Brisbane rock trio Mecha Mecha embrace the darkness as they unleash their new single, 'Caught In A Cage'.
'Caught In A Cage' is a return to form for Mecha Mecha and stands in stark contrast to 2019 single 'Greedy Boys', which was their attempt at radio-friendly pop rock."It's definitely much more on the other end of what we want to write and how we want to sound – unrestrained, longer songs and heavier as well," drummer Angelo Webb says of 'Caught In A Cage'.
After 'Greedy Boys', Mecha Mecha have leaned into their natural tendencies for extended songwriting, rather than curtailing it for the sake of radio play.
Nonetheless, frontman Walt Webb is proud of what they achieved with 'Greedy Boys', considering it a healthy part of the band's growth and an important addition to their back catalogue.
"It was a bit of an experiment, and I'm quite happy with the song that came out, it served its purpose," Walt says. "You can't always be upset, and moody and broody at the world," he laughs.
"At the time when I wrote it, I was pretty happy with the relationship I was in, so it was a bit reflective of where I was at."
Over a year later, 'Caught In A Cage' similarly reflects Walt's state-of-being, another reason for their return to ominous prog rock ventures. "'Caught In A Cage' is a pretty obvious metaphor for a break-up," he admits, "it's reflecting real-world happenings.
"'Greedy Boys', I do really love that song but we're going to be going more in the direction of just writing for ourselves as opposed to [attracting] a triple j audience or something like that."
Walt goes on to explain that the writing of 'Caught In A Cage' also coincided with the advent of COVID-19, adding to the emotional intensity of the work. "I was in a five-year relationship and it came to an end before COVID happened, and it was a pretty dark time; not just for me, a lot of people were struggling," he says.
"Without getting too personal, it was a bad time and that's what was coming out of me compositionally at the time. It's kind of unusual to write that morbidly."
Musically, 'Caught In A Cage' draws heavily on the influences of TOOL, most notably in the cascading bassline, which both Walt and Angelo agree is the centrepiece of the song.
"I think the bass part is the best part of the song," Angelo says. "Isaac [Vincent, bass] is a violinist – my drumming in the song, I try to keep it droning with the bass throughout the song."
Along with dashes of Nine Inch Nails circa 1994 and 'The Downward Spiral' (Walt confesses 'Closer' was on high-rotation while writing), Mecha Mecha have tastefully combined their influences into their flagship song.
"The thing about 'Caught In A Cage', to me it's one of the funnest songs to play because it almost always gets the crowd dancing," Walt says.
"So, it becomes more about it being fun for the people who come and watch us, it's not about us. I think we're moving in the right direction in that sense."
Just as the song itself deals with the fallout of isolation, so too was the filming of the video fraught with the real-life stresses of social distancing during the onset of the pandemic.
"It's quite funny the timing of it," Walt says. "Because when we were shooting the video for it, everyone was panicking about COVID, and it was a disaster.
"It was pretty early in COVID's history when we didn't know much about it. . . and we had every studio we booked to shoot the video cancel on us. We had two or three contingency options that cancelled on us as well.
"So, we ended up building a set in the backyard because it was the only thing we could get away with safely doing at the time.
"It actually forced us to change the theme of video, which was quite cool, to make it an isolation-themed video where each of the performers and the actress had their own booth."
'Caught In A Cage' is Mecha Mecha having the bravery as a band to say 'this is us and this is what we sound like', in turn displaying the growth and development the band has undertaken in the past year.
"I would say we've gotten more focussed on what we're trying to get to," Angelo says, "more refining of our sounds and trying to release as many of our unreleased songs as possible."
Walt adds: "It's getting easier. In the same way you get better at playing guitar by playing guitar, you get better at releasing songs by releasing songs. We're hoping to release another one in the next few months."
As for the prospects of a live tour? "We're not really allowed to say anything because it's not locked-in yet," Walt teases, "but there is potential for a decent touring support later in the year."
Until that time, we're free to enjoy 'Caught In A Cage', the song that will become the grand metric for all Mecha Mecha songs evermore. "It's very much our set-finisher, our show-closer this song," Walt says.
"It is the epitome of our writing. We took the same kind of restraint we had in 'Greedy Boys' in the sense it's not a very shreddy song; there’s a lot going on but we're not wanking or showing off.
"To me it would be our CV song, the first song we show people. It's one of our best songs, and we're quite proud of it."
'Caught In A Cage' is out now.
