Raw Nerve
Gig Seeker Pro

Raw Nerve

| SELF

| SELF
Band Rock Punk

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"RAW NERVE :A Rat In The Cellar"

On Friday, December 18, Raw Nerve launch their debut CD, Paralysed, at the Rocket Room. Frontman Donnie and bassist Rob caught up with MIKE WAFER to spill the beans.
In addition to his solo country project, Cold Turkey, Donnie Rat has been keeping himself busy since his previous band, The Homicides, went down the gurgler.

“And I don’t even know why we broke up,” says Donnie with a laugh, “but what are ya gonna do?”

Start a new band, apparently. And with the help of Rob, drummer Mike and Undies on guitar, Raw Nerve was born. Although similarly irreverent to The Homicides, this new project is decidedly more rock’n’roll. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do… rock’n’roll,” Donnie explains. “With The Homicides it was always trying to get it into more of a rock’n’roll direction, but that’s what we’ve got now. It sort of feels like Lazy Cowgirls or something to me… fast, catchy… and we’ve got a great lineup for that. With Undies on guitar and Mike on drums, I can do that.”

“And me and Undies and Mike just click,” Rob adds with a nod.

“That’s right,” echoes Donnie, “it’s the best band I’ve ever played with on stage, and that’s good for me because I don’t have to worry about what’s going on with you guys. It’s tighter, it’s better… I mean, me and Undies have known each other for 15 years. We’ve never played together, never jammed together, yet we’re coming up with this stuff.

“This is probably the only band I’ve been in where we’ve talked about it more than actually doing it. We’d sit around and get smashed and just talk about it. ‘Let’s do this band, a straight rock’n’roll band’. Then we just had a think about who we wanted to play with. We wanted Mike on drums, and Rob turned out to be the perfect bass player for us. We didn’t try anyone out, we just thought about who we wanted to play with.

Though Raw Nerve still has the necessary bite to keep the danger alive. The band’s debut EP, as a good example, is a no-frills affair that follows Donnie’s career-long love of low-fi recordings that spit out blood and broken glass.

“I’d have done it on a four-track if I’d had my way,” Donnie says. “Get that kind of dirty New Bomb Turks sort of style, y’know? I love the sound we got on this one, but I’d be happy to do it all on a four track if the other guys would let me. I sit by myself at home with the four track and just record like that anyway.”

So how did they record the EP? “One day with Max [Ducker, Cellar Sessions]. One day, two cartons, one bottle of bourbon and a thousand bucks’ worth of speed,” Donnie laughs. “One day to record and then a little bit of re-mixing,” he adds.

But there’s really no other way to record a band like Raw Nerve, because that’s how they write and perform anyway. To try and tart them up in the studio would probably just suck some of the life out of it, even though recording them on a four track could essentially do the same thing.

The balance they’ve found is pretty much the right one then, as the studio is more or less used as a way of cleanly capturing exactly how the band sounds and plays, with at least the option of having more than one drum mic.

As he always does, Donnie laughs at studio talk as though it were all a big joke. More interested in just getting the job done, Donnie’s had too much of a punk rock upbringing (in every sense of the word) to care about anything other than writing the hooks then shoving them in people’s faces.

But with Raw Nerve, he definitely sees a bigger potential than merely playing the Hydey every month and never straying from the usual traps.

“We’ve had a lot of interest in the ‘get your shit together and come tour’ sense. So people know who we are and there’s a lot we can do with this band because it’s straight rock’n’roll, and we know what we’re doing,” he says. “This has been harder work for me singing than other bands, because it needs more. Everyone in the band is on top of their game, so I’ve gotta be as well. “It will need us to push it, but it could do better than any other band I’ve been in before I reckon.” - Mike Wafer (XPRESS MAG)


Discography

DEC 2009 - PARALYSED EP

Photos

Bio

Welcome to the rock and roll zoo. Damn dirty apes with guitars, drums and amps. Loud faster, meaner and hotter, raw hook addicted tunes about dirty girls and dirty habits. Think The Eazybeats vs. The Lazy Cowgirls’ vs. The Dwarves. Triple threat cage match

Raw Nerve formed out of the debris if infamous stage burners, The Homicides and filth pub rockers, Python. Inspired by amphetamine guitar rhythm plus primeval drum beat muscle, Raw Nerve wasted no time in belting out a monster set of Rock n Roll howlers and hitting local stages with a pure sonic vengeance. This ain’t no messing around.

October 2009 saw Raw Nerve hit the studio, cranking out their debut 5 Track EP “Paralyzed” with the Reverend Max Ducker (Cellar Sessions). In one day plus pretty much one take, the band hung-over n' sleepless made it look bloody easy. Their hard approach to rehearsals + constant gigging taken into the studio proving the point..

he band has already left their stain on most local stages, tours have been offered and dubious deals laid out on the table.