No place like home

Released four years after the band’s globally successful Sound Awake, the Perth hard rockers’ latest offering debuted at number one on the ARIA chart.

‘We went about it in different ways this time, it still took four years but it wasn’t as painful,’ bassist Jon Stockman said.

‘It’s a natural progression for us, it’s just the next period of writing we’ve done and that’s what any of the records really are for us, sort of little audio bookmarks of where we were at as a band.’

Stockman said many of the album’s heavier songs were influenced by the political climate around the world at the time, while other influences include ancient civilisations and the unknown.

‘For me it’s a real narrative from start to finish, it begins in a similar way to the way it ends but it’s got a shift through it,’ he said.

‘That’s really important to us when we put a record out, because it’s the whole thing that matters to us, not just the individual parts.’

Karnivool will play to a home crowd as part of their national Asymmetry tour before heading to Europe but Stockman said Perth felt different to playing anywhere else.

‘This is our home and where we started and we haven’t changed how we feel about ourselves because of any success the band have had,’ he said.

‘I’ve always been really grounded in that aspect because this could all just disappear at any time.’

‘Because we don’t play Perth shows very much it’s going to be good and I look forward to going home to my own bed at the end of the night, it’s really novel.’

As to whether fans will have to wait another four years for the next album, Stockman was ambivalent.

‘I couldn’t say that’s not a possibility because we’ve tried every time to limit the time between records,’ he said.

‘We do it because we want to put music out and we’ve got something left to write, so we’re going to keep writing until we don’t feel like it anymore.’