Fledgling Brisbane alt-rock band Empanic return to Ipswich Battle Of The Bands (IBOTB) this year after taking out third place at the 2016 competition.
Since last year’s IBOTB, Empanic have been developing their stagecraft and songwriting, with vocalist-guitarist Sam Reynolds saying they’ve become a more cohesive unit. “I feel like since then we've rehearsed our band dynamics quite a bit and we’ve become a bit tighter as a band, because we'd only been gigging for six months at that point,” Sam says.
“A year on from that and I feel like we've gotten tight as a band and we really know what kind of genre works for us.”
Drummer Josh Garnett echoes Sam’s statement, adding that it was only by performing at last year’s IBOTB they were able to gauge their progress as a band.
“It was a bit of a different one,” Josh says, “because instead of just playing a gig with other bands, it was more of a direct comparison between ourselves and other bands. So it was easy to see where our shortfalls were and where we were doing pretty well compared to the other bands, but it's definitely more competitive.”
When they return to the battle arena (stage) at Ipswich City Square, Sam says Empanic will be bringing a fuller and louder setlist for a high-energy performance. “It turns out we had some extra time [last year] so we played another song that we'd only finished writing and weren't too sure about it, but it ended up being our favourite song of the whole set.
“So we're hoping to pick more songs in that vein for a high octane and intense set that will add a bit more loudness.”
Josh adds: “We've also got a special intro planned as per last year and it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Filling out the four-piece Empanic line-up is bassist Josh Kameus and Mathieu Dawes on keyboards, a classically-trained pianist who Josh believes gives the group a point-of-difference among their peers. “The fact that Mathieu is a classically-trained piano player just brings a whole new level to the band,” he says.
“He doesn’t have a lot of experience playing contemporary rock music at all, but that doesn’t worry me in the slightest because he's bringing something new.”
Empanic released their debut EP ‘Drive’ last year which featured the single ‘Parade’. Although they are currently focussed on the upcoming IBOTB event, Sam says they have plenty of new material to begin working on another release in the near-future.
“We are constantly updating our repertoire because we have this goal of being able to play two shows consecutively and play completely different sets each time,” he says.
“We're constantly writing songs and it’s easy to write songs when you have a band full of songwriters; all four of us enjoy contributing. It's not all too stressful, but we do pressure ourselves to write a lot of material.”
For the bands appearing for the first time at IBOTB in 2017, Josh has the following friendly advice: “Treat it like a real performance, rather than just getting up there and playing songs that you've written. You're really performing so make a persona and embody it; make it a real big, special deal.”
Empanic play Ipswich Battle Of The Bands at Ipswich City Square 1 July.
