Since 1996, Wollongong outfit Segression have been pillars of the national heavy metal community.
They've supported acts like Slipknot, Pantera, Fear Factory, Machine Head and Ozzy Osbourne, and their 2000 album 'Smile' remains one of the highest-selling metal albums released in Australia.
For lead vocalist and bass player Chris Rand, it's no longer about being a rock star. “Honestly, when you've been doing it so long everything changes for you,” Chris says.
“At the beginning you have all these expectations of what you want out of your career and as you do it longer and longer those expectations fade away and it becomes more pure enjoyment, and you refine what you do and try to learn and pick up things along the way and try to make sure everyone around you has a good time as well.”
Segression has undergone several cosmetic and personnel changes over the lifetime of the band, but Chris says the current line-up of himself, guitarists Sven Sellin and Michael Katselos, and drummer Adam Bunnell is the best yet. “The band is playing better than we ever have,” he says.
“It'd be amazing to see what crowds on the Slipknot [2000] tour or Pantera [2001] tour would think of the current line-up because we didn't sit there and think 'we're wonderful, we're doing this so well'.
“All the way along we have looked at how we can improve and having done it for so long now we definitely learnt a lot along the way, and I think the current line-up and what we're playing is way in advance of what we were doing before.”
Home crowds will have the chance to see exactly how good Segression really are when the band play Dicey Riley's in October. “We're going to be playing for 90 minutes, non-stop with very little talking,” Chris says.
“You can talk about wanting to give back to the scene as much as you like, but it's your actions over a long period of time that people judge and the reason we're playing Dicey's is plain and simple – it's free. People can come along, they don't have to spend a lot of money, they can have a nice night out and watch 90 minutes of Segression.”
Chris says that Segression are also working on new music, but that he no longer sees the value in releasing full albums. For their next release, the band will be doing a follow-up to their blasting track (and 1997 album of the same name) 'Fifth Of The Fifth'.
“What we're going to be doing with the next release is a song called 'Blood On The Sixth', which is going to tie 'Fifth Of The Fifth' to [2014 album] 'Painted In Blood', because for us it's always been about trying to tell a story,” Chris says.
“While I won't say we're getting towards the end of the story, we're certainly a few chapters in now after doing it for so long. So we're going to start tying what we were talking about in the beginning of the band to what we're talking about now. We have a linkage there with the way we're going with the message.”
