Intervista Airbourne (Matt Harrison)

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Hello, welcome to TrueMetal.it!

Thank you – happy to have a chat!

I’ve been listening to “Boneshaker” for the last few days and I must say that I like it a lot, it sounds very powerful and “very Airbourne”. How would you describe it to your fans?

Glad to hear you like it! The best way to describe it would be to say that it’s definitely the Airbourne album that comes closest to capturing the feel and energy of an Airbourne live show. It’s raw and in-your-face and the guitars are aggressive and LOUD!

The producer of the album was multi-award winner Dave Cobb, how was it to work with him?

It was amazing to work with Dave. He’s a true rock n’ roller and there’s a reason he’s the biggest producer in the world right now. He’s a genius at capturing ‘the moment’ of a band playing live – and creates a recording environment where none of us ever felt the ‘pressure’ of recording… It was always about having fun and capturing a song at its inception when everyone is most inspired and energised by a new idea.

If I’m not mistaken “Breakin’ Outta Hell” was the first album you recorded in your home-country, Australia. With “Boneshaker” you went back again to the States, to Nashville, how so? Did you have any issue recording the previous album?

The reason we went to Nashville was purely based on Dave’s location. He works out of RCA Studio A on Music Row which is an amazingly famous recording studio and ultimately, it was an easy decision! The studio itself was hugely inspiring and it was an honour to create music in the same room as Elvis, Johnny Cash and The Rolling Stones once did. Seeing photos of those artists all over the walls definitely helped us appreciate the history of the place and make sure we were on our A-game!

In a time when bands write long albums and songs, you kept the album Rock N’ Roll and straight to the point: 30 minutes of music over 10 songs. Were you ever tempted to follow the trend, so to say, and to write a longer album?

Never. This album was ALWAYS about deliberately going against the current trends of songwriting and recording. Modern record making has gotten way to “perfect” and soul-less – and a lot of modern rock and metal albums all sound the same… We wanted to do the complete opposite of that and make a record that is raw and energetic – and capture four real human beings playing real instruments! The songs were tracked live in the same room as one another… Guitars were bleeding into the drum mics and we left all the little ‘mistakes’ because they gave the songs the soul of a band playing live in the studio.

The music industry is today in a state that makes it hard for a band to succeed and to make a living, especially in Rock/Metal. However, you somehow managed to make it and have been playing to thousands of fans for years now without any gimmick or particularly innovative side to your music, just classic, solid Rock N’ Roll. What would you say has been the key to Airbourne’s success?

Sort of like I alluded to with the way that we recorded the album… People can see that it’s real. We play everything live; there’s no backing tracks or any of that shit… And we roll 24 Marshall speaker cabinets onto stage every night because we love it and because thousands of rock n’ rollers every night love it too! Ultimately, I think people connect with Airbourne and our music because they can see that we care about what we do and that we’d bleed for rock n’ roll!

It’s now been 12 years since “Runnin’ Wild”, and I guess that when you were recording that album you could have hardly imagined that you’d be here today. Do you remember a particular moment when you realised that the music career was actually working out for you?

Well, it’s been nearly 3 years since I joined the band so I wasn’t in the band during those early days. But we have been friends since those early days and our paths have kinda run parallel in a lot of ways up to the point that I actually did join the band! In a weird way, I guess we all always felt as though our music career would reach this point (and hopefully beyond!) because it’s literally all we’ve ever wanted to do and we all approach music with a single-minded attitude that has kept driving us forward for all these years! We’re always thinking about and planning-for the ‘next step’ and making the live show bigger and crazier each tour. The cool thing is that we have constant moments that remind us why we love rock n’ roll… My THIRD show with the band was in front of 80,000 people so you can imagine that was a pretty crazy moment!

With five albums in your discography you’ve got quite some music to choose from when you play live, is it hard to put a setlist together?

Yes, it’s definitely getting more difficult. Especially as we start adding more and more of the songs from “Boneshaker”! We’ve actually started rotating songs through the setlist most nights so we can play a larger selection of songs from all five records.

– To close this interview, what has been the weirdest episode, the most Spinal Tap moment you lived on the road?

Those things happen constantly! Haha. Only a few nights ago; I went to take a piss during the encore break and got lost on the way back to stage. The rest of the guys obviously didn’t think to do a headcount because as I was trying to find my way back to the stage, I heard 3/4’s of Airbourne kick into ‘Ready To Rock’! I finally made my way onto stage just before the first chorus.

Davide Sciaky