In Heart's Wake
Described by Rolling Stone Magazine as “striking metalcore at its aggressive, meaningful best”, Ark is the fourth full-length album from Byron Bay outfit In Heart’s Wake.
After touring the album across east coast capital cities, and throughout the United States, they’re making sure none of their fans miss out, with a massive regional tour landing in Darwin this February. Guitarist Ben Naime spoke to Off The Leash.
You’re on a massive regional tour of Australia at the moment. Is there anywhere in particular you’re really looking forward to playing?
We’ve done a few regional tours of Australia before, but this is by far the most extensive. The place we’re most excited to play for the first time is Alice Springs. I don’t think any of us ever imagined we would get to go, let alone play there.
Before the Great Southern Land Tour, you did 32 shows over 38 days in Northern America. How was it?
It was our first time headlining in America. A handful of the shows sold out and the crowd response was amazing, which was a huge highlight for everyone in the band.
Sorry to harp on about the touring... but before America you were in Europe. Before that Australia... how do you have the energy?!
Last year was really busy and it’s looking like the first half of 2018 is going to be pretty busy too. We love touring but it’s been nice to have a couple of weeks at home over Christmas and New Year. We all eat really well on tour and try to get a reasonable amount of sleep. It’s important to stay healthy, especially when you’re headlining and have to give it your all every night on stage.
You’re touring off the back of your latest album Ark. Which songs are you really looking forward to sharing with your fans now that you’re back home in Australia?
We played a bunch of songs from Ark on our Australian headline tour last year, but we’ll probably play a couple of songs that we haven’t played live before on the regional run. I don’t want to give too much away, but we’ll probably be playing a few songs from the second half of the album.
Why did you want to create a thematic album – and why water?
We’ve always had a theme to our albums – I think it helps the album flow and lets you tell a story. We live by the ocean, and water is a huge part of our lives – we wouldn’t exist without it. It’s a topic that’s easy for us to relate to and we’re passionate about it, so it came pretty naturally when coming up with an overall theme.
Fri 16 Feb | 8pm | Discovery Darwin
