Last week we stumbled across She Doesn’t Care, the latest single from local Sydney act Final Gambit. Raw and righteous, it came to the band after a somewhat shaky period involving gig troubles, some quick learning, and a shifting roster of band members.
Yet as the single will demonstrate, they’re back in full force. Ahead of their She Doesn’t Care single launch, we caught up with the band to find out all about it.
To celebrate their crunchy new single and an upcoming Sydney launch party, we caught up with Final Gambit for the latest.
HAPPY: Hey guys, how’s it going? What are you all up to at the moment?
FINAL GAMBIT: Great, cheers for asking. We’re gearing up for a couple live shows coming up. Our single launch show at The Valve Bar on the 31st and the launch for the next single. It’s a really exciting time and the support we’ve received already has been awesome.
HAPPY: We’re digging the new track… could you tell us a little bit about it?
FINAL GAMBIT: It was a song I wrote about my now girlfriend when we first sort of started talking and going on dates. The whole song is about me wanting to take the next step and be more than a nightly fling. Essentially just being serious about each other in a cheeky kinda way.
HAPPY: When you formed last year, you faced a few issues in terms of booking gigs and recording… could you tell us about this?
FINAL GAMBIT: Well I think people forget how bands start. Usually it’s just a bunch of kids sounding shit not knowing how to write a song, lyrics or even what makes their favourite music good. I had to learn how to write music and trust my ears for the first time. She Doesn’t Care was the first song Aleksi and I jammed away with for months, it was such a slow grind for seemingly such a simple song but everyone starts somewhere and everyone’s gotta learn right?
Aleksi then had to leave for his military conscription in Finland and Lauren joined the band as I think our third guitarist. We had something like four other drummers pull out until Aleksi finally finished his conscription and came back. All good things come in time I guess! You’ve just got to keep the faith in what you’re doing and remind yourself why your doing it, just makes the victories even sweeter.
HAPPY: What made you want to regroup as a band?
FINAL GAMBIT: Well we knew we were onto something special; a heavy hard-hitting punk sound is there. If we could see ourselves loving the music as a fan we knew we had to keep going.
It was a real defining time for us, like how bad did we really want this? So, when Aleksi started planning coming back to Australia I hit him up to persuade him to change his Melbourne plans and come back to Sydney. Thankfully he did, and we hit the ground running, started finishing off the EP and recorded the tunes. We all want to perform songs with a youthful spirit, edge and make a damn statement when we’re on that stage.
HAPPY: We’re picking up a few different sounds in your music… are there any particular bands who have influenced you?
FINAL GAMBIT: I know DZ Deathrays is a huge one for myself, to hear a riff-based band really kill it inspired me to be in a band in the first place. Their hard-hitting song writing just gets me going; it’s the pace and the passion that just makes me wanna mosh. That also goes for other bands like Royal Blood, Queens of the Stone Age, Death From Above and Bass Drum of Death, I really love those bands. The energy in their music is just so unapologetic and in your face, sort of a classic rock n roll mentality like AC/DC with lots of hard edges. We want to be more than just a band, we want to make albums with real themes about them with no two the same, artistry is something all these bands have in common so we’re gonna follow their musical path forging our own at the same time.
HAPPY: The video’s really great too! What was it like making this clip?
FINAL GAMBIT: Pretty fun actually, we started the band to dance and make music that we loved. We though what better way to show that than a super DIY video? We wanted a video but didn’t want to fork out too much money so we just set the camera up in one spot and filmed us playing about 20 times. It was definitely fun to do, there were some moments where we definitely got a bit weird. It was also done to pull back the curtain to people who discover us, you know, we’re just normal people who like to play rock music.
HAPPY: I can imagine your live show would be pretty wild… what can people expect heading along to a Final Gambit gig?
FINAL GAMBIT: A proper old school rock show, we play hard hitting rock with a thousand influences. It’s a party and a celebration of a style of music playing that has kind of gone missing. Rock music should have mistakes, should be loud and should be for everyone.
HAPPY: What’s next for Final Gambit? Any other exciting plans in the works?
FINAL GAMBIT: Apart from the She Doesn’t Care launch show we’re gearing up for the next single release in November and rehearsing like mad to set up a tour next year. Somehow during that time I’ve gotta push myself to write an album so that’s been great fun so far.
Catch Final Gambit live in Sydney:
Sun 28 Oct – The Hideaway Bar, Enmore – Details
Wed 31 Oct – Agincourt Hotel, Sydney – Details
