Move To Strike

Late last year, there was a quiet buzz building around local punk circles. After a couple of years of the A-Town scene being heavily dominated by some impressive hardcore and screamo outfits, melody was again starting to seep back into the Enigma Bar and Fowler's Live. Main protagonists The Open Season and In Fiction were beginning to attract some attention, but perhaps the freshest sound of the emo nu-wave was emanating from a bedroom in the Adelaide Hills. Enter Move To Strike.

"I'll just say maybe a little bored with it," frontman Benjamin Green says of the scene at the time. "I love all sorts of music and stuff, but my main thing that I love is melody. It's really good now that bands like Gyroscope and After The Fall and Kisschasy have lead the way in melodic rock - it's proven that Australian bands can be interesting and exciting and put on a really good show without having screaming and moshing and crazy guitar swings. I think hardcore and all that stuff in Adelaide at the moment is really exciting and cool, but I think that melodic stuff has just as much to offer."

Move To Strike arrived late 2005 with an impressive live show, some slick emo-rock gems and a nifty little demo CD called 'Battlefield Postcards' already under their belt. The band spent close to a year writing, rehearsing and recording before even playing their first show.

"I guess we weren't in a huge hurry to rush into anything. We wanted to see if we were prepared for everything before we started, and I think that's paid off a little bit in the success that we've had," Green explains. "It started out as just playing a couple of songs, and we were just doing it 'cos we loved making that sound. Then it developed into a band, and we had enough songs that we were like, 'oh, we can probably start playing shows soon.'

"Before we did that, we really wanted to have a demo so we could listen to the songs for ourselves and see whether they were up to scratch. I had sort of been dabbling in recording, and I made myself a mini recording studio at home. By the time it was finished it ended up being the full blown demo that was good enough to show to other people."

For a home-recorded demo, 'Battlefield Postcards' has done remarkably well. The first printing of 500 copies sold out within five months, and met rave reviews, Nova airplay and an ever-growing fanbase. "It was a bit of an experiment, so we were happy with any response," Green reiterates. "We wanted to make it as good as possible without having to get too much help from other people, to show everyone what we're capable of."

The wholly independent band did everything themselves, from individually packaging and spray-painting every CD to mercilessly promoting themselves around town in an attempt to get their name out there. "I guess it is a lot of work doing everything by yourself. We're all really passionate about the band and about the music. [We're] putting everything we have into it, and we'll take it as far as it will take us."

2006 is shaping up to be a big year for Move To Strike. Last weekend, the band headed off to Victoria to play their first interstate shows with Armageddon Sky. August will also see them head into the studio to record their debut EP with producer Darren Thompson. For the first time Move To Strike will be relying on somebody else - but Green is nothing short of amped.

"Having other people is a little bit difficult at first, because I'm sort of a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak. I've been learning that it's good to get outside influence, because when you're so close to a project you can't really see it from anyone else's perspective, and you sort of lose touch with reality sometimes. It's only gonna make it better. [Thompson's] gonna be able to get things to sound the way we tried when we did it by ourselves. It's gonna sound exactly how it was meant to."

Matt Vesely