Cutting their teeth at DIY shows, this Perth quintet are as confrontational as they come. Meet your new favourite hardcore band.
Channelling the likes of Code Orange and Employed To Serve, Cursed Earth are loud, angry and may just be your new favourite hardcore band
“I’ve kicked my bassist’s bass out of his hands, I’ve kicked my guitarist’s guitar out of his hands, I’ve smashed my hands on my drummer’s cymbals… everyone ends up getting really hurt.”
Hammer is talking to Cursed Earth vocalist Jazmine Luders, reminiscing over 208, a house in suburban Perth that stages DIY shows in the living room and has become an integral part of the Australian punk scene. Jazmine has been a part of the local hardcore community since she was a teenager and has been lucky enough to play the fabled house on a number of occasions.
The singer discovered hardcore at the age of 13 after attending a show from the band who have really put Australia’s heavy scene on the map, Parkway Drive. The local opener at the show really struck a chord with Jazmine, who went to their subsequent album launch and found a new world that she connected with. Now 24 years old, she’s been involved in hardcore almost half of her life.
Steeped in a scene built on morals and that prides itself on being shrouded in progressive, liberal views, Jazmine isn’t taking any shit from hardcore’s more dunderheaded quarters, making it clear that fist-flinging and crowd killing is not acceptable behaviour.
“Everybody loves the music, and that’s the reason why everyone’s in the room, but the violence needs to stop,” she says emphatically.
“There’s been a few of our shows where people have got hurt. Everyone loves the music but there’s no need to be violent towards it.
“Racism is a very big thing [for us],” she continues. “And homophobia, especially me being a gay person, me and my band don’t tolerate homophobia to any extent whatsoever. If you don’t agree with that then maybe you’re not a human being.”
Despite being so vocal about these issues over the phone today, Jazmine says she doesn’t address these issues onstage because fans already know what Cursed Earth are about.
But then, Jazmine didn’t always want to be a vocalist. Having played drums since she was 10 years old, but never in a band, she admits it was getting mic grabs at shows that instilled the idea of being a singer.
“The vocalist of one band handed me the microphone, so I screamed. Everyone turned around looking at me like ,‘Holy shit, did that come out of her?’ I didn’t think I would be able to produce a noise like that.”
“DON’T ever TOLERATE HOMOPHOBIA. IF YOU DO, YOU’re NOT A HUMAN BEING”
JAZMINE LUDERS IS VERY MUCH IN THE NOT-A-DICKHEAD CLUB
Being able to naturally unleash such an unholy roar, there’s no wonder it led to fronting one of the most aggressive bands in Australia. Drawing comparisons to the likes of Code Orange and Nails, this is hyper-intense and as fierce as it gets. Jazmine admits that she doesn’t listen to that much heavy music anymore, and the self-described “hypebeast” draws a lot of motivation from American hip-hop.
“It’s about trying to gain inspiration from other things to bring into our music and give it a different flair to what other people are trying to do,” she says.
Born and raised in the “most isolated city in the world” has no doubt contributed to Cursed Earth’s inherent desire to stand out from the pack and do things a little differently, admitting that their whole philosophy was to be “really heavy and in your face because there was a lack of that in our country.” But what attracted her to such heavy music in the first place?
“I’m a very dark person,” replies Jazmine solemnly. “Our music reflects how we feel inside. Nothing’s fake, everything’s real, we take everything to heart when it comes to writing music.
“We’re all good people and good to have fun with, but our main goal is to put all of our hatred and shit that we have against the world into Cursed Earth”
This darkness has manifested itself in the band’s new EP, Cycles Of Grief Volume II: Decay, the follow up to Volume I: Growth: a short yet brutal assault of desolation, but with a swaggering undercurrent primed and ready to snap necks.
“It’s music for people with short attention spans,” explains Jazmine. And she’s not wrong, with the combined EPs clocking in at 25 minutes. Sure, it could have been released as an album, but each song has its own meaning, and
Jazmine was adamant for each track to be ingested and enjoyed for what it is. There’s also a distinct divide between the two records.
Both are savage, with the dial on Decay turned even further toward total annihilation, but the near-five-minute closing track is a departure from everything the young band had established in their sound so far, drawing itself out over a bleak expanse of noise, layering the barbaric screams with haunting moans. This is not a happy record.
“Cycles Of Grief is about a person who’s gone through so much trauma in their life that they’ve become self-destructive and they don’t know how to live with themselves anymore,” says Jazmine. Not revealing specifics, she admits it comes from personal experiences as she finds fictional lyrics too cheesy, but the songs can be interpreted in many ways to suit the listener. “It’s about someone going through the worst time in their life and grieving over it. It means different things to us than it does to other people, which is totally fine, that’s art.”
Cycles Of Grief has been released on acclaimed Australian rock and metal label UNFD. And while Cursed Earth are the heaviest band on their roster by a long way, Jazmine is adamant they haven’t sold out.
“We’ll always stay DIY, we’re not going to change as people just because we’re on UNFD,” she insists. “We’re always going to be Cursed Earth and that music is never going to change.”
Echoing a similar mentality to that of hardcore’s latest breed such as Code Orange and Employed To Serve, integrity is key to Cursed Earth. While veiled in mystery, their music is real, and comes from a place of genuine darkness and pain, like all worthwhile art. Or, as Jazmine puts it: “It’s unrelenting, it’s in your face, and if you can relate to it then you should be listening to it.”
Seems fair enough.