The Living End

Author: Danielle O’Donohue

We’ve known it for a while now but in the past couple of years it seems the rest of the world has finally cottoned on. The Living End is about as good as rock’n’roll gets.

The three Melbourne rockers are back in Australia after their triumphant U.S. Warped tour when lead singer Chris Cheney says the trio made plenty of new fans.

“We had a good crowd every day just with the other bands that were watching,” he says.

The release earlier this year of the band’s State Of Emergency album was greeted with an enthusiastic response from fans old and new. Cheney says the band is happy to see a new generation of young music fans down the front at shows.

“I don’t know how that’s happened but we’ve definitely noticed a resurgence,” he says. “It’s just awesome because they weren’t around when the first album came out. We’re noticing with this last tour we did, Wake Up was getting a bigger reaction than Prisoner (Of Society) which is unheard of for us.”

One of the most dynamic live bands going round, Cheney’s never quite understood all the hype surrounding the Living End’s live experience.

“We’ve never really thought that much about it,” he says. “People always go on about that. But that’s only because we just played and played and played. It really annoys me when you see these bands that sell all these records and they can’t play properly live.”