Mr Rogers are an alternative rock four-piece from Brisbane crossing over somewhere between Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, self-described as 'the worst thing to happen to music for all the right reasons'.
“We consider ourselves to be a shocking band lyrically and thematically,” frontman and aspiring 'shock-god' Brad White says.
“We like to take the piss out of Australian culture, the dichotomy of its morals and the fascism of religion that's involved in our political landscape at the moment.
“A lot of the hypocrisies we see are people who preach the Australian way of life, that you need to be a certain way,” he continues.
“You see that a lot in people like Scott Morrison, Pauline Hanson and those sort of politicians who tell you you have to be a certain way or you're not Australian regardless if you were born here or not, and they take it to this whole racist level. We kind of say 'this is what you're proud of, how can you be proud of being these people?'.”
Asked if it's just the hypocrisy of conservatives they take issue with, Brad says that although they see hypocrisies in the left side of politics, “. . . they're not as detrimental to people; they don't shame people,” he says.
“It's mostly the conservatives that tell people they can't be the way they are, whether they're a certain race, a certain sexuality, if they're not the gender they were born, if they're different in any way, shape or form to the true blue, Ocker Aussie.”
Though Mr Rogers have so far written with their tongues firmly planted in-cheek, their latest track 'Plastic Skin' drops all pretence of ironic humour in favour of going directly for the jugular.
“It's more direct, more vicious in what I say lyrically,” Brad says of 'Plastic Skin'.
“In previous songs we use more metaphors and have a bit of fun, whereas this is vicious, it's a straight-up f...-you, how dare you be this person and treat people the way you do. Sometimes you've got to do that to get attention on the message you're saying. You've got to be offensive for people to take notice of what you're doing. We're a shock rock band.”
In true shock rock style, and following Marilyn Manson's lead of juxtaposing beauty with the grotesque, the band's name has been taken from popular children's show 'Mr Rogers' Neighbourhood', subverting and perverting the Christian innocence Fred Rogers symbolises.
“We want to say, in no way are we accusing Mr Rogers of doing any of these things, but we thought it would be funny if this Christian American man who preaches such good morals on TV, if backstage he wasn't that person; he was like an alcoholic, drug-abusing, psychotic. Not funny in a ha-ha sense, but in an ironic sense if Mr Rogers was this person.”
