Founded by lead singer Genevieve Rodda and guitarist Anthony 'Fox' Roberts, Temtris have been growing a steady following in their native Australia and were chosen as the support band for Geoff Tate during his Operation: Mindcrime tour in 2020, a year that also saw them headline SMASHFEST, the New Zealand HM festival. This in turn lead to a deal with Wormholedeath Records and their first Japanese release, 2021’s Ritual warfare.

 

Album Discography:
2003   Threshold

2007   Masquerade

2014   Shallow Grave

2016   Enter The Asylum

2018   Rapture 

2021   Ritual Warfare

 

Q: How are you Genevieve?

 

GR: I’m actually sitting here in a jacket because it’s cold here. I’m in the Gold Coast where it’s normally sunny and today the sun finally came out. It’s been raining non-stop – I don’t know if you’ve seen the news over here?

 

Q: I have. The floods in Sydney are terrible.

 

GR: It’s crazy.

 

Albums

 

Q: Let’s get to the band. Some websites say you have had the same line-up for nineteen years. Is that so?

 

GR: No. Myself and Anthony Fox are the original members but the rest, we have had quite a few changes which is due to that every time we release an album, we want to push ourselves further and work harder and usually, that breaks people (laughs). As you know as well, there is not a lot of money in the music industry so it has to be a passion for people to really want to do this, to work hard and get to you goals and that is something we have always pushed on with. Even through Covid we pushed on through, released an album and toured as much as we could so yeah, we have had a few changes. It’s actually a bit of a running joke with Temtris because it’s not often that there are all the same members on each album.

 

Q: I stand corrected on the line-ups. Now, your last album had a Japanese release...

 

GR: Yeah! Wormhole Death Records did a Japanese release for us. It was our latest release, our sixth album, Ritual Warfare. They did a standard pressing which went worldwide and then a Japanese one which was done by Masa Kishimoto and got it in the shops over there. We are currently going through contracts with him and are hoping to sign with them again so the next album which we are currently writing and will be recording in September, will hopefully have a Japanese release.

 

Q: Is the next album more of the same or is it a step forward or even a step in different direction?

GR: We do try and push ourselves musically with every album. We like to change our sound a little bit as well. We still sound like Temtris but people like to hear something fresh so this will have a new theme and a new feel to it. We are going to go with a bit of a futuristic thing with this one. We have some big plans for it. The artwork is being done at the moment and we are hoping to bring something a little different and fresh. We have two very capable guitarists and they are really pushing themselves on this album with some pretty fancy guitar work so we are excited.

 

Q: Six albums so far so this is your seventh.

 

GR: It’s insane. It’s funny as a band as you start out all excited just trying to get one album out and lately, every two years, we’ve been pumping albums out and pushing ourselves. We really want to get out of Australia and play more overseas. When we got the Japanese release on the last album we were keen to get over to Japan but Covid destroyed all of that. Now that we pretty much know we are working with them again, we’d love to get over there and show Japan what we can do live as we are very energetic on stage.

 

Australia

 

Q: You mentioned you were in the Gold Coast earlier. Are you based there?

 

GR: No. Anthony and myself work at schools and we are just up here having a break for a couple of days.

 

Q: Sydney then?

 

GR: I’m from down the south coast of Sydney, about an hour down from Wollongong. The other half of the band live in Sydney so when we rehearse, Anthony and I drive to Sydney for the rehearsals.

 

Q: That’s dedication.

 

GR: It’s a five-hour round trip to rehearse but that’s what you do when you love your music.

 

Q: You played with Loudness in Australia, right?

GR: Yeah! We were fans of Loudness anyway and to be offered the chance to play with them…They came here in 2019 and I gave them a copy of our vinyl and a shirt to thank them for having us on the tour. We played with them in Sydney at The Crowbar and it was sold out and all these lovely people had come from Japan to see them on the Australian tour. They made us these little origami presents which was really lovely. That was awesome. They made these little stars for us and I have mine in a frame with the poster.

 

Q: How is the Metal scene in Australia these days?

 

GR: It’s pretty good considering everything it has been through. The last few months shows have started popping back up and wintertime is always hard but the turnouts have been great. It’s always consistent in that way that you have your main Metal family that goes to all the local shows but then with the international bands that come here, as a local band, you wonder who all these Metalheads are that come out of the woodwork for the big bands. You have your hardcore Metalheads that just love the scene but it did take a bit of hit through Covid and we actually stopped gigging through winter this time because I didn’t want to risk having Covid come through and having to go into lockdown again. That’s why we got into writing the next album and we’ll get into gigging again when it warms up. Flu over here is pretty bad as well at the moment.

 

International

 

Q: Where have you been internationally?

 

GR: The only place we’ve been outside of Australia is New Zealand. We went over there and headlined a two-day Metal festival called SMASHFEST in Gisbourne. We had to fly to Aukland and then take a little plane down there and it was a ton of fun. We haven’t had any other opportunities though because we had it all planned with the Ritual Warfare album to get out of Australia but the world just threw Covid at everybody.

Q: Being teachers must give you a good window in the holidays to tour a lot.
 

GR: Yeah and that’s pretty much what we do. Anthony teaches Special Needs kids and I do the nursing side of things so it does give us that opportunity with holidays to do tours and shows around the place. Not that everybody else in the band are teachers…(laughs). The other guys are ready though and have already got time off. The other guitarist told me that he had already told his boss ‘Next year I am touring; I am not coming to work’. (laughs)

 

Q: Another international musician you worked with was Marty Friedman.

 

GR: He came here in I think 2020 and we got asked to join the tour in Sydney. Our drummer lent his drummer his drumkit so we were there early and Anthony is a huge Marty fan so for him to play with Marty was ticking a big box. Their show had so much energy with his bass player jumping around on stage and it was a weeknight as well and had a really good turnout. Anthony has a Kelly guitar like Marty as well so he brought it along to try and get signed but he was really busy though so we never got to talk to him.

 

Q: Anybody else?

 

GR: We worked with Girlschool, Raven and Tank when they came and they were all amazing. Relaxed and fun to hang out with. I remember helping lug their gear up the elevators to get to Green Room (laughs). Another memory is of David Readman (Tank) asking the promoter, Doug, to get him a cup of tea before he went onstage and Doug running around everywhere trying to find some hot water! (laughs)

 

Q: Doug is a good guy.

 

GR: Yeah he looks after Temtris a lot. That’s how we get a lot of the shows and he makes our merchandise as well so we like working with him. He’s struggling with the rain at the moment – he’s underwater from the floods.

 

Q: Oh dear. Let’s hope there isn’t too much damage. One last question…

 

Temtris

 

Q: …What does the name mean?

 

GR: Everyone asks that! When we started, we just wanted something that sounded female-fronted. We wanted something that sounded Metal and had a female singer. In Australia, there are still not many female singers in Metal. There are probably a handful that I can think of and I know in Europe it is huge…

 

Q: Japan as well.

GR: …that’s interesting. In Europe, both Symphonic Rock and Death Metal female vocals are huge but even when we do festivals here, I don’t see a lot of girls. I’m usually the only girl amongst fifty guys going onstage. (laughs)

 

Q: That’s very surprising.

 

GR: Yeah, I know a few girl guitarists and a few singers but we are very Americanised here so although we have our Metalheads, a lot of people listen to Pop. All we can hope is that it grows. There are a lot of younger girls coming through now who are playing guitar so hopefully that will help.

 

Q: Genevieve, good to talk to you and hopefully we’ll see you ver here at some point.

 

GR: That’d be great. If all goes to plan we will have another Japanese release and we’d love to over and talk to all the Metalheads over there and extend the Temtris Metal Family! That’d be cool.

 

Q: Thanks Genevieve, take care.

 

GR: Thanks and bye.