Lacquered Black are taking grunge back to the main stage with a distinct live energy

Lacquered Black aren't about typical grunge sob songs. The Auckland band are building a sound around the kind of live energy that leaves a room speechless. They're working towards their first recorded releases, and are keeping things as old school as possible - tracking in a live room, minimal overdubs and really drawing into the collective force of performing as a band. They're pushing their take on grunge metal into something built for bigger stages.

We caught up with Lacquered Black to talk about their live shows, recording with real amps and drums, the current return of grunge, the local heavy music scene and their ambitions to take the band overseas.

You have such an immense live sound. What goes into making such a hard hitting performance?

Haha I definitely think having walls of amps helps. We're going for that larger than life sound and experience. We try to maintain a really high level of energy by thrashing round, jumping into the crowds and interacting with each other. We want every show to feel like an experience rather than just standing on stage playing songs.

You’re working on some recorded releases. How do you approach translating that energy from your shows into a recorded song?

Having a really good producer and engineers really helps! Its been a mission finding the right place and people to catch lightning in a bottle with us, but we're really happy with the team we've put together.

We were really keen to keep things as old school as we could without trying to go insane or blow the budget. All the guitars and bass tracks are coming through real amps and big stacks, and the drums are a real kit recorded in a big woody room to give lots of space.

We were keen to keep it faithful to what came before us and minimise using digital as a way out. No disrespect to digital users of course, it was just a preference of ours. Were really excited with how they're sounding and are really excited to share them.

Grunge is having quite a revival at the moment. Why do you think younger generations are waking up to this style of music?

I think its because theres so much lore, legend and mystique to some of the big names and faces, and especially since many of them died young. A lot of them spoke about things that i think you just don't really hear about in songs coming out at the moment.

People wanna know about things like heavy drug addiction, metaphors and cynical takes on every day life. I think people find those things risky to write and sing about due to how vulnerable it can leave you, especially knowing that other people and especially your peers are listening and judging your craft.

They are definitely things we speak about in our songs, but we like to leave our lyrics somewhat ambiguous so that what ever you think the song is about and what or how it applies to in your life, is what the song is truly about.

So grunge is making a come back, but what do you guys bring to that sound that feels unique to the band?

I think a big thing is that were completely a grunge metal band, rather than just having it be an influence or an aspect. The word grunge gets mixed in with loads of other genres like indie and pop and were very not those either of those things.

I think another thing is, going back to what i was talking about earlier, the whole larger than life experience. The super high energy isn't something a lot of other bands under the grunge umbrella aren't really into at the moment and its something we would love to see more of locally and internationally.

Who are your favourite local bands around the scene?

Wow theres a lot of heavy hitters at the moment. Were really big fans of Headlock Grave and were stoked to be playing with them at Tuning Fork later this year. Such a brutal and heavy sound, its gonna be such a difficult act to follow.

Sprawl is amazing too, those guys are so young even compared to us and they pull massive crowds already. They've got insane stage presence and they do the early 2000s thing so so well.

Parasitic Infestation are way more heavy than us but the energy, slams, heaviness and fun that their music brings to live shows is unmatched and out of all the lighters I’ve lost in the past I’ve held tight onto the one I bought from their merch table.

In five years time, what would you like to have achieved?

Well were currently staring at the feat of doing our first album together which will be a first album for all of us. We've all been in bands since we were teenagers and none of us have really felt as much raw passion and fire that we could actually do something big with what were doing.

We want to play stadiums asap. I work at Spark Arena part time and watching that stage get built day in day out gets me fired up and furious to be the one on it.

Seeing our friends Boondocks getting booked to play there at Rock 2000 I think was massive for us and other local bands. It showed everyone that there is still a way out from playing dingy clubs to playing arena shows. Huge congratulations to them they deserve every piece of it!

In five years time we would love to be touring internationally, playing festivals in places we can barely pronounce with a couple good records out that were really proud of, maybe some acoustic stuff on the side and a real fanbase of people that love and understand what were doing.