Nick Zammit can remember the exact moment he knew he wanted to become a member of Battlesnake.
“I got a text message saying: ‘We’re starting a rock band that’s going to be about wizards and dragons’,” says the drummer. “I saw that and I was like: ‘Yes!’”
That was seven years ago, and the Sydney-based seven-piece Battlesnake have just released their second album, The Rise And Demise Of The Motorsteeple. These days the words ‘magnum’ and ‘opus’ are thrown around with abandon, but this album is about as magnum and as opus as one can possibly get, with titles like A Blessing Of Fire And Speed and Pterodactyl Firehawk dovetailing gleefully with the kind of willful disregard for fashion norms that suggests the band might not be taken seriously were they not so seriously good.
“We’re all heavily influenced by the world-building of Lord Of The Rings and Dune,” says guitarist Paul Mason. “We’ve worked hard to sort of develop this ‘brand’ and to have it all tie in thematically, and it would be amazing to think that we’re on our way to creating our own movement, because we got some pretty crazy fans.”
He’s not wrong. Live clips of the band show them fully be-cloaked, as if gathered for an ancient, alien ritual, with frontman Sam Frank sporting a towering pair of horns while fans cower at his feet.
“They’re worshipping the guitar solo,” Mason explains. "It's a good thing to keep alive. Jeff Beck's not here on the planet anymore. So we're gonna do our bit, you know?"
And those costumes?
“When we started we had this bag full of random costumes,” says Zammit. “I used to wear a one-piece leopard onesie. Billy [O’Key, keytar] had Muay Thai shorts on with flags on his back.”
“Ben [Frank, guitar] and I had leotards,” adds Mason.
Before the robes arrived, the group progressed to wearing white Speedos with the band’s logo embroidered on. By the time you read this they’ll probably have moved on to something else.
If that all sounds a bit, well, silly, don’t let it put you off, because The Rise And Demise Of The Motorsteeple is a beast of an album, full of wild ambition and packed with great ideas. The band describe themselves as a mix of Queen, Judas Priest, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and AC/DC. Which makes no sense until you hear the album, and then it very much does.
Battlesnake are serious. In 2022 they supported Kiss in Sydney on their End Of The Road tour, which made them more so.
“We’re a humble band of seven dudes from Sydney,” says Mason. “But it was still encouraging to me. We’ve got pyro now, and some pretty ballistic shows. It’s just a case of making it happen, brick by brick.”
