By Greg Pratt

On The Internal Dialogue, album number two for Australian weirdo death/thrash/groove metallers CONTRIVE, the band definitely didn’t go the safe route. The disc is jam-packed with riffs, ideas, and musical skills, all of which add up to an aural love letter to all things extreme, be it worshipping at the altar of death metal, quirky thrash (stay tuned for a STRAPPING YOUNG LAD connection), catchy but not cheesy grooves (I’m thinking SOULFLY’s better moments), and, work with me here, melodic Swedish hardcore like RAISED FIST.

“We pushed ourselves and our ideas and gave room to explore other areas to add to our sound from previous releases,” says guitarist/vocalist Paul Haug. “We focused more on letting the songs breathe and we paid more attention to all aspects of the songs.”

As mentioned, The Internal Dialogue (which follows up their first, The Meaning Unseen, which came out way back in 2005) is diverse but never gets too haphazard, and also keeps things classy… no small feat for an album that flirts with prog and even power tendencies.

“We have, as [bassist] Tim Stahlmann calls it, ‘a high shit filter’,” chuckles Paul, “where nothing will get through unless all three of us are happy with what we’re creating. We pay a lot attention to what each other are doing musically and bounce ideas off each other without any concerns with what’s cool at the moment, or what’s retro or blatantly plagiaristic out there."

This lack of concern is why the band’s sound ends up being somewhat outside of the box, and rather, to be frank, uncool. Let’s face it, dudes are hip to be square, and they don’t care.

"Man, we’ve been labelled so many things, some very cool, some stupid,” laughs Paul. “We feel great when people can’t put us into a specific genre, and it allows us to play with a lot of different bands and expose our music to different audiences. With our sound, we just come up with what sounds good to our ears first and foremost, and if the public like it, then that's the payoff with writing music and putting it out there.”

Despite the band being from Australia, the album has a Canuck connection: it was mixed by Vancouver’s Devin Townsend. After the album was recorded in Australia, Contrive drummer Andrew Haug (Paul’s brother) flew to Vancouver to work his magic with Devin.

“Andrew mixed the album with great results and a lot of laughs with Dev,” says Paul. “Dev is the man; he didn’t have to fix or change any of the songs; he really liked them as they were, and gave it a very spacious mix so all the instruments wouldn’t bury each other. We’re very proud of it.”

Location can play a big part in how a band sounds, and for a unique band like Contrive, living in a place like Australia, which is pretty unique for a metal band, is no doubt a large part of the reason why the band sounds like they do.

“Ah, the living in Australia thing,” says Paul, with a chuckle, assuring us that the band doesn’t rely on this as a gimmick. “We don’t have aboriginal instruments in our songs or Crocodile Dundee samples (laughs).”

But it’s not all chuckles being a metal band from down under. Paul says that being from an isolated country and playing metal is as tough for these guys as it is for all bands in that situation.

“We all have no real support from the music industry here, so it’s a scene that supports itself,” he says. “But as time has gone on, that’s not really the case. There’s still too much segregation between genres in the scene and the unity has been missing for a number of years.”

The new Contrive track 'Is This The Way?' is currently streaming online at BraveWords.com - head to the left-hand-side of the site to launch KnuckleTracks Online Audio Player.

For more info visit Contrive.com.au.