Australia had the isolation problem in its purest form. No touring bands, imports that took months, a domestic industry with no interest, and several thousand miles of ocean between the scene and anybody who might have heard it.
What came out of that was a small number of bands who funded everything themselves and one who never released an album at all and is still talked about.
The distance
An imported record reached Sydney months after release, if a shop had ordered it. A tape from a trader in Europe took six to eight weeks each way, which made a conversation about a demo a four month undertaking. No American or European band toured there, because the flights cost more than the shows would earn.
So Australian bands worked from an incomplete and delayed picture of what the rest of the world was doing, which is the same condition as Brazil and Japan and produces the same result: something adjacent to the source rather than derived from it.
Mortal Sin
From Sydney, and the band who got furthest. Mayhemic Destruction in 1986 was funded by the band themselves, pressed independently, and good enough that it was picked up and reissued internationally, which took them to Europe.
That is a considerable achievement from where they were standing. A self financed album from Sydney reaching a European tour required the record to be better than the competition by a clear margin, because nothing else was going to carry it.
Hobbs' Angel of Death
From Melbourne, formed by Peter Hobbs, and considerably more extreme than Mortal Sin. The 1988 self titled album was recorded with Harris Johns in Berlin, which is a remarkable sentence for an Australian band of the period and says a good deal about how far they were prepared to go.
Slaughter Lord
The band who never released an album and are cited more than most bands who did. Slaughter Lord existed in Sydney between 1985 and 1988, recorded demos, and split without a proper release.
The demos circulated on the tape network, acquired a reputation entirely out of proportion to their availability, and have since been compiled and reissued. Musicians in death metal and black metal name them regularly, which is a strange fate for four songs recorded in a rehearsal room on the other side of the world.
| Band | City | Key release | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mortal Sin | Sydney | Mayhemic Destruction | 1986 | Self funded, and it worked |
| Slaughter Lord | Sydney | The demos | 1986 | No album, and a reputation anyway |
| Hobbs' Angel of Death | Melbourne | Hobbs' Angel of Death | 1988 | Recorded in Berlin |
| Sadistik Exekution | Sydney | The Magus | 1991 | Beyond any category |
| Armoured Angel | Canberra | The demos | 1980s | Long running, rarely released |
The postal economy
Everything in Australian metal in this period ran on the international post, and the practical details matter.
Sending a package to Europe cost real money at Australian postal rates. International reply coupons, which allowed a recipient to reply without paying, were a genuine currency in the trading network. And a band promoting a demo abroad was effectively funding an advertising campaign out of postage.
That is why the Australian bands who got anywhere are the ones who committed to it seriously: half measures did not survive the shipping costs.
What happened later
Australia now has a substantial and internationally regarded extreme metal scene, and the distance problem has effectively disappeared. A band in Perth releases something and it is heard in Europe the same day.
The 1980s catalogue has been reissued and reassessed, and Slaughter Lord in particular have moved from a rumour on a cassette to a documented part of the history. That is the same story as every other isolated scene in this chapter, and it took the same thirty years.
Southern Europe's version, with better distribution and equally little recognition, is Italy and Spain, and the general account is in Brazil, Canada and the Rest of the World.
The venues
Australia had one advantage that partly offset the distance: a functioning pub circuit that would put on loud bands.
Sydney and Melbourne both had rooms where a metal bill could play on a weeknight, and the licensing culture supported live music in a way that several larger countries did not. That gave the bands somewhere to develop, which is more than the Eastern bloc or most of Latin America had.
What it did not give them was anybody to play to who might sign them, review them internationally or take a tape home. A scene can be healthy locally and invisible globally, and Australia in 1987 was exactly that.
What the records sound like
Rougher than the European equivalents and closer to the German end than the American one, which is the tell that these bands were working from Venom, Motorhead and Sodom rather than from the Bay Area.
Hobbs' Angel of Death recording in Berlin with Harris Johns is the clearest confirmation. That is not a producer an American influenced band would have chosen; it is the choice of a band who wanted the sound of Persecution Mania and were prepared to fly to the other side of the world to get it.
Where to start
Mayhemic Destruction first, because it is the most complete record and because it is genuinely good rather than interesting for contextual reasons. Then the Slaughter Lord compilation, which is four songs and a rehearsal tape and explains why musicians keep naming a band who never released an album.
Then Hobbs' Angel of Death for the Berlin production, and Sadistik Exekution if the appetite for the genuinely deranged end of this music survives all of the above.
What the isolation produced
The same thing it produced in Brazil, in Poland and in Japan, and the consistency of the pattern across four continents is the most interesting finding in this whole chapter.
Australian bands heard the source records late, incompletely and in poor condition, and what they made from them is adjacent to those records rather than derived from them. Slaughter Lord in particular sound like a band who had been told what death metal was going to be and were guessing at it, three years early, which is exactly what they were.
Access produces competence. Distance produces mutation. Every scene in this chapter demonstrates it, and the ones furthest from California produced the most that was genuinely new.
Sources and notes
Years refer to original releases. Slaughter Lord's material was released posthumously as compilations; the dates given are recording dates.
