A good two years on from the release of their roaring Demo cassette, Future Suck have returned with Simulation, another bout of their grimy and relentless hardcore-tinged rock ’n’ roll. While their debut release definitely held up, this time around everything hits a little harder - the riffs sharper, the beats heaving and bandleader Grace Gibson’s frenzied vocals all the more potent.

Packing a whole lot of power into 23 minutes, Simulation refuses to let up from beginning to end. Opening track ‘WLF’ bursts out of the gates with a vengeance, the mid-point combo of ‘Hold Me Back’ and ‘Simulation’ makes for a left-right-goodnight that reveals how clever the group’s musicianship is from beneath the layers of noise, and on the backend, ‘Theme From Future Suck II’ and ‘Iron Fist’ send out the listen on a searing hot note that’s equal parts furious and fun. When the group turn their momentum from unruly to steely-eyed, things are equally compelling - ‘Magnolia’ uses the band’s sheer force to make for the album’s most passionate moment, and Future Suck sound similarly supercharged when they tackle inequality on the urgent ‘Paydirt’.

For a band who’ve built a reputation as one of the most feverish band’s in town, Simulation captures Future Suck at the top of their game, as sharp and forceful as ever. To help us dig into the new album, Grace and drummer Kyle have kindly walked us through each track on the record.

WLF

Grace: This is one of the first songs we wrote together. I wrote the lyrics about playing footy because I'd just started playing for the Lomond Barracudas - I didn’t have white line fever - I didn't wanna be anywhere near the ball - but that’s definitely changed over the years! I reckon it was the first song we ever played at our very first gig which was a house party and I’ve never been more nervous in my life, I completely forgot to sing the first verse. We thought it’d be a cool way to start the album, with a super old song that we wrote just to fire everyone up.

Kyle: I wonder why we didn’t put it on the demo… I’m glad we didn’t though, it’s gotten a lot better since. Grace’s jaw cracked while we were recording this one, we hoped the mic picked it up but never found it - maybe you can hear it?

Hell For Leather

Kyle: This is the shortest amount of time it’s ever taken us to write a song. It all came together stupidly easy.

Grace: I really like the new bass line Kyle wrote for this song and Kayley smashes it live. I was listening to lots of country music when i was writing these lyrics (always am) and structured it kind of like a country song and put a little hat tip to Billy Joe Shaver in there.

Mantra

Kyle: I like Rhys’ guitar part in this song, it might be the best chord progression on the album - well done Rhys… or maybe Iron Fist…

Grace: Rhys and Kyle pretty much completely wrote this one and brought it to band prac. Being brothers they’ve got a really cool way of almost always being on the same page. You can see them writing something together and they both just like ‘get it’ when everyone else in the room is like wtf… Love how it came together though! I wrote the words about all these self-help freaks that give you mantras to say to yourself and like power pose in the mirror to make your life better when it’s a pretty fucked time to be living in the world and all this like ‘inspirational’ advice isn’t gonna change that.

Hold Me Back

Grace: This one’s about finally giving up on something that you’ve been pouring yourself into that isn’t worth your time. We wrote this song and ‘Simulation’ like straight after we put out the demo and instantly hated our demo because these songs were way better. We only got to play them like twice before we all went into lockdown for years though so they still kind of seem new which is nice I guess! I think George came up with the main riff and was like… is this too slow for FS? and we’re like naa… Love a stomper.

Simulation

Kyle: I really like the rockin part in this one - George’s two lead lines in the second part where he does one line then answers himself in the next is unreal. Grace made the sample at the start which is a news bulletin talking about UFO sightings mixed in with a whole lot of white noise.

Grace: When we were trying to pick a name for the album we decided it was easiest to just choose one of our song names, we went through a few but settled on ‘Simulation’ because of the crazy couple of years we’ve just been through. The lyrics are all about flat earthers, doomsday preppers and simulation theory. When we started playing it we were like “oh it’s about all those people that really believe they’re gonna shut down the whole world and cancel everything because of a random virus…lol” - jokes on us.

Thunderbolt

Grace: These lyrics are dumb as - they’re about this fantasy of dating a bushranger and leaving your nice boring boyfriend for this real rugged cowboy.

Kyle: Cop that Rhys!

Grace: My boyfriend's not boring so he's got nothing to worry about.

Kyle: I guess he’s fairly rugged too… While Rhys was working hard to get his lead lines in this, Grace and I were carrying on playing with a 3D painting thing of a horse in Jason's studio (see attached). That's the best part of recording - when you've finished recording your part and can then just piss around while everyone else is still working hard. Ate a lot of Peckish thins this day.

Paydirt

Grace: ‘Paydirt’ is actually a gold panning term. We used it here to kind of talk about power imbalances and how some people have it so bloody tough while others breeze through life having no idea how the things they do impact others.

Kyle: In the bridge bit where Grace says “the rich die rich” she used to say something else and the rest of us all swore it was “I’m hunggggrrrrryyyyy". I hear you Grace.

Harley

Kyle: Bit of a polarising song hey Rhys... I think it was taking us a couple of goes to get a good live take of this one (two guitars n drums). We finally finished a take and all looked around and felt pretty good - might be the winner. Once the guitars rung out we realised Rhys’ phone was ringing and he forgot to put it on silent. The ringtone bled into three or four mics and we thought it ruined the take but eventually found a way to cut it out. Hot tip - put your phone on silent when ya record. Best part is it was just our brother Gus calling to ask what pool he should go to for a swim.

Magnolia

Grace: This one's a pretty deep one in the context of the album that has a whole lot of silly stuff on it. It's about my mum passing away. I wrote the lyrics in lockdown when I had lots of time and lots of stuff on my mind. I'd go for runs and listen to the shitty phone recording we'd done of the instruments at some stage in a break in lockdowns and try and piece together the lyrics and like where the rhymes would go. If you listen really close Kayley reads a poem my mum wrote about my sisters and I growing up at the beginning. This song is kind of like a response to her words - just about wishing she was (and feeling like she is) still around for all these things that have happened in life since she passed away.

Kyle: This one also came together really easily too. George started playing the main riff at band prac when we were having drinks break or smoko just mucking around. Nice one George.

Theme from Future Suck II

Grace: We put a ‘Theme from Future Suck’ on our demo which we still play live so thought it’d be fun to do a part two and make it even dumber. I wrote the lyrics to this theme at the same time as the other one and cut them so it was easy as to just pull these out for the album.

Kyle: When we started as a band, Grace wanted to do a theme song and we were gonna just call it “theme” but I'd been listening to a lot of spaghetti western soundtracks at the time and suggested this longer stupider one instead. Stupid name for stupid song. In theme one Rhys solos for most of it and now in theme two it’s George’s turn. What happens if we write another theme? Bass solo? Vocal solo? Mark my words.

Iron Fist

Grace: No one in FS has any idea what I bang on about at the best of times but sometimes someone comes out with just completely different like misheard lyrics from our songs. Kyle swore I was saying “Stuart Little, Backstreet Boys” in this one - Rhys reckons the chorus sounds like “Aaron’s pissed” - I try and write cool lyrics and can never win! It’s actually about this murderer called Iron-faced Irene - named that because she was really ugly which I think is really cool. We changed the chorus to Iron Fist instead of Iron Faced though because Motorhead… and it sounds way tougher.

Kyle: We recorded Grace whispering some of the verse lyrics I don't remember what ones though. You can kinda hear if you really try. Spooky. I think we originally tried this with the drums like twice as fast and tried reworking it so many times it nearly got canned but I’m glad we didn't. I've changed my mind. This is my favourite chord progression. We all feel like real rockstars finishing the song with a fade out. What clever recording trickery, I wonder who did that. We should have looped the outro 40 more times and finished the LP with a ten minute epic. Ah well always next time.