The Death Set is one of those bands that will hurt you.  And hurt themselves.  And break their instruments.  Take our word for it, they're a damn good time.

Chief Magazine: How long did you live in Australia, and do you still currently reside in Baltimore? 

Johnny: The band originally is from the silly Gold Coast of Australia. A coastal retirement style surfing town trying its best to be a glitzy LA type of thing. We escaped to Sydney for a stint of six months to write and play some shows, then took off to Brooklyn with our friend Dan Morris who runs The Arm gallery in Williamsburg. After a few months we settled in Baltimore staying for an extended period at our friend Emily Rabbit’s house, who put out our first EP.

I grew up in Australia having lived there all my life, barring a stint of two years in Tokyo. I’m still in Baltimore now having sorted out crazy visa stuff. We first moved to the States about two years ago. 

The band was originally myself and Beau Velasco. The recordings so far and the new full length will be our songs. The live lineup consists now of myself and Peter O’Connell whom I met though Wham City and occasionally Jahphet Landis (Jah Jah’s brother) on drums. Matt Papich of Ecstatic Sunshine filled in on guitar for a stint.

Would you ever move back to Australia, or are you planning to stay in the U.S.? 

Definitely. Living in the States is primarily for music and touring. When I feel that is done for me I will move back. In the future I can definitely see myself living on a piece of property getting into sustainable farming and living with a solid crew of pets and animals. That idea of solitude in a beautiful forest setting definitely appeals to me. Get my monk on, Australia-style.

There seems to be a bit of a scene coming out of Baltimore between you guys and Dan Deacon, and also the band Ponytail, whom we talked to recently. How tight-knit is that scene, and how long have you been aware that Baltimore bands were on the verge of gaining national prominence? 

Yeah, somebody told me the other day that they were doing a story, and the idea was that Baltimore is the new Brooklyn! That’s a pretty ridiculous concept as they are obviously insanely different, but I definitely know there is a focus right now, with Baltimore Club, Dan Deacon, Wham City, Spankrock and all.

I guess it’s pretty tight-knit by default. Most of us have lived in or had something to do with a couple of live-in artist warehouse spaces here namely the Copy Cat building and the H and H building. For example: I first lived next to Wham City in the Copy Cat.  I now live with Jeremy from Ponytail. OCDJ is my neighbor. I am about to move in with Kevin from Video Hippos, in a space Dan Deacon is running. So I think all these people living together or in close proximity helped this scene flourish and be proactive. This also meant we helped each other. For example I mixed the first Ecstatic Sunshine record, mastered the first Ponytail record, did vocals on Dan’s record. Nolen from Double Dagger did our last EP art, Matt from Ecstatic Sunshine puts out Baltimore bands through his label Wildfire Wildfire, etc etc. It’s a community where everyone knows what the other people’s talents are and we rarely have to outsource outside this group to get things done. 

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What do you like about Baltimore? What is its appeal over, say, New York City?

IT’S CHEAP! To be honest… to be a musician or artist here, you compromise your time less to survive by doing a bullshit job or whatever and you can concentrate on what you love. Of course, Baltimore is cheap because it has the highest homicide rate per 100,000 of all U.S. cities of 250,000 or more population.  And obviously it has an awesome community of great bands and artists. Being in close proximity to the art school MICA and having party warehouse spaces also guarantees lots of crazy drunken underage kids spazzing out at shows—very important. 

I remember when I was living in Brooklyn and I came down to see a show at the Copy Cat with Dan Deacon and Ecstatic Sunshine and everyone was just going crazy. I had never seen anything like it. Granted I hadn’t been to a Todd P NYC show yet but it was nothing I had seen in my travels from Australia to Europe to the UK and the States. It was a pretty easy decision to move there. 

What you were guys like as kids?

Pretty shy, I guess. Tiny in stature. Into surfing, skateboarding and music.

How young were you when you realized you wanted to get into music? What was the music that you listened to that made you realize that this was what you wanted to do? 

Both my brothers are musicians so it was constantly around me. I’ve wanted to play music forever. However, I guess I let traveling and the concept of a real job get in the way for a bit. It’s definitely different in Australia and the idea of being just a musician is a lot more distant than here because of the fact you can’t tour the same. There are really only 4 or 5 cities you would hit on a tour in Oz, and they are 800 miles apart each. This makes living off of playing shows unrealistic. So I guess when we toured in Australia with Japanther I learned first hand that it could be done in America, and that was somewhat eye opening.

How long had you guys known each other before starting the group? How did The Death Set come together? 

It was born out of another group called Black Panda, the band we toured with in Australia, with Japanther. Beau and I met through friends on the Gold Coast probably three years ago. The live lineup I met through living in Baltimore.

What groups or artists have influenced your sound? 

I think that the scene from Brooklyn and Baltimore definitely influenced me. Not so much Australia. Videos of bands playing on floors to frantic kids has been amazingly influential. When I first saw that Lightning Bolt video “The Power of Salad and Milkshakes” in Australia it blew me away. I’d never seen anything like it before. I wanted to play and see shows like that. It just doesn’t exist like that in Australia.

Clearly, your songs are seriously catchy – “Negative Thinking” has gotten wedged into my head and won’t come out. But there appears to be a tongue-in-cheek aspect to the group, from the name of the group itself to your propensity for shouting “the mother-fucking Death Set” in your songs. Do you consciously try for a satirical slant to what you do, or does that just come out of an effort to have fun with the whole process? 

Yeah, I think it’s pretty ridiculous and funny having a name like The Death Set, then playing pop songs. I remember hanging out with Ben Frost, my friend from Australia, and talking about his paintings. I like his idea of contrast and opposites existing together. Sometimes I feel that idea is relevant to this band, if that’s what you mean by satirical. However sometimes the songs are very straight forward, personal and honest, like “Negative Thinking”.