Psycroptic
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Psycroptic

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“I do about four or five different things to get by,” says Haley. “My main gig is running Direct Touring, a touring and booking agency. I do that and teach drums and a bit of this and a bit of that.”

Haley’s recently brought out New York death metallers Immolation and has organised a Destroyer 666 tour in November. After that, his attention will return to Psycroptic, the band he formed with his brother Joe back in 1999. One of the most brutal bands to cross the Bass Strait, the tech death metal mainstays have released six studio albums, the most recent being their self-titled LP, released last year. They’ve only just finished touring this album, but are already working on the next.

“I think we’re a bit over two thirds through writing a new album,” says Haley. “We just finished touring for the last album, but we decided to keep rolling with the momentum because the reaction was good from both the press and fans.”

Haley can’t reveal album or song titles yet, but does say that his brother Joe has written the bulk of the new material. While they don’t see eye-to-eye all the time, he admits that playing in a band with his brother does have its perks.

“If you need to tell your brother to get fucked, you can,” jokes Haley. “That’s both a pro and a con. We learnt our instruments around the same time so we’ve always jammed together. We know each other’s playing and we can push each other. He engineers all our albums so he knows my playing. It’s not going to hurt my ego if he presses stop and says, ‘Do it again, you can play better than that.’”

So do they ever clash over stylistic differences? “I’m always going to want the band to be more brutal and he’s always going to want the band to be old ‘80s thrash. We meet in the middle somewhere which works well.”

Haley lives in Melbourne these days but says Psycroptic are still proud of their Tasmanian origins. When they released their single Echoes to Come, from their self-titled album, a portion of the proceeds were donated to Devil Ark, an organisation working to save the Tasmanian Devil from extinction.

“The program that we sponsored was not so much putting money into the research to stop [the facial tumours], because you don’t know where that money is going,” says Haley. “We donated to a program called Devil Ark, which pays for the upkeep of devils that are being relocated to an area that’s unaffected. It’s not so much trying to fight the cancer but making sure there’s a population left.”

Haley can’t recall the exact figure raised but says they were able to pay for the upkeep of a devil for the best part of a year.

“Every Tasmanian is always going to reference the [Tasmanian] Devil. If we sit back and don’t do anything, it’s pretty fucked. It was only a small token, but at least it was something.”

By Jack Pilven