The past is dead. The eminent scholars in the salons have assured us that there is nothing to feat in the glowing beam of the new era. It is true that I would be little without the future. I drive even though I wear glasses. On the walk to the post office I find a bouncy ball with grills and kick it under a car. My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I am Catholic. I am an under-educated over-sexed inhabitor of the female tradition with no hai, an ex-homesteader dyspepsia for civilities who carries an alcoholic pro-Islamist acceleration through the needle’s eye of the Kali Yuga. The future has been kind to me. And yet the past calls. I am the Berardi of hardcore, distressed by the falsified accents and divestive talking points sold under the banner of the genre I love so much. Romansy plays to the heart of my unearnt nostalgia. The music echoes the giants of the old guard; the fervour of SS Decontrol, the ringing open power chords of D.Y.S, the crushing sludgly drum-driven intros of Youth of Today, all combined with vocals that edge towards early grind. Yet Romansy is hardcore for the hyper-present. This is the thirst for destruction. Fuck the past. I love the machine.

I meet Coco in Methven Park off the back of an anniversary screening on The Wicker Man, which is the most apt unplanned set-up for an interview one could ask for. We begin speaking about the Wicker Man and the band, and then I remember to turn my phone on…

Stew:
Are you a punk band?

Coco:
First and foremost.

S:
This occult element, this spirit element, for a while it's been seen as something punk can’t do, like it's some kind of hippie thing, but there’s such a history of it.

C:
Absolutely! Which is why I think you absolutely can do it. There's a clear lineage of that. It makes as much sense to me as anything else you might make noise about. I adore Bad Brains massively. They're the best punk band that there ever was.

There’s massive spirituality in the occult. It’s not all spiritual but that side of me will permeate a lot of how I express myself because there's a learned language with those philosophies and they colour how I communicate. I try not to be too on the nose because it takes the fun out of it. A lot of what I read I have to read a few times because initially I might understand a word one way and understand it a different way later but those two don't necessarily cancel each other out. It all starts to blossom and open up.

S:
As you write too does the thinking change as you write about them ?

C:
Once you start pushing the words around they lead to other ideas. You might have the start of the sentence but there might be multiple ways to end the sentence. It will move and find its place. Maybe it's a mental exercise, because even if I've used ideas as a jumping off point you start to explore ways to reframe it in your own way. I don't think writing Romansy lyrics has led to any kind of epiphany but that might not be true. It might be enough to respark a connection.

S:
What is writing like?

C:
It's usually me, at home. It comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I really want to pick up an instrument - usually the bass. I really like writing songs with the bass, something about it makes sense, it gets to the core of it. It has the low end, the rhythm, that body feel, more than guitar. Sometimes it'll all flow out in one go, sometimes I'll pick it up the next day, the next week, over a year later. Writing songs is a strange thing. You're interacting with it. Sometimes you translate from your head through the strings, other times you have a vague idea, a tempo, a rhythm. Sometimes you're just playing with pure energy, moving your fingers to places you hope will land somewhere until the next bit comes out and you like it. I'm doubtful that all of the ideas come from just you. Whether the idea comes out of you or it came off another record or it came from somewhere in the air and you are the antenna that picks it up, it's a crazy thing. It's a unique experience. I recommend everyone do it at some point.

S:
Does it surprise you then what comes out?

C:
Sometimes it's bang on what you thought it was going to be. Other times you feel like if you were asked to write the song yesterday you wouldn’t have known how. Something happened and it all worked.

S:
This EP feels like it dropped out of nothing. Did it come together as quickly as it reared itself?

C:
It did come quickly. They're our new ones, we have a lot of old ones that'll come out on the twelve inch, some already came out on the demo tape. We had the older ones and we enjoyed them but I wanted to explore new ideas. It just made sense to put them together as a batch of four. It was gonna be three to begin with but Spider really likes playing his theremin. He asked if we wanted theremin on the record and it sounded like it could be cool so we gave it a shot. I realised it wasn't going to suit anything we had written so a week before recording i had to write another one.

Up until two three days before recording it was a certain thing but I couldn't finish it so I had to stop and restart. Threw a hail mary and riffed a new idea and somehow that worked. I like working with an envelope because as soon as you are given something to work with you immediately want to push those boundaries, but having that starting off point gives you something to work with. It was a seven inch record so I know how long we could push the last song for, so I just tried to see how much I could get away with in a minute and thirty. That's that song Spider’s Crawl and it feels long.

Our songs feel epic because they have the structure of a longer form thing. You start a band and you listen to a lot of things and you go ‘i’d love to bring this or that into what we’re doing’. It doesn't always come out but it doesn't mean you don't want to keep trying. There was probably some of that involved too.

S:
Do you do all the instrumentation?

C:
I write it all so far. Then I'll take it to the gang and see what they think. Sometimes they need some convincing.

S:
So then is that just out of necessity?

C:
It was gonna be a solo project. In 2020 I was starting a new band with the rhythm section of Gutter Gods plus Dan from Straightjacket Nation on the microphone.. We had a few jams and we had a few songs. Then lockdowns happened and peoples lives changed, they started looking to start families and buy houses and I realised that wasn't going to happen but I still wanted to explore the ideas. I had recording gear to play around with. I'd had a few jams with Zach and he's a great guy to play with so we married the ideas I had and the music Zach and I were making and he just became my guy to write with. I go on hyperactive sprees where I just write riffs for days so there is always enough material to draw on.

S:
The rhythm section fascinates me because of how the songs sound without a drummer. They sound almost futuristic. Will you keep it?

C:
if the perfect person came along we’d probably give it a crack but it's almost more practical not to have a drummer. We rehearse at my apartment so there's not really space for one. When we were writing I felt like I could really hear the drums a certain way. I usually play drums. I'll write what I hear will fit or I'll go back over the recordings and beatbox over it and see what comes out. The night before we recorded the first 8 or 9 songs I played the drums over them and mostly they came out how I wanted them, so on the first recordings I'm playing an electric kit. Since then the fun of exploring the trio and we program the drums has kept us going. I haven't seen that done with a hardcore band in a while, except for some bands overseas. There's lots I want to explore with the program's drums because I started getting really into hard dance music which I think can marry up really well with punk or heavy metal.

S:
Just reinforces the lack of need to constrain yourself...

C:
There's no rules. There should be driving ideas but how you achieve them and what they look like can change. There's certain drummers that would be sick to play with but there's also stuff with the program that you don't know. It's been funny with this band because we haven't heard ourselves at full volume until our first show. Again, we want to see what we can get away with. There's a lot of ideas going on in the music of this band and I started chuckling to myself early on about the idea that it would be really good if all my friends who had similar music taste to me had something on the record they loved and something that drove them up the wall. Even if you like it there’ll be something you find a bit on the nose. Poking fun in every direction.

S:
And not pleasing everyone

C:
I've never wanted to sound like the band up the road. Even if we're doing similar things I always want to feel different. If you’ve got a great band of a certain style then you don’t need to try and be them.

S:
Just go to their show instead.

C:
yeah! We’re around, people like certain music, what are you going to bring to the table? It's up to you to decide what you want that to be. If someones nailing it, get out of the kitchen. It's interesting to fill a gap, to get DIY. If you see a lack or a space and you want to be the one to fill it go for it. I don't know if it's a need to feel different or if it's just more interesting but I don't want to be a dime a dozen band. It's interesting to put yourself out there and ask what’s going to be fresh and real for someone even if they don't like it. That's better than playing mediocre, especially in extreme music. It's not extreme if it's average.

S:
Always chasing the extreme ?

C:
With art I definitely had that turning point in high school where you start getting into gnarly stuff.

S:
Watching gore films to feel something

C:
You gotta try everything once. At some point it becomes more interesting to keep chasing something that excites you. It's always reactionary because once you've done it for a while then you can go off and be gentle and react in that way. Punk music’s always been reactionary.

S:
Gentle reaction. Extreme music people, they’re always trying to one up each other about who’s into the most extreme stuff. Can you talk about the Spacemen 3 show and acknowledge the gentle?

C:
I love Spacemen

S:
we all love Spacemen

C:
That shit rules. Its fucked up, ultra repetitive, druggy, Stooges, raga. I love that. I love the blues, I love psych rock, that’s my music. I don't need to just play with grindcore even though when it's good it's great. That's my kind of music. There's an element of flower power psych in our songs. With that show though I thought we’d stick out too much so I said no initially though. We had heaps of other bands we asked but most couldn't do it, so like ten days before, just after I made the poster, one of the bands pulled out. So fuck it, I’ll do it myself. I wanted to play with psychedelic lights. There's common threads. Just because it doesn't sound the same doesn't mean they don't belong together.

S:
Bad Brains! Rastafari has such incredible flower power.

C:
Maybe not in their hands but generally.

S;
Playing with them both I guess

C:
Flower power and aggression aren't mutually exclusive. I toy with that a lot. There's room for both those things. They can be married in their own way and I think they need to be to be effective. Maybe that's just an ethical point and maybe I'll change my mind on that one day but I still see the value in both. There's a tendency to look at hippy shit as meek and flowery but it's not. But it should be loud and in your face, it's a protest.

S:
Are you protesting and what the fuck are you even saying if you are cos we can’t make it out.

C:
chuckles yeah! Absolutely there is. I've spent time thinking about what punk music is, where it comes from, what defines it. A lot of it is self empowerment, whether for yourself or for your people or for all people. Getting up there and making some noise about it, at least for me, isn't always about me. It's about what I see and think about and have to sit with. A lot of it is wishing for something better but while we can’t have something better i might make some noise about it. It's about a lot of things. Like what Led Zeppelin say, sometimes words have two meanings. The songs are for me but they are for everyone. If you're asking people to pay for it there has to be something in there for them. If we’re talking about the word death, mostly that’s in a tarot context.

S:
A tower ?

C:
Nah, the death card. It’s change, usually. That colours my way of thinking and my way of communicating. It's more enjoyable to do it through doom and gloom because I like horror movies and fight sports. I like controlled conflict when I'm storytelling. Chess with your body as well as your mind.

S:
Are you a routine tarot user?

C:
Not routinely. Semi regularly, more when there's the calling or the curiosity. Or just fuck, I need help with this. It’s nice to ask the cards.

S:
What are you asking ?

C:
Maybe something bigger. Maybe it's yourself in another way. Takes it all out of your head and puts it in front of you.

S:
Like songwriting.

C:
Right, it's a dialogue. I'm not certain with who but there's certainly a conversation.

S:
Have you always been around the divine?

C:
Always went to Catholic school but by the end of highschool I was over it. Had a lot of fun with teenage atheism. Wasn't purely rebellion either, but the stories they were telling weren’t checking out and they didn't make a lot of sense. It was all rules and doctrine and dogma, there wasn't much room for argument. But I found my way back to it like I think everyone does. There was too much chance and synchronicity and it beacons you in. If you’re curious or something calls you to investigate, that’s that dialogue opening up.

S:
I've been reading about anarchism and Islam and how hierarchy is so hard to break

C:
For sure, that’s how I identify with anarchy as my most base tenant of governing myself. Also there’s a lot in tradition that says you have the right to govern yourself but also the challenge to create the world in your own image. I think that’s something lots of people misunderstand about Nietschze. He didn't just kill God for fun, it wasn't all doom and gloom teenage nihilism. He was telling us to ask questions and if they dont hold up to scrutiny, destroy them and it's up to you to rebuild and put value back into the world.

S:
Nietszhe rocks!

C:
I think it’s righteous. Also I love how he writes with kind of a mean spirit and an attitude. I don’t want to call him a gatekeeper but there’s a bit of a ‘if you cant get with it get the fuck away from it’ attitude. Alister Crowley’s really similar. I really respond to that kind of writing. They're tough love.

S:
And so you write songs with something you love and something that makes you squirm.

C:
Right. I don't know if I'd call it duality but I guess that’s the simplest way to put it. Both those things exist inside of me the way they exist in everyone. A lot of life is violent but it's not always a clash. There’s ancient books about it, I’m probably not qualified to speak on it. But there’s a lot of truths in those books.

S:
They were big for a reason.

C:
I love it all. There's major similarities in a lot of it and that's I think the truth in them. And that truth changes with your life. One of my favourite videos is Boz Scaggs playing Loan Me a Dime. When that song was released I think he was in his twenties and it's a good white boy blues song. But this video I watch, it’s him much later in life and it feels like those lyrics have taken on far different, far greater meaning. It’s like he understands what he wrote differently. What do you know about love and heartbreak when you’re twenty? It's only when you’ve been around the block a few times that heartbreak might be a different thing. That’s the wry knowing smile you get when old people tell you something.

S:
How much understanding did hearing yourself live for the first time add?

C:
Mostly it was confirmation. It all felt good. But the old recordings are still rough, got to get to work on them. I was with some friends the other night and I'd definitely taken drugs so I was up. I had a drink and just chucked them on through my headphones, just to see how much work was left. Listened to some records first, just as... What’s the opposite of a palate cleanser?

S:
A palette dampener... An aperitif?

C:
That’s it, so I put the songs on and they were better than I remembered. They were rawer than I remembered because of that live percussion. We don't have to do much with them at all. There’s really only mixing and mastering that they need. So it’s just trusting in what you’ve written and if it feels good in the moment then it’s probably worth a go.

S:
When can we hear them?

C:
I’d say sometime in 2024. There’s a bit of work to do, lyrics to be written. I don't want to sing the same every song, I've just got some ideas to flex. I really want to do them justice. I’m glad we waited on these because they changed and came to life in that year away from them.

S:
Vinyl again?

C:
Always vinyl. I like that it's an analogue product that’s a physical thing. I think that’s how punk bands should etch their place. It's a tradition. Punk’s nearly as old as the blues were when punk started. It’s folk music, there’s a lineage, there’s annals of old tradition. It’s a big thing to be part of and I take it really seriously and that’s why it’s important to put your best foot forward...