Making Music: Mordor

By Alasdair McClintock on March 10, 2021 in Arts

Maroubra’s finest. Photo: Ethan Davis

There is a stigma amongst regular folk that metal bands are made up of strange, aggressive beings, who spend a lot of time indoors. This is untrue, most of them aren’t aggressive. Mordor kick the other stereotypes too though, being a friendly pack of youngsters who love the ocean as much as their music.
Growing up in Maroubra will do that to you, as all the members did. The five-piece is made up of Zac Michael (vocals), Kain Zulian and Dan Tyson (guitars), Khava Black (bass) and Monty Tait (drums). They started out, as so many bands do, after a “countless amount of drinks” in mid-2019, when they played a few songs together and thought it would be fun to start a band.
Mordor was then formed. Named, as you might have guessed, after the evil realm of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. The band explained, “Khava and Monty are geeks and like Lord of the Rings. The rest of us hadn’t seen or read it, but the name sounded cool when Khava said it. It sounded dark and evil, which we all knew was the direction we would take.”
While there is a definite darkness to their sound, to call them evil or straight-up metal would do them an injustice (even if they might disagree). They list Tool, Black Sabbath, Grinspoon and Nine Inch Nails amongst their influences, and a few of their tracks have distinctly post-punk vibes, including ‘House of Lies’, which fans of early At-The-Drive-In would particularly warm to.
Presently, they have only a few DIY self-mixed demo recordings available on Triple J Unearthed, but the band do have plans to record in the future, just not immediately. As they said themselves, “We have a couple of new songs in the pipeline but if you want to hear them you’ll have to come to a gig. We probably won’t be recording any time soon.”
With that in mind, gigs are definitely head of the agenda in 2021. The band spent much of 2020 honing their live show and responded, “Playing as many gigs as we can and maybe releasing an album we are all proud of,” to the question of what the ideal future would hold for Mordor. You can follow them on the usual socials to find out where they’re playing next.
As for their thoughts on the state of music in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs?
“There’s heaps of potential for some people to do some cool things. It would be fun if we all got together and did a festival around here.” Not a bad idea, is it?