KARNIVOOL BIOGRAPHY

When Perth five-piece heavy rock outfit Karnivool emerged in April 2005 with an album called Themata, two things were immediately obvious. One, here was a record that single-handedly set a new benchmark for heavy rock in this country and others for years to come. And two, Karnivool were going to be big. Really big.
Over the following years the band toured hard, selling out major venues wherever they played and attracting a hardcore cult of fans. Karnivool went on to earn three spots in the triple j ‘Hottest 100’ (the largest music poll in the world) and became a drawcard act at the Big Day Out and other major rock festivals in Australia. And, after shifting 32,000 units of Themata completely independently, they secured an international licensing deal for the album in the US, UK, Canada and Mexico through the Bieler Bros label. Suddenly, this little ol’ prog-rock band from Perth were one of Australia’s biggest acts.

It took three years before the band were ready to re-enlist Themata’s producer-extraordinaire Forrester Savell to record and produce the new album, Sound Awake. Hunkering down at Perth’s Blackbird and Kingdom Studios over several months, and later mixing at Melbourne’s famous Sing Sing Studios, Karnivool began what would be an arduous recording process. Unlike Themata – an album which had been very much lead guitarist Drew Goddard’s brainchild and a tightly-scripted, intricately-composed record that was assembled piecemeal, bit-by-bit – the band wanted their new album to be a collective, collaborative work. So they wrote as one, jamming out their ideas and improvising upon them. They dissected, experimented, second-guessed, pared-down, built-up, reworked, pored over and examined the minutia of every single bar.

“(Sound Awake) took so long because we set the bar very high, very early on,” says guitarist Drew Goddard. “We consciously set out to challenge ourselves so it was a long, gruelling process. A mixture of banging our heads against walls and those intermittent moments of utter joy when it all came together.”

“There’s so much space on this record,” enthuses vocalist Ian Kenny. “The whole thing is a massive journey and a lot of it is uncharted, uncalculated stuff for us. The hardest part was just letting it run its course in the studio. Letting it go, y’know? It felt like we were all at the helm of this ship through some very, very choppy waters. But as fractured and precarious a process as it was, it came together.”

Simply put, Sound Awake is a kaleidoscopic, multi-dimensional masterpiece. It’s a record that’s blown people away. So much so that the Sony Independent Network wasted no time in getting on board in support, despite the band being unlike any other artist they’ve worked with before, certainly one of the most musically challenging, but an act clearly capable of inspiring music lovers spectrum-wide.

Released in June 2009, and whilst being a self-proclaimed slow-burning grower of a record, Sound Awake wasted no time in infiltrating the ears of the masses, going Gold in Australia in less than a month, then securing release dates worldwide from the US to Germany to Switzerland to Sweden and beyond. A year on has seen numerous sold-out Australian tours, two massive US and European tours including an appearance at this year’s SxSW event to rave reviews, a main-stage slot on the national Big Day Tour and a massive amount of critical acclaim pouring from everywhere including the likes of highly respected press such as Kerrang, Rocksound, Rolling Stone, Art Rocker, Blunt Magazine, Kill Your Stereo, and more.

Sound Awake’s successful assault on the public conscious has now also resulted in an invitation to perform at the highly-prestigious Sonisphere festival in the UK and being lured back across international waters for extensive touring, with the intention of reaching all parts of the globe, as their fan base expands globally and exponentially.

“We questioned everything with this record,” explains Kenny, “because the moment we stop doing that, we’re fucked. The term ‘sound awake’ came from the idea of remaining awake in an environment where it’s so easy to turn off. It also stands for how this album is going to be a challenge to digest in one sitting – it’s going to test some people. It’s going to be hard on the palate at first.”

“It’s a challenging album, yes,” weighs in guitar Mark “Hoss” Hosking. “Not something you’ll hear playing in the background of the Home & Away café. It’s large in scope and requires the listener’s attention. But I think that’s why Karnivool fans dig it, for that very reason. We’re not a band that writes a song for an agenda.”

Kenny adds “This album will keep on giving. There’s a lot of sonic depth on each track and I’m still hearing so many undertones and reasons as to why each song ended up the way it did. A new album should challenge your listeners. Give them something new, different and inspirational, and I think if you’re delving into those sort of waters as a band, then you’re on the money.”

“The progressive rock album of the year has come from down under. It’s time meet Australia’s finest” – Guitarist (UK)

“Masterpiece – that’s the only word that can accurately describe Karnivool’s ‘Sound Awake’” – melodic.net (US)

“A hail of expansive melodies, that, when at there are little short of breathtaking. This is genuinely impressive stuff” – Kerrang! (UK)

“(Sound Awake) is an ambitious exploration of sound that borders on sheer genius” – Fasterlouder (AUS)
“Karnivool have more than proven themselves among the progressive greats, delivering compositions that evolve with endurance, crush with rhythmic intelligence, and take flight with radiant complexity and astounding melodic brilliance.” – Decoy Music (US)

“Not many rock bands have excited me lately, but when I heard Karnivool I lost S*%t!!” – LP33.tv (US)
“A true masterpiece… prepare to be awakened by greatness and witness true musical brilliance. They are the real thing.” – (10/10) Just Push Play (US)