Nerve Damage: Society Made Me Sick | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Society Made Me Sick is the latest EP from Gold Coast based hardcore punk band Nerve Damage. Like many of the most interesting new hardcore releases in this country, it’s out on Newcastle based Last Ride Records.

Nerve Damage have been around since 2015, existing in the hardcore punk underground of all ages moshpits and tattoo parlours. Society Made Me Sick though emerges into a media landscape showing a keen interest in representation of Indigenous culture. Singer Shaun Allen is a proud Yugambeh and Bundjalung man, in a subculture that has not traditionally been heavily populated by the first peoples of this land.

While hardcore punk has unfortunately too often been the genre of choice for neo-nazi groups, its history is not quite as white as some would make out. It was, after all, forged by the African-American members of Bad Brains; and quickly spread to all parts of the world. On any given weekend, heavy bands are thrashing out in countless languages and locations. But there’s no doubt that in Australia, Aboriginal artists in punk and hardcore have not been as prominent as in other genres.

So it’s nice to see the rising profile of bands like Nerve Damage and another Yugambeh artist Axel Best of metalcore band Wildheart. Because punk is meant to take on individual flavours according to its surroundings, evolving in local scenes. Like any other artform, making punk that comes from Australia without engaging with this continent’s Aboriginal history seems incomplete.

Mind you, Society Made Me Sick is definitely a hardcore record. The themes are all apocalyptic rage and pushing back against the man. “Shake their earth, watch it fall / Leave them exposed to be mauled” goes opening song Hard Rain; while the title track is everything you would expect in theme. The sound is heavy mid-tempo hardcore with a slight taste for atonal noise. There is a cover of Police by 80’s Australian punk legends X, a nice touch in linking Nerve Damage to a political punk tradition of this country.

Later this month, Nerve Damage will appear, along with an album introduction by Shaun Allen, on a Last Ride Records compilation called This Is Australia. The title is a bold claim from a pretty marginal subculture, but also a bit of a surprise in a scene that is generally averse to patriotism. While the artwork of Society Made Me Sick is a classic image of graffiti on a wall, This Is Australia will feature a picture of Uluru, strangely reminiscent of something from a souvenir shop. And yet I can appreciate what they are trying to do - finding the unity that joins hardcore bands from the multicultural suburbs of Western Sydney to the bogan heartland of the Hunter Valley and the original people of this land.

Nerve Damage do not sound much like traditional Aboriginal music, but they could sound like it’s future - where the DIY ethos and inclusive scene of punk are a symbol for an Australia that makes the effort to enable our Indigenous people to flourish and contribute everything they have to offer the culture of this place. Society has made plenty of punks sick, but could punk be a tonic to make our society better?

- Andy Paine.
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