The New Year’s hangovers have only just subsided and now here we get a fresh blast of ear-splitting, pants-shitting powerviolence from West Australian mongrels Extortion. Thanks a bunch, cunts!

Called Loose Screws and released today through Resist, it’s 10-inches of the band’s rawest shit yet. Recorded in Oakland last year during their maiden US trek by Dan Rathburn, it’s notable for a guest appearance by noted fan Barney Greenway of Napalm Death, who trades vocals with frontman Rohan Harrison on the track, “Grind To A Halt”.

UB.com’s Danger Coolidge spoke with Harrison about Loose Screws, celebrity fans and ever-changing line-ups…

How did Loose Screws come to be recorded in the States?
We were touring there and figured whilst we were over travelling through San Francisco/Oakland we’d see if we could record at Polymorph Studios as a lot of our favourite records were recorded there (Tragedy, His Hero is Gone, Artimus Pyle, Iron Lung). We got in contact with Dan Rathburn there and he fit us in. We recorded all the tracks minus the vocals in two days pretty much smack bang in the middle of the tour. The vocals were recorded over in Perth with Al Smith at Bergerk! Studios and the mixing was done via correspondence over a few months with Dan in the US. The songs were written close to the tour and kept fairly simple, as we didn’t have too much time to practice them and get organised for the tour. We got everything we’d written down (and one or two tracks that were written in the studio) and probably could’ve spent forever with additional production but decided to keep it pretty simple.

Barney from Napalm Death makes a guest appearance on “Grind To A Halt” – give us the story there?
We played with Napalm in Perth in 2007 and Barney picked up our records. A few months later he got in contact and we sent a few emails back and forth and he mentioned he’d be keen to sing a track on our next record. The song itself was an song by a older band myself and Rhys [Davies, drums/guitar] were in called The Collapse, but we never got around to recording it properly before the band broke up and thought the song sounded mean enough to suit Extortion. We had a demo recording with Rhys singing, so Barney had a guide version to go off with lyrics we’d written. Barney’s vocals suit it perfectly and the lyrics have vague references to apocalyptic/pessimistic worldview that suits both Barney’s roar and Extortion’s general lyrical content. Ha.

The last track, “Socially Inept” is an instrumental with a sort of industrial/Ministry-esque vibe – something unexpected for Extortion. What was the thinking behind that one?
It was written in the studio as we had the time and I’d been messing around with a simple, repetitive riff that thought would work well after a mess of fast shit. It just came together then and there in the studio. I wouldn’t rule out doing something along those lines in the future though, we’re prone to veering off into whatever direction we feel like at any given time.

We love the way there have been different production touches to the last couple of releases, the Terminal Cancer 7” on Shortfuse and now the Loose Screws 10”. Of course, Al Smith production suits the band the best, but these other recordings show different sides to the sound.
Exactly. There’s a whole bunch of bands that I’d rather listen to the demos than the studio versions because they’ve got that nasty, mean sound. That’s kinda what Terminal Cancer was meant to be. It’s the same kind of songwriting but with a totally different vibe just because of the quality of the recording. I wouldn’t want to keep that as our main way of recording but I’d like to do something like that again. As long as you can hear every instrument then raw recordings are fucking amazing. I love the sound of it. And Loose Screws, that seems to have a bit more of a punk feel to it. Not in a raw way but just when you compare it with Al Smith’s stuff, which I guess you could say is more metal. It’s all very clear and sounds good but it’s punk in that it just sounds like a bunch of dudes in a room.

Extortion has had a few line-up reshuffles yet you have managed to keep things ticking over – toured the US, released splits with Agents Of Abhorrence, Jed Whitey, Rupture and Septic Surge, did the Terminal Cancer 7” and now Loose Screws. Is Extortion you and whomever you can get to play with you?
Rhys and I started the band and we both wrote the music to begin with. But then he left to go to the UK for few years and he urged me to keep the band going with a new drummer and so I became the sole songwriter from that point on. I’ve been pretty lucky in that everyone who’s played with the band has been a good mate who also has been a solid enough musician to play whatever I throw at them. In all we’ve had four drummers, three bassists and four guitarists over the years. I think out of the times we’ve played Melbourne there’s not been once where we’ve had the same line-up. But it’s never really been difficult. Everyone seems to pick up the songs really quickly. It’s been easy.

You once joked that the band should be renamed Rohan & The Extortions – why don’t you do that as a side-project?
I was talking to Max [Kohane], drummer from Agents Of Abhorrence, and he was saying he’d like to do something together, so maybe it would be good to do something in that way, like still under the Extortion banner but different. I’d love to work with Max; he’s a bullshit-fast drummer. It would be like Rupture where you’d have spin-offs like Gus Chamber & the Rape Apes or the Ruptured Wank Tanks.

You recently relocated from Perth to Melbourne. How is Melbourne treating you so far and what does the move mean for the future of Extortion?
Melbourne is fine, though I’ve only just moved here so still finding my feet. I haven’t been doing too much since I got here. I’ve been taking it easy. I’ll take any shitty job to start off with and then I hope to sort myself out, I’d like to be able do something maybe with my illustration, get a tattooing apprenticeship or something like that. I think Melbourne is the only city in Australia where tattooing isn’t run by bikers. Which also means there is shitloads more competition here but whatever. I’ve just started with someone showing me how that shit works so once I get a few bodgy home-jobs on people then I’ll start asking around to try and get an apprenticeship. The current Extortion line-up is split over Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne and will be for the next few recordings (we’ve got some splits and whatnot to record for) and tours til a few months into this year when it will be based in Melbourne with myself and some older members of the band who have moved here previously.

We hear you did some recording at The Arthouse recently?
We recorded a practice and hopefully we’ll be able to use a few tracks for some splits and shit. Other than that, I’ve been writing for that one we were speaking to you about ages ago, doing something with a bit more of a dirty eighties thrash metal vibe to it. Obviously we’ve been talking about that forever and I have about twenty songs down for that. So once Rhys is healed up from his recent hip surgery we will start working on recording all those tracks and see what goes down best and maybe ending up with a 14 or 15-track album. It will be a few months into this year before we even get started on that though. It seems the last record where we had a lot of time to spend on getting it just right was Control [EP] and that was ages ago. We’ve always had time issues. The records are good but maybe not as good as I’d like.

You put out so much stuff; it seems to be non-stop releases.
The dream would be to rival Rupture, but I still don’t think we are going to get anywhere near it.

Extortion MySpace: www.myspace.com/extortionextortion