The long-delayed festival makes its Brisbane debut on April 23rd
(Image credit: Press/Supplied)
After what feels like no less than a decade of delays, the inaugural Full Tilt festival will make its debut in Brisbane on Saturday, April 23rd.
In the meantime, Australian Guitar is catching up with some of the legendary shredders set to tear it up at the show. In this edition, we chat to Andy Marsh of Thy Art Is Murder.
What can the legion of moshlords out there expect to see when you take the stage at Full Tilt? I think across the board you can expect a ton of tension and release. For many of us it has been the longest break in our careers and to finally be back in front of a live audience is going to be the rush of a lifetime. We will be playing a lot of songs from our newest album Human Target for the first time in Australia which is going to be a great feeling!
You’re obviously sharing the Full Tilt lineup with some fucking killer acts. Who’s set are you personally most keen to see, and why? Our great friends Justice For The Damned and Polaris are on the same day as us and we can’t wait to catch their sets!
What does your live rig look like at the moment? It’s a pretty efficient rig that’s designed for consistency and functionality. I’ll be playing Jackson guitars into my Kemper profilers; we don’t use any pedals live at all outside of the kemper remote which we just use for tuning. No audio passes to the front of stage it’s all contained in our racks safely next to our tech.
What would you say is the cornerstone of your live sound? For us it is just the sheer unrelenting brutality and tightness of the band. We’ve been together for a while now and the music really speaks for itself in a live setting when we are playing well together. Our front man CJ is well known around the world for the spontaneous energy he brings to the stage and often surprises even us, I expect to see some antics at the shows.
What makes your festival set a unique experience when compared to a standard venue set? The larger format comes with its own pressures and opportunities. At a fest we will play songs that are hits from our catalog to hopefully win over some new fans and will often focus on rhythmically driven material that is not as susceptible to the wind effecting the sound from the PA. Overly technical and fast songs can often get lost in a large field or arena, not that many of our songs are slow or easy to play.
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What are your festival essentials, and why should everybody have them? Chucking the stage schedules/map on your phone lock screen, a hat and plenty of water are essential. For us folks that are backstage, not losing your meal ticket is very important.
What’s your favourite festival memory of all time? Most of my favorite festival moments have been as a punter, we’ve played too many festivals at this point to just pick one of them. Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit is one of my favorite songwriters and finally getting to see Limp Bizkit after 20 years was for sure one of the great moments for me.
Ellie Robinson is an Australian writer, editor and dog enthusiast with a keen ear for pop-rock and a keen tongue for actual Pop Rocks. Her bylines include music rag staples like NME, BLUNT, Mixdown and, of course, Australian Guitar (where she also serves as Editor-at-Large), but also less expected fare like TV Soap and Snowboarding Australia. Her go-to guitar is a Fender Player Tele, which, controversially, she only picked up after she'd joined the team at Australian Guitar. Before then, Ellie was a keyboardist – thankfully, the AG crew helped her see the light…
