Sydney Punk: Oily Boys

In the last of a four-part series profiling current Sydney punk bands, MAX EASTON tackles Oily Boys, whose sound he calls “a filthy perversion of vicious hardcore, altered by a willingness to let outside influences chum the waters.”

Dizzy and Yuta recoil as a half-dozen dogs the size of six-packs charge at the cross-legged triangle we make in Camperdown Park. The dogs then assemble dead centre and begin ravenously sniffing at each other.

“Apparently sniffing their butts gives them a lot of information about each other, like hobbies and interests,” Dizzy says.

“If only it was that easy with humans,” Yuta replies.

“Smell does reveal a lot about people though. Like, you can really smell a crust,” he jokes before sniffing the air. “Oh, yeah, you must really love D-beat.”

Yuta and Dizzy’s lethargic bantering over cans of scotch and Coke in the Sunday afternoon sun is about as far from the music of their band as you could get. Featuring members previously of Taipan and Low Life, the Oily Boys are a filthy perversion of vicious hardcore, altered by a willingness to let outside influences chum the waters. This open-minded approach to a genre stained by the pursuit of purity has seen them heralded as one of Sydney’s most legitimate hardcore options, particularly by others in this interview series.

“Do you want our opinion on Sydney punk rock?” Cristian of Low Life spat while leaning over his booth at The Midnight Special. “We endorse the Oily Boys: full stop. They’re not trying to be anything in particular. It’s just a bunch of guys who listened to some shit hardcore records, listened to some shit punk records, listened to 2WS, then mashed it all together into this gross fuckin’ thing which is way more punk than the guys who go, ‘Let’s do this, then drop down to that and here’s where the kids will have a mosh pit.’”

The murky middle-point identified by Cristian is something the band had never intended.

“Whenever we’d practice, we’d listen to New Order or Icehouse.”

“Initially I wanted to play in a really dumb ’70s punk band,” Dizzy explains. “But it ended up being really different. We started listening to Cleaners from Venus and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, who are really cool and really demented. Whenever we’d practice we’d hang out in my living room and not listen to punk, we’d listen to New Order or Icehouse. But Yuta was listening to Italian hardcore, getting into Discharge and stuff and it all just happened on its own.”

“Then you pulled out the flange and here we are,” Yuta says.

Dizzy co-runs label and distro Disinfect with Rick Slayborg, which gives him a first-hand taste of the futility of running a band as a business. For a band like Oily Boys, the only way they can operate with that kind of sound is not just as a non-profit enterprise, but an inevitable vacuuming of their funds.

“Whatever, you always lose money off music,” he says. “Any band I know has made more money off shirts than releases. It’s more fun that way, when you don’t have to worry about it. You just lose money and don’t think about it.”

“Gary made some Oily Boys shirts to pay for his flight to Brisbane,” Yuta says. “He sold them all and made a bit of money, but then he got to the airport and it turned out he booked a flight for the wrong day. He had to spend $400 on a replacement ticket. I think I just laughed at him and left.”

“Yuta and Gary are like nemeses, it’s hilarious. They’re butting heads all the time. I couldn’t think of two more polar opposite people.”

“I say to him: ‘You wish you could cry, you fucking cyborg.’”

“Gary’s really straight. I say to him when he’s angry all the time: ‘You wish you could cry, you fucking cyborg.’ He has no emotions. We wanted to record his answers for this interview in like a Stephen Hawking voice and bring it along.”

“It’s a pretty fun dynamic this band. We all kind of rip into each other. From the outside people probably think it’s pretty harsh though.”

Camperdown Park is full of passing prams and unleashed dogs, while the recording is stained by the monotonous hum of a distant and irritatingly persistent drumming circle. It’s a stark contrast to the dimly lit rooms the band is usually seen in, where a front row is pushed back by the aggressive and unintelligible vocal thrashes of their singer Drew.

Oily Boys play a more diverse range of shows than the other bands in this series, and that comes from the border they straddle between the heterogeneous DIY scene and an entirely separate and insular metal and hardcore circuit. It has left them in odd scenarios.

“Big spaces really aren’t that great,” Dizzy says. “Stages and shit; I hate stages. We played the Oxford Art Factory once, at a hardcore fest on that stage to about 10 people. It was pretty fucked.”

“The one good thing about that OAF show was that no one knew there was a band room,” Yuta adds. “They just had a lot of beer and we stayed in that room pretty much the whole time.”

Dizzy: “And then Yuta pissed in the kettle and boiled it.”

“I’m glad we nuked the kettle. That’ll show those straight-edge guys for drinking tea.”

Yuta: “Yeah, we nuked the kettle. I really thought there’d be yellow steam. Anyway, we didn’t have a great time. I’m glad we nuked the kettle though. That’ll show those straight-edge guys for drinking tea.”

“We’ve done a couple of those kinds of shows. We played Total Attack in Brisbane, which was one of those ‘three days of hardcore fun’ things and I don’t know how people do it,” Dizzy adds. “I don’t have the energy for a whole day of anything anymore, let alone the same thing.”

“I guess our favourite venue is The Square,” he continues. “We get treated real well there, but where else is there? Sydney’s pretty hard-pressed for shows all the time.”

“It’s too small to pick and choose,” Yuta replies.

“If there are two shows on the same night there aren’t enough people to fill them both,” Dizzy says. “There are so few people who go to shows here that you can’t do it. It’s probably why there are less bands; I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation. We don’t play many shows either; I don’t know if that’s a Sydney thing. I was lucky: when I was 18 or 19, there were some really good punk bands around. Then it died out. I don’t know what happened the past couple of years.”

“Trends changed maybe.”

“Or music is changing,” Dizzy counters. “People have their own crowds and people can live in their own bubble. Punk’s a bit … it’s not traditionally what I thought was there. Bands don’t seem to follow punk bands that are happening overseas now; they’re more familiar with R.I.P. Society or other garage bands that they know personally. I’m not sure that people are as exposed as they used to be.”

This limited choice of bands of a certain type is seen in how often Oily Boys and Housewives play side-by-side. But despite being two of the most active and recognised straight-out punk bands in the city, in a live setting the connection makes a lot of sense. Both Drew and Lincoln stand at a microphone walking around a more reserved backing band, but the intensity is very different and the music isn’t really on the same plane. Where Housewives retract from aggression and suck it up into chaotic, insular agitation, Oily Boys push outwardly at the world around them and the audience reception follows in turn.

“We played this show at the Flinders [Hotel] with Housewives once,” Dizzy starts, before spinning off into a bizarre story involving a bouncer smashing his beer, the ensuing confrontation, a foot race and subsequent bashing. “I guess we’re banned from there now, but shows like that are fun at least. Where you play is about a metre from where the people stand, and at that show our mate had flopped his cock out and sat it in his beer right in front of us.”

“I like that he can come to shows and do that,” Yuta laughs.

“That’s what pisses me off about Melbourne: people can be real stale and humourless.”

“Stuff like that makes shows funny and enjoyable. That’s what pisses me off about Melbourne: people can be real stale and humourless. We played upstairs at the Gaso once. Some mates of ours were moshing at a Gutter Gods set and people were heaps upset about it. So they brought spray cans into the pit and the whole thing was like a gas chamber. They weren’t tagging or damaging anything though, just damaging people’s lungs.”

This desire for live chaos is maybe one of the most lingering and unfulfilled desires of modern punk and hardcore. For most, 2013 is a much more reserved time than what kick-started the mythology of this brand of music, and the result is a more reserved approach across the board.

“I hate the whole looking-bored thing that seems to be around a bit in punk,” Yuta agrees. “If you’re playing punk then get into it: you should be spitting at people or something. But there’s no point in Sydney. You can’t be a dick because you just won’t play any shows. It’s too small a community.”

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Oily Boys’ demo tape came out last year. Tim Scott called it “mob justice … that leaves a lasting impression.” Upcoming gigs below, including a couple for Maggot Fest. Watch the fuck out, Melbourne.

Sat, Sept 14 – Black Wire Records, Sydney, NSW [7:30pm, $10, all ages, w/Vigilante, Sick People, Unknown to God + Sewercide]
Sat, Sept 21 – Magpies Club, Canberra, ACT [7:30pm, $10, all ages, w/Black Coffee, Eye Gouge, Hygiene + Beach Slut]
Sat, Nov 2 – Maggot Fest @ Gasometer, Melbourne, VIC [w/Straightjacket Nation, Lakes, Helta Skelta + many more]
Sun, Nov 3 – Maggot Fest Drain Rave #3 @ TBA, Melbourne, VIC [w/Simfuckers,
 Gutter Gods
+ Havittajat]

PREVIOUSLY:
Sydney Punk: Housewives
Sydney Punk: Low Life
Sydney Punk: Raw Prawn