This Saturday, Pod People make their long awaited return to Wollongong to play La La La's. We believe it is their first show since the epic Electric Wizard show at the Oxford Tavern around twenty years ago! Their classic album 'Doom Saloon' was reissued in recent times on vinyl for the first time and the last few copies are available in store now. Pod People's Josh Nixon fills us in on five records that mean a lot to him.
Your first album. It can be the first record/cd/tape you bought, first album downloaded or just the first album you remember hearing that stuck with you.
The most impactful first album I listened too was Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. I was under 5 and would play it over and over with my cousins and it was both terrifying and amazing and it stuck with me forever. I got to play on a cover of Eve of the War with Alchemist which now Pod guitarist Roy was a member of. My first albums I bought with my own money was Kiss Dynasty and a David Bowie compilation for 80 Toya at the Panguna markets in Bougainville. Dynasty we all remember, the Bowie one had a version of ‘The Laughing Gnome’, as insidious an ear worm as ever put to wax.
The album that changed your musical outlook. It can be your most influential, one that led you down a certain path, or had a long-lasting impact on you.
Iron Maiden Live After Death was my gateway drug into metal music which was right on high school which for me started in 86 at the peak of thrash. I loved all of it in the mid to late 80s when heavy metal was not chopped into sub genres, Bolt Thrower next to Bon Jovi at the record shop. So the prevalence through the birth of grind and death metal was speed, ever faster.
The musical lightbulb game changer for me was underage at a metal gig in a pub and the sound man put Forest of Equilibrium on and the tectonic plates shifted as Garry & Adams riffs and Lee’s unique vocals changed my whole life & put me on a doom path for life. Cathedral were that band for me.
An album that you love but is not as widely known as it should be.
In doom land I don’t think Orodruin get enough flowers for Epicurean Mass, but I always have an instinctive trigger for this question. Korpse from Aberdeen Scotland don’t have a bad record and Revirgin from 1996 alway confounds me that they weren’t more well known. Insanely groovy death metal and a plethora of great riffs.
The record that drew you in with its visuals. It can be the cover art, a press pic of the band that made you take notice...
Album art has always been immensely important to me and that goes right back to the beginning with War of the Worlds. That album had 3 artists working on the cover and lush booklet. Geoff Taylor, Michael Trim and Peter Goodfellow and I would pour over the sleeve and booklet when I listened to it. It’s their fault I nearly sent Jeb and High Beam records here in Wollongong to the cleaners with a giant fold out inverted cross for our fist full length Doom Saloon. Derek Riggs also culpable, but Ray Ahn, Glenno, Roy Torkington, Craig Westwood, Dan Seagrave, Dave Praychet all huge for me among many others.
The album you are currently loving the most at the moment.
I’ve been doing whole discographies lately, in order after doing Cathedrals after they put Societies Pact With Satan last year. Currently it’s Nuerosis and I’m up to the new album having been through an almost flawless back album considering the circumstances. Give the situation the band found themselves in with Scott, the record is a triumph. If you’re familiar with Aaron Turners work on Isis, Old Man Gloom and Sumac, the album might feature more of him than Nueorisisms but if the price for more Neurosis is to have him slightly over represented on the record to acclimatise him to the band and fans then it’s well worth it. He fits so naturally into the band, it’s a stunning record and well worth it.
Catch Pod People at La La La's on Saturday pril 18th and grab a copy of Doom Saloon here.
