It has been 14 long years since The Butterfly Effect released an album, and boy have they made it a good one.
'IV' is everything fans have come to expect of The Butterfly Effect – blaring guitar lines, heavy drums, and melodic vocals that stick in your head. It's weighty and delicious.The band cherry-picked the best songs from their 2008 demos, as well as writing new songs 'So Tired' and 'Nil By Mouth' for the album. The new songs throwback to the heavy sound of early Butterfly Effect albums.
"'So Tired' is about being angry at rolling lockdowns and the stupidity of humans fighting over toilet paper. It asks what happens to you when you get angry? What emotions do you go through with grief, emotion and loss?" frontman Clint Boge elucidates.
The first single from the album 'Visiting Hours' was originally entitled 'Two Towers', as it explores the journey between birth and death, but the band renamed it due to sensitivity to the events of September 11.
The song starts out reflective and relaxed, before bursting into an anthemic last chorus. "We had to keep cutting parts, because it would have been this six minute, epic, world's on fire journey. The start is a conversation from myself to the universe about time.
"A lot of this album touches on time – how we use it and how it affects us, existentialism and the meaning of life. I'm reflecting back asking were the plans we devised worth waiting for? What did we do with our time?" questions Clint.
"I keep coming back to John Lennon's eternal quote, 'life happens while you're making other plans'. Hence the title 'Visiting Hours'; we're just here visiting. What are you going to do? People dealing with loved ones dying in hospital have also taken it on that trajectory, which is really interesting."
Track 'Nil By Mouth' features some pointed lyrics, as Boge sarcastically takes aim at the current state of society and the online generation. One lyrics states: 'I don't care about the new sensation, pornographic exploitation, for the YouTube generation.'
"It's a massive, sarcastic dig. I'm having a dig at the OnlyFans set, and YouTube. How far they push the debasing of young people, men and women, for the entertainment of others.
"It hurts me as a human being, because I have two teenagers, 16 and 13. Watching them digest and interact, and the way that they are being bombarded by it. We are making young women, especially, more sexualised at a younger age, and that I think is very dangerous. I don't think it's empowering at all, I think it's absolutely disgusting."
Clint is quick to point out he's not talking about women wearing whatever they want, and is mindful of being inclusive. He simply wonders where we are heading as a society, and notes the track is about the degradation in the way we communicate.
Some lyrics that were cut from the song even mentioned a famous family, but he took them out as they were too pointed. “The contradiction of the line 'I don't care' was me trying to tell myself I don't care about it, but I do. It's also a social commentary on people saying 'don't worry about it, who cares?' I'm like, 'no!’.”
The track 'Start Again' meant a lot to Boge, as it was written at the time the band was breaking down and Boge's marriage broke down.
"It was this massive avalanche of emotion. I was thinking I spat on a gypsy woman in a past life and that was my penance. I felt like the universe was kicking me in the balls squarely.
"What I've learnt is that it will make you stronger. It's human emotion to feel pain and sadness, that will ultimately drive you to a better place.
"The danger point is when that becomes your normal, and you decay even further. Mental health is en vogue these days and I think it's great that we're having more conversations about it and bringing it into the light."
The Butterfly Effect start their national tour this Friday in Cairns in support of the album, hitting 11 cities across 2.5 weeks. They've also been known to pull the odd prank while also getting up to shenanigans on and off stagem while on tour.
"There have been nudie runs, bands have put vodka in our water bottles. At the end of tour, we always play tricks. Someone put talcum powder on Benny [Hill]'s snare so the minute he hit it for the first time, it went up in his face.
"One of the funniest moments was watching [guitarist] Kurt [Goedhart] fall off stage in Melbourne. Our tour manager Yogi put fluro tape all over the front of the stage: 'Do not step here, edge of stage' all that.
"Second song in, we went into 'One Second Of Insanity’ and next minute I saw out of the corner of my eye Kurt disappear off the stage. I just lost my sh.t.
"He got back up, and he's running around. Four songs later, and same again, he went over the top. There's some really naughty stories I could tell you, but I won't."
'IV' is now available.
The Butterfly Effect 2022 Tour Dates
Fri 30 Sep - Tanks Arts Centre (Cairns)Sat 1 Oct - Dalrymple Hotel (Townsville)
Sun 2 Oct - Seabreeze Hotel (Mackay)
Thu 6 Oct - Blank Space (Toowoomba)
Fri 7 Oct - Eatons Hill Hotel (Brisbane)
Sat 8 Oct - The Roundhouse (Sydney)
Sun 9 Oct - The Uni Bar (Hobart)
Thu 13 Oct - Northcote Theatre (Melbourne)
Fri 14 Oct - Northcote Theatre (Melbourne)
Sat 15 Oct - Hindley Street Music Hall (Adelaide)
Sun 16 Oct - Metropolis (Fremantle)