Interview by Kris Peters
Necrosonic Festival 2025 can rightfully lay claim to being Brisbane's premiere heavy metal music festival. Following a successful debut in 2024, the 2025 edition is again curated by Kent Bartley, one of the masterminds behind legendary Australian festivals like Overcranked, Inferno, and Dead of Winter. The lineup includes both international acts and resurrected Australian legends, with some bands reuniting for rare or one-off performances.
Described as a "ritual" rather than just a festival, Necrosonic 2025 promises an intense, 12-hour-plus experience featuring 30 of the heaviest bands from the underground metal scene, performing across three stages at the Mansfield Tavern on August 23. One of the most popular grouping of bands in last year's debut offering was Resurrected: Back From The Dead and this year's collection of older bands reunited promises to be no exception with Massic, Idle Ruin, Daysend, Beanflipper and Brace dusting off the cobwebs and keen to re-enter the fray alongside Portal, Bolzer, Abramelin, Frankenbok and more.
Sydney heavy outfit Brace are one of the Resurrected, reforming after 20 years to answer the metal call to arms, with bass player Rod Yates more than happy to shoot the breeze with HEAVY about Round Two for the band.
"It's been a long time," he affirmed. "It's been about 20 years since the last show, but you know what? It's sounding pretty good. We've picked up where we left off, which is good."
We mention the other four bands in the Resurrected category and point out that Brace will be amongst illustrious company in returning to the stage.
"I can't believe that we get to share a stage with those bands for one," he enthused. "Daysend we used to play with quite a bit back in the day, we're good friends with those guys. We haven't seen them for a long time, so that's going to be great, but Beanflipper are one of the bands that you grew up listening to and used to read about in Hot Metal, so to see them back playing and to play on the same stage as them... It's going to be massive with the other bands as well. You've got 30 bands playing across three stages in 12 hours!"
In the full interview, Rod discusses getting the band back together and how easily they have slipped back into gear. He tells us what we can expect from Brace live, including three songs to listen to in order to get to know the band if you are unfamiliar with their music.
We talk about the value of festivals such as Necrosonic to the Australian heavy metal scene, the history of Brace, why they broke up and what's changed to make them try again, new music and more.
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