Violent Soho return to their core beliefs to find inspiration for Everything Is A-OK

There would be multiple tours and festival dates to cash in on their new-found popularity and plans for a more epic follow-up album would be fast-tracked to maintain the momentum.

But Violent Soho have never been part of the music industry machine. They're the quintessential outsiders, who somehow stormed the gates armed with a snarl and guitar distortion.

A decade after their debut EP Pigs & TV, the grunge revivalists became one of the unlikeliest bands to crack No.1 in 2016 when their fourth album Waco caught fire.

Suddenly after years of making a racket in the underground, the four scruffy lads from Mansfield - a south-east suburb of Brisbane known as the Queensland capital's "Bible belt" - were the biggest band in the country courtesy of slacker hits like Viceroy and Soda.

But within a year the school friends Luke Boerdam (vocals, guitar), James Tidswell (guitar), Luke Henery (bass) and Michael Richards (drums) were exhausted.

Amid juggling children, marriages and break-ups, Violent Soho decided to take a sabbatical at the height of their popularity.

"We probably could have done a regional tour, but I think it would have been detrimental," Boerdam said. "I don't think we would be here now.

"I think we would have done another record and it would have been too much and broken the band.

"We were already having this shit attitude. We were headlining Groovin The Moo [in 2017] and didn't give a shit. We just got too tired."

Boerdam broke up with his partner of nine years and moved in with his parents. A very un-rock'n'roll move for a frontman in his 30s.

Initially Boerdam struggled for inspiration. He wrote just three songs in a year, before he begun to drawn on the personal feelings of isolation he was experiencing.

"I had to write music again," he said. "It was cathartic to write music again. Hungry Ghost and Waco weren't personal records, they were critiquing the world around us.

"Whereas this record was far more personal and that's where I found my reason to write and put out music. For the band, we had to find our core again."

Two weeks ago Violent Soho released their fifth album Everything Is A-OK. It's crystal clear Soho's core is intact.

The band's fan base have also remained as fervent as their mosh pits. Everything Is A-OK debuted at No.1 on the ARIA charts, ahead of international pop superstars Dua Lipa and The Weeknd.

Last month their 2013 single Covered In Chrome also polled at No.4 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of the decade.

While tracks like Vacation Forever, Canada and Lying On The Floor breathe with an energy of an inspired band, Boerdam said the initial rehearsals were anything but.

The passion didn't begin to return until the four-piece started jokingly tossing around "anti-music industry ideas" like calling the album the mobile phone number of their record label manager, Johann Ponniah of I Oh You, and using the same "shitty" equipment they had when they were 18.

While those more outlandish ideas were jettisoned, Violent Soho doubled down on their commitment to avoid the pressure to head overseas, increase the production and work with a big-name international producer.

"The key was ignoring all that shit, as it's all trends anyway," Boerdam said. "We learnt more than anyone that you can fail for 10 years and then you put out the right record at the right time and it catches on for some reason.

"You can't explain it, but it happens. That could all end tomorrow.

"Rather than embracing what, by other people's standards, we're meant to be, it's a big f--k you to that and this is actually what we want to do. Success was never the point of this band.

"It was to release some music that we liked and that mimicked our influences and to share it with people."

The album's ironic title and lyrics is naturally striking a chord in the present COVID-19 lockdown.

Just this year alone Australia have been ravaged by bushfire and now the global coronavirus pandemic. Boerdam's lyrics like, "There's a baby boomer across the street and it won't stop staring at me", from Vacation Forever, originally analysing the generational divide in modern Australia, has come to represent something more sinister.

Then there's the frightfully prophetic lyrics on the closing A-OK where Boerdam sings, "Show the children empty lots/ They can dance a bunker waltz/ Everything is A-Okay."

"I was obviously not predicting a super virus or bushfires," he said. "I was just writing the songs and how I felt and explaining an angst and frustration I could see in people and how we connect and what's going on around us.

"Some how it's lined up in a freakish way."

The COVID-19 lockdown caused the cancellation of Violent Soho's Everything Is A-OK international tour and the band's triumphant return to Splendour In The Grass has been postponed to October.

It the meantime, Boerdam has already started writing album No.6, which he said won't take take four years. However, there's one place he wants to be.

"I've started writing again, but we're desperate to tour," he said.