Press

Street Press
PETER MENGEDE IS BEST KNOWN TO MANY AS A MEMBER OF 90S HEAVY HITTERS HELMET AND HANDSOME, BUT NOW HE HAS MOVED BACK TO BRISBANE AND STARTED KUNST. HE SPEAKS TO DAN CONDON ABOUT THE INITIAL RESPONSE TO HIS NEW PROJECT.

“I think people have always been surprised,” Mengede says when asked how audiences have responded to the group thus far. “With Helmet we were doing aggro art-noise that was co-opted by the market into first grunge, then alternative, then nu-metal if you like. With Handsome we tried to avoid metal and hardcore clichés like math rock bludgeoning and singing ‘watch your back if you cross the tracks’ by combining Morrissey-inspired lyrics with post hardcore dissonance inflected melodies.
“While we’ve gone back and worked on a few Handsome ideas that I’d catalogued, Kunst write as a group so what we do now is a product of everyone’s personalities and influences, which makes for a more interesting world. I’ve heard people at shows who are surprised to hear that there’s someone from Helmet in the band. They mostly think it’s the bass player and I suspect Damian enjoys the attention.”
The only way to really understand what the band are about is to see them live. Mengede gives us an idea as to what we can expect from the band’s live show.
“We’ll be playing most of our new tunes book ended with a couple of Handsome songs for those in the know,” he reveals. “In Kunst you can expect a wall of assonant dissonance that revisits the 90s with a touch of retro 70s thrown with the occasional moment of pop perfection. Jimmy’s been threatening to set himself on fire lately so we’ll have to have an extinguisher handy.”
- Dan Condon, Time Off (Jan 20, 2010)

Read More