Interview: Nosedive Chat About Their New Single ‘Bad Mood’ and More!

Wollongong, home of the now dead Rad Bar, may it rest in peace… but also home to metal/hardcore band Nosedive, who have just released their latest single, ‘Bad Mood’ via Best Wishes Records. Following their 2020 two track demo ‘Murder Minded/Nice Way To Die’, ‘Bad Mood’ is an introspective glimpse at depressive episodes especially during a global pandemic and not being able to see a way out of a dark place.

We had a chat with vocalist Josh Hanns to give us a rundown on the track, the state of the outer sydney scene and more about the band. Read all about it below.

You’ve just released a track, Bad Mood, Can you give us a run down on the track and inspiration behind it?

Yeah, we had it in another form for a little bit before Covid and then that lockdown just ruined our plans for the year and forced us to focus on our music. Everybody by themselves did their little bit and it just came about from that bad mood we were all in during lockdown and expressing that through that really haunting, sad, angry song.

With the songwriting and recording, because of Covid, it was obviously approached differently, did you learn anything new in this process?

Probably learning to not just take the first iteration of a song as how it has to be. At first the song was a lot faster, but once we went back and reworked it and tweaked it we just polished it more and more and the product is like a mature sounding song that we’re really proud of. I guess just taking our time with things and really focusing ourselves. Being able to work remotely as well, we demoed it out a lot more which normally we don’t do, but yeah it was a good process going through.

I wanna bring it back a little bit, how did you all meet and why was Nosedive formed?

It’s a bit of a weird one, our current guitarist Jack went uni with Marcus, our other guitarist and I knew Jack, so he introduced us together. We formed the band then Jack left straight away. So once we’d introduced he quit and went and did his own thing and so we formed the band without him and we played for a little bit and recently he joined again and we’re back to our original lineup. I think we all just wanted to play in a metal band and there were a couple of other bands that we were inspired by that we really wanted to be like, so that was the goal when we started.

And some of your members are previous members of other bands we may know as well?

Yeah, Jack, Jesse and Marcus were in Up Late and After Touch, kind of like the same band but through different iterations. Having their experience is great to have in the band. We’ve all been friends for years and been through bands together and things so it’s really cool having them all together and doing stuff.

Being from ‘The Gong’, I love that place, I’m still a bit sad about Rad Bar being gone…but what is the outer Sydney/Wollongong scene like at the moment?

Not gonna lie, it did die down a little immediately after Rad Bar closed and Covid decimated things as well, but there’s definitely hard workers down here who are putting in a lot of effort to make live music a thing. It’s popping up in ways you wouldn’t expect. Like people organising shows in warehouse spaces…. We played an art gallery, all kinds of different things. There’s some venues coming up like La La La’s which we’re playing next friday, they put on heaps of shows and it’s a great place to play. There’s other places like Dapto’s Diamond Dogs which do any show you could imagine. They do thrash gigs, hardcore shows … like if anyone wants to play a show you can organise it at Dapto Dogs and they’ll let you play there.

You guys just played a show at Frankies in Sydney last night (Sunday May 9th) How was that show and what is a Nosedive live performance like?

Ah geez… I feel we have a pretty ferocious persona on stage. I’m not as aggressive as our guitarist Marcus, he’s really antagonistic I guess to audience members. But yeah it was a really good show even though it was seated and people showed up even though there were restrictions. It was just fun to be on stage and do stuff.

Lucky the gig wasn’t completely canned, I’ve heard so many other shows in the past week just be thrown out the window.

Yeah, we’re very lucky. I think we’re still in talks about playing on Friday, but it’s looking like that will go ahead still, I think we’ve made it through without any cancellations which is good.

I love the sound you have, I grew up on that riff heavy hardcore, old school vibe. Like you mentioned briefly before, you are very influenced by certain bands, what bands or artists influence your style the most?

Whenever we talk about it we say we’re a metal band with a hardcore band persona. I think the biggest influences for us are Mammoth Grinder and Power Trip, but we all grew up on Metallica and Slayer, old metal that we all love. So I would say those are the biggest influences for us. There are so many little influences that we pick up along the way that change our music and it’d be impossible to list it all.

What is in store for Nosedive in the coming months?  Any new music to keep our eyes out for?

We didn’t plan to, we planned to do ‘Bad Mood’ as a stand alone single, but even before it was released we were demoing music and getting ready to book in time to record so that’s something we’re doing now. Whether or not we get something out before the end of the year we don’t know, we’re kind of a fly by the seat of our pants band. If we can get our shit together and get some music out we will, it will probably be an EP I’m assuming. We’re also trying to put a tour together hopefully. That’s definitely on our priority list, to play some shows.