been supporting Holding Absence on a tour across the UK and Europe. “Holding Absence all assumed we have been gonna be like highschool bullies earlier than they met us, due to how dry we have been onstage,” Jacob remembers. “But when Lucas [Woodland, singer] tried to battle me, I reckon he would win. I’m certain he can swing – and he can kick these legs excessive, bro. I don’t have the athletic functionality to compete with that. I’ll have to coach… I’ll add it to the listing.”
Ethan shortly cuts in with a wry smile: “Proper subsequent to turning into a very good singer, proper?”
Behind the shimmering soundscapes and ethereal brooding, the group have been self-confessed dorks again in highschool in Vermont, suburban Melbourne. Even now, the pair indulge within the nerdier aspect of issues. Ethan’s forearm is branded with Neversoft’s skewered eyeball emblem in honour of the Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater videogame sequence, whereas Jacob is consistently upstaged on the decision by his one-eyed cat, Zuko, named after the character from animated TV sequence Avatar: The Final Airbender.
“We have been the little nerds within the music room,” Jacob laughs.
The pair shaped the band in 2015, with drummer Ben Maida and ex-guitarist Sam Anderson, in hopes of seizing the coveted crown at Vermont Secondary School’s Battle Of The Bands.
“Our first title was Configuration,” Ethan says. “Earlier than, we have been in very totally different bands. Jacob was principally in a Metallica cowl band, and I had extra of an alternate rock upbringing. My mother and father used to play Purple Sizzling Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins. We kind of discovered the candy spot in the course of our Venn diagram of music style.”
The cherry on prime was the band’s music instructor. “She began displaying us emo music,” Ethan smiles. “She was like our musical godmother. She pointed us in the correct course.”
Jacob even introduced some choral information to the desk, because the frontman was a part of the Australian Boys Choir for six years. “I didn’t adore it,” he admits. “However I suppose it made me extra conscious of harmonies. However then your voice adjustments as you develop up, and you must discover ways to use it yet again… So I principally needed to begin from scratch once more anyway.”
Thornhill have a penchant for ranging from scratch, consistently rebuilding their sound from the bottom up. Whereas 2019’s The Darkish Pool set the band up as metalcore’s subsequent massive factor, providing a masterclass in technical prog and djent riffage, 2022’s Heroine was a tonal shift, bringing in soporific shoegaze and darkish glamour.
Self-indulgently wealthy and drowning in reverb, Heroine was a love letter to 90s alt metallic. Tracks similar to Valentine and The Hellfire Membership oozed a melt-in-your-mouth liminality, whereas the album’s movies have been hypnotic. Arkangel’s wet, grainy pictures, harking back to The Crow, amplified grittier guitar tones, whereas Casanova’s Nineteen Sixties James Bond discoball aesthetic added to the observe’s woozier qualities.
“I used to be impressed by the overdramatic realm of cinema, significantly Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet,” Jacob explains. “That document was a complete bundle. The movies have been equally as essential because the music.”
Nonetheless, the document was written over lockdown, and the band shortly realised it didn’t translate effectively dwell. “It’s arduous for a crowd to take pleasure in a bunch of dudes enjoying shoegaze,” Jacob laughs. “We lacked a little bit of motion on the final document, we shifted focus away from heavy music. Once we went again out on the highway, we remembered how enjoyable heavier tracks are to play. On Our bodies, we’re chasing the dopamine.”
New album Our bodies is the right assembly level of The Darkish Pool and Heroine, the place shoegaze merges with uncooked, metallic distortion. Single Nerv encapsulates the band’s newest period, its weightless choruses offsetting the scratchy ferocity of every verse.
“I believe Nerv is one of the best music we’ve ever made,” Jacob says. “It was the primary observe we wrote after correctly stepping into the stride of the document’s sound. We despatched it backwards and forwards a number of instances, then we have been each identical to, ‘This music fucking slaps.’”
“I believe we forgot tips on how to collaborate throughout lockdown, which is after we wrote Heroine,” Ethan chimes in. “Collaboration is how we work greatest. We used to document in our bassist Nick Sjogren’s mother and father’ home, all our minds in a single room, all collectively. It took till midway by means of Our bodies to get again into our collaborative stride – Nerv was the ‘eureka’ second. Then we went again and rewrote every part.”
Whereas Our bodies packs extra chunk than Heroine, the essence of nostalgia stays. Glimmers of recent sounds are additionally thrown into the superb combine, as Crush pulses with sultry, muted R&B affect. It’s Thornhill’s personal method of dragging the 90s into the current.
“I positively suppose the 90s is a large factor for us,” Ethan provides. “We’re simply 27, so possibly we’ve kind of romanticised it in our heads, but it surely felt like the last word period of expression and revolt. Objectively, I’d additionally say it’s when heavy music was at its peak coolness. There was an power about it.”
The mantra for Our bodies was nearly, ‘What would a 90s band do?’. “If I’d launched my debut in 1995, what would I observe it up with in, say, ’99?” Ethan says. “We positively wish to try to seize the identical power as these data, that sense you’re listening to one thing new and definitive of the last decade. We’re working in the direction of that.”
“Our motto has at all times been that you need to write the music that you simply personally wish to hear,” Jacob explains. “For those who’re not content material with the present sound inside a style, you attempt to discover what the scene is missing.”
Thornhill have already earned approval from a few of metalcore’s greatest names, supporting the likes of Architects and Bury Tomorrow, and have even ticked off their first UK headline exhibits. At the moment, Jacob reveals they’re going all-in to make the band a hit.
“You possibly can both be broke and do music full time, otherwise you may be barely much less broke and have an off-the-cuff job on the aspect – and I’m selecting to remain broke proper now,” Jacob grins. “That’s simply the sacrifice you make.”
Our bodies is out now through UFND. Thornhill play Louder Than Life on September 19 and Aftershock on October 3.
