Interview By Dan Cribb

Imagine if Green Day still produced awesome albums like ‘Dookie’ or ‘Kerplunk’. Do you wish they hadn’t flushed those sounds down the toilet to make way for rock operas and musicals? If you miss lyrics about girls, drinking and having fun, then checking out TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET should be high on your to-do list.

Teenage Bottlerocket are currently touring Australia with FRENZAL RHOMB and guitarist/vocalist Ray Carlisle kindly gave up a few minutes of his time before the tour to answer some questions.

“Gordy from Frenzal Rhomb fell in love with our music, or so he says. Maybe he was just drunk. I don’t know,” laughed Carlisle.

“I wanna go to the beach at least once when I’m in Australia. I’m looking forward to taking everything in and just living day by day.”

Before punk music, Ray and his brother Brandon played in a couple of high-school heavy-metal bands, one called the Carlisle Crew.

“Being in a band with my brother can sometimes be a pain in the arse. On the plus side, we’ve been playing music together our whole lives and we know what we expect out of each other so writing music kind of comes naturally for us. It’s got its ups and downs but I’d say there are more ups than downs.”

Green Day was the band that converted the brothers from heavy-metal to punk rock.

“If wasn’t for Green Day we probably wouldn’t be playing punk music,” Carlisle said.

“Green Day came along and blew our minds. From there we tackled the whole Lookout and Fat Wreck catalogues and pretty much anything underground that we could get our hands on.”

Before the band had even written their first song they had their logo, which appears on the front of all their full-lengths, ready to go.

“When we started the band we had certain things in mind and one of the things was the way we look. We wear leather jackets and Chuck Taylors.

“We wanted our appearance to represent our style of music and we came to the conclusion that a lot of the bands that we love, like Alkaline Trio and Bad Religion, had a logo that you didn’t even have to put the band name on.”

After they’re finished in Australia they’re heading home to tour before starting work on a new album. They’ve got about ten songs written at the moment including ‘Mutilate Me’ and ‘Punk House of Horror’ which were released on a 7 inch early this year.

“We were really fortunate because we booked studio time at the Blasting Room and when we showed up Rise Against was recording their new full length. They were mixing their record in LA at the time but they still had all their gear set up.

“That really cut down on set-up time and we were able to smash those songs out in one day.”