Interview by Kris Peters
Melbourne metal outfit The Last Martyr have wasted little time entrenching their roots in the Australian music scene.
After announcing their intentions in 2021 with the single Hindsight, the band have pressed the accelerator firmly to the floor in pursuit of musical integrity, touring relentlessly and securing spots alongside international heavyweights such as Dayseeker, The Gateway Plan, Story Of The Year and Black Veil Brides.
After a successful run of shows last year as part of Sunk Loto's triumphant return, The Last Martyr followed expectations by releasing a banger of a track in Comedy/Tragedy earlier this year, but last month threw that script into the abyss by turning their focus back to the turn of the century with a reworked version of Bomfunk MC's hit song Freestyler.
Featuring J-Figure from Sydney's The Weight Of Silence alongside frontwoman Monica Strut, Freestyler has shown a more adventurous and dangerous side to The Last Martyr that can only be the by-product of a band completely at ease with themselves and their music.
Strut sat down with HEAVY to discuss the single and more.
"We were so nervous about this one," she smiled, "but so far, so good. It's one of those songs that is a little bit more obscure, but everyone knows it once they hear it. It's been a good reminder for people that grew up in the 90s and were kids in the 90s like we were. Maybe it's even introduced it to some new people as well. I think it's going well."
That whole era was rich for tracks such as this, leading us to ask Strut as to why The Last Martyr chose this particular song to cover.
"I have no idea," she laughed. "We're one of those bands where we've all got eclectic music tastes, and it's really, really difficult for us to agree on a cover. I think it was Ben, our drummer, who originally came up with the idea, and we thought why don't we play a snippet of a cover, just to break up the set a little bit. We used to play a Linkin Park cover, so that was our designated cover, but we had this idea to do a verse and a chorus of another song into an original song and have it as a little bit of a feature. So Vin was on an absolute mission to track down the samples for the original version, and we could not find it anywhere. He actually came across someone he found I think on YouTube from somewhere in Europe and reached out on Instagram and kept following up, and eventually he was good enough to give us the samples. So we started playing that live and playing it into our song Like A Ghost, which worked well."
In the full interview, Monica talks more about the song, having J-Figure as guest vocalist, how they dismantled then reassembled the original song from the ground up, whether Freestyler is a stand-alone track or part of a bigger picture, progress on new music, what direction it might take, their two upcoming headline shows and more.