1990s Brisbane rockers Purple Avengers make an unexpected comeback with the release of ‘A Storm Of Years’, their first studio album in over ten years.
The group will continue the comeback with a reunion gig at Oriental Rock 3. The show celebrates the bands that made The Orient Hotel their home during the late ‘80s and ‘90s.
Purple Avengers join forces with fellow Brisbane rockers The Bam Bams and Chopper Division for a family reunion like no other. “The Orient was a real haven for independent Brisbane bands back in the day,” Purple Avengers guitarist Karl Avenger says.
“It was before Triple J and when venues were the heart and soul of keeping bands alive. That was always the venue and there were some promoters who were willing to put on bands doing their own, original music.”
With members of the band currently split across different continents, they rarely have the chance to play together as a live unit anymore, making the Orient Rock 3 even more of a treat for the band. “We’re really looking forward to the night and seeing people we haven’t seen for a while and hopefully there are some new fans on the horizon,” Karl says.
“We’ve got quite a bit of material so it’ll be a mix of everything. There will be songs off the CDs we put out over the Phantom [Records] years, and then quite a range of things off the new album and we might throw something else in as a surprise and to test ourselves.”
Despite the band’s trans-continental status, with the wonders of technology they have been able to write, record and produce ‘A Storm Of Years’.
Karl explains how the album is largely an allegory for the destructive nature of mankind. “I hate using the term concept album because it can have a very negative connotation, but with this album I tried to tie songs together that were all written around a particular idea.
“It’s a silly sci-fi story but a moral for our time. It’s based on the idea that there used to be some pretty intelligent and peaceful life on this planet but at some stage aliens came to visit them. The aliens’ spaceship has these things called ‘time engines’ and when they tried to visit us they ended up millions of years in the past.
"So they tried to create their own intelligent life by mixing whatever they could find with themselves, but unfortunately they didn’t end up with the same peaceful utopia that was here in the first place. It’s an allegory for how humans are destroying their home and there must be some reason behind it.”
Although there is clearly an element of nostalgia to the Orient Rock 3 show, with the release of their new album and possibly more to come, Karl says Purple Avengers are keen to celebrate the past but have their eyes firmly focussed on the future. “For all the guys in Purple Avengers, music is the thing that holds us together,” he says.
“We live and breathe it. Even if we’re not getting releases out or doing things in-between we’re pretty obsessed with music, even just listening to other people's.
“So there is some nostalgia to it but for us there’s been a lot of continuity there as well, we’ve always had projects and played in other bands or had solo projects and so on. I’ve kept expanding my songbook along the way, so it’s good to get some of that recorded and play it in front of people.”
Purple Avengers play Orient Rock 3 at New Globe Theatre 10 December.
