After playing sold-out tours with Nick Oliveri and Svetlanas, The Black Armada are preparing for their next big show at Fuzz Nest with new music to come.
Formed from “veterans of the scene”, The Black Armada is somewhat of a super-group of east-coast musicians. Starting off as a two-piece, The Black Armada began writing and recording demos as the start of a new project, a step away from their other, busy band lives.
Now with Simon Meli (vocals), Christian Tryhorn (guitar), Jack Parkes (drums) and Jamie Roberts (bass), The Black Armada are ready to rock and roll.
“The Black Armada started as a bit of a collection of seasoned musos I guess, who wanted to start a new project with a bit more of a psychedelic-rock sound; we were all in other bands at the time,” Christian says.
“Myself and the drummer, Jack, started writing these tunes a couple of years ago; it started as a two-piece but then the project sort of fell away for a while and then Simon Meli moved up from Sydney.
"He's one of Sydney's best frontmen I’d say and he's done a lot of stuff around Sydney and internationally; and he moved up to the Gold Coast and asked if I was doing anything. So I sent him The Black Armada demo tracks and he came back with all these wild vocal ideas.
“From there we got onboard Jamie Roberts, our bass player, and he's a seasoned session guy as well and we're all just gelling at the moment. We're playing with some great company, so it'd be great to keep that rolling on.”
On top of playing in The Black Armada (as well as Transvaal Diamond Syndicate), running the annual blues, rock and psych festival Mojo Burning, being one of the Dead Of Winter Festival promoters as well as running a bar, Christian is also a director at Beats Cartel, booking and managing domestic and international artists.
Fuelled by a passion for the rock scene, Christian is now organising the upcoming mini-fest Fuzz Nest, which The Black Armada will headline.
“[Psych rock is] probably one of my three favourite genres of music: rock, sort of blues rock, and then psychedelic stoner-rock. I don't think it's a genre that's overly represented very well in Brisbane and nationally, although people are starting to bring bands from overseas and push the scene.
“I've been trying to push the scene for ten years and Fuzz Nest was an idea based on the current crop of fuzzed-out bands that I see with potential in Brisbane, and just putting a night together where we can team up over a couple of stages and get a mini-festival started for hopefully an annual event in Brisbane.”
With no music released yet by The Black Armada, Christian promises a debut single, off of a forthcoming EP, will be released soon.
“We've been slowly building together this EP, which has got seven songs [that's] ready to record. We started working with Rick Will; he's a producer down in Sydney – he did Incubus, Grinspoon and he's done some really good stuff.
“He's tracking one of our songs at the moment and we've got a view of finishing the EP off and just releasing single by single with some clips. Nothing released yet, but it’s in the works. I'd say a couple more months before our first single.
"I'd say we'd have something out before the [end of the] year; we're all veterans of the scene to a certain extent, so there's no rush with this project. We're making sure the shows we play are solid and the people we play with are solid, and we'll slowly filter out some cool content.”
