2025 was a pretty weak year for Australian music, in my humble opinion. There were a few standout releases here and there (Cave Sermon and Depravity spring to mind), but it wasn't until the 11th hour that we got something truly outstanding. That something was The World is Not Yours, the debut long-player from Melbourne's Munt, which immediately laid all compatriots and competitors to waste, along with much of its surrounds.
The delightfully named Munt describe their sound as "Black Grinding Death". Personally, I don't as much black or grind in their sound as I do punishingly brutal, and slightly core-leaning death metal. There's a nastier, more extreme edge to their sound for sure, but The World is Not Yours is a record that more readily brings to mind the kineticism and brutality of deathcore acts like Despised Icon and fellow Australians Aversions Crown, but with the brutal death metal component cranked all the way up.
Catching the band supporting Cryptopsy late last year as well proved they're just as volatile live, and surprisingly joyous. I'm not sure I've ever seen another band so happy to be creating such hideous and hostile sounds. Now it's your chance to check out The World is Not Yours along with Munt's various influences below, and catch them on their tour of Australia's East Coast (+Adelaide) with Frankston goonslingers Nembutolik, which kicks off tonight!
Tim "Mothlord" Richmond (Vocals)
The Amenta – N0n (2008)
This album is undeniably a life changer for me as a person and as a musician or artist. I had come across The Amenta on MySpace in their Occassus (2004) era, when I was too young and too green for their music. I remember being scared of The Amenta's imagery and the song "Nihil", even though Limewire had delivered me to some really extreme music, such as Napalm Death, Gorgoroth, Gorguts etc. at the age of 13.
N0n is a departure from their prior album’s more pure blackened death with noisy synths leaning far further into bleak, dystopian electronic elements and overall a more mechanical and oppressive sound absent of most other industrial metals much more cheesy boisterousness which has served to inspire my song writing outside of my efforts as a singer—having what the band themselves described as a “psychedelic horror” tone to it and a take on industrial metal pouring straight from the vein of Godflesh’s Streecleaner (1989). Lyrically, the album is entirely confrontational in highlighting all the faults, contradictions and failures of human society, psychology and behaviour.
I think this was the first time I experienced an album so poetically yet brutally “preaching from the pulpit” about the world, and many of those songs were a personal wake up call for how I viewed myself, the world and my place in it. Even the most abrasive and antagonistic tracks like "Vermin", were a kind of rallying call to choose to be better, despite unambiguously decrying the listener and our species as “vermin”. From here on, I made it a personal mission to carry that torch, to hopefully ignite a fire in others for how they relate to the world and engage with and create their own art. To this day, I still consider this album to be one of the best mergings of sound and message, and it provided a personal bench mark for The World Is Not Yours.
Bloodbath – The Fathomless Mastery (2008)
One of the biggest vocal inspirations for me across the board is Mikael Akerfeldt and his work in Opeth. His clean singing is so full of character and soul and specifically his heavy vocals are almost effortlessly imposing and monstrous, beyond almost any other peers at the time. I remember hearing "Demon of the Fall" and "Deliverance" by Opeth around the same age of 13, and being shocked about what sounds a human could make.
It wasn’t until a few years later I discovered Mikael had also sung in Bloodbath (I had heard songs from their album Nightmares Made Flesh (2004), which did not have him on vocals) and was able to experience the release of their then-newest album The Fathomless Mastery in 2008. Hearing his voice paired with such dark and inspired Swedish death metal has never tired for me. I really feel like this is one of those albums that is truly special and never seems to get the respect it is due, when people talk about the band or death metal in general. Every song oozes with inspiration, attention to detail and a unique identity and a consistent expansive apocalyptic tone. There are tinges of evil fun and nasty groove throughout the album, but—aside from the prior Unblessing the Purity (2008) EP, which served as Akerfeldt's return to the band—this is Bloodbath at their most uncompromisingly dark and oppressive, as well as their most creative and dynamic.
The Secret – Agnus Dei (2012)
I don't think I'll be the only member of Munt to cite this album as being a massive source of inspiration. For those who don’t know, The Secret are an Italian blackened crust/grindcore band who have been around since the late 2000’s. I had been a pretty huge fan of their work before joining Munt and always a little jealous of never getting to be involved in a local band I had been friends with, called Cordell (who Munt did a split with), whose members had introduced me to The Secret—who were a large influence on their own sound—around 2012.
From start to end this album is a commanding and dark d-beat-driven grindcore beast that does not relent on it’s bitter hostility and commitment to vicious hooks and invoking a feeling of diabolical power within. The Secret are one of those bands who never really broke into general knowledge, but—for those who know—this band sets a standard. There is no cheese at all. If you like black metal and grind/crust this is sincerely, probably the best album in the genre.
While I had said I was not really interested in being in a full-time straight hardcore band, I always wanted to be involved in something blackened. So when the opportunity to join Munt, who had already taken an amount of influence from The Secret—and with my first band, The Seraphim Veil, becoming non-functioning as a live unit—I immediately relished the chance to run around onstage to grim d-beats.
Vermin Womb – Impermanence (2014)
I could easily go on and on about records that shaped me, but I felt like squeezing in a final honorable mention for Impermanence, the debut EP by Vermin Womb—a project by Ethan McCarthy of Primitive Man and sonic successor of sorts to his prior band Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire. It's as if you took Primitive Man’s twisted, churning, blackened sludge sound and added near -constant ferocious blasts and d-beats.
Ethan is another one of those singers of a distinct breed who are capable of summoning a completely inhuman and deep growl that seethes with disgust and hostility, which inspired me to push my voice even further. His approach to twisted chord progressions also massively influenced my guitar playing. Hearing this EP, and specifically the song “You Know Nothing”, changed my life and inspired me to want to start some kind of similar hellish, dissonant and cathartic grindcore band of my own that nearly manifested before I had the option to join Munt and channel some of those feelings there.
David "Spud" Robertson (Guitar)
Sikth – The Trees are Dead & Dried Out, Wait for Something Wild (2003)
When this album dropped, I was about 15 and making my transition from the world of skate/pop-punk into much heavier forms of metal/death, etc. and had also just started playing in my first bands. One of my friends showed me this album they had bought, purely because of the cover art, and it changed everything for me. I reckon, for the first few years of listening to it, I probably had no idea what was even really going on musically, but I was so drawn to the unique sound and the journey it took me on. Since then, it's pretty much always been on a constant rotation for twenty-three years.
I know this band has done a lot since these early days, and the crowd favourite between their two early records is usually Death of a Dead Day (2006)[*] (still an amazing record!), but this is the one that has no doubt influenced me the most. I practically brainwashed myself for the first few years I was beginning to write my own music by listening to this every day, so who knows how many ways it has wound itself into my creative brain. For me, it is a testament to following your own ideas, no matter how strange it might be to others. Even though we sound nothing like them, I definitely thought about this album several times while writing The World is Not Yours.
[*Is it? I've always considered The Trees are Dead... to be the classic. But I consider The Future in Whose Eyes? (2017) to be their best album anyway.]
Ronnie Dixon (Bass)
Norma Jean – Bless The Martyr and Kiss the Child (2002)
I found out about Norma Jean, and this record in particular, about a year after it dropped. I was battling with my identity growing up very Christian, but being a pretty massive emo kid. We didn't have regular pay-TV at my house, but we had Christ TV, and there was a music show that played all the alternative music once a week on it. One night, I was flicking through it and the video for "Memphis Will Be Laid to Waste'" came on and I was hooked. I had never heard anything so pissed-off-sounding in my life. The chaos of it all: Josh Scogin's pissed vocals, the constant screeching chaos chords, the breakdown... I had to have more. I jumped on Limewire and set a download overnight, woke up the next day, burnt it onto a CD and continued to lose my mind over and over again and how sick this band was. Ever since then, I've gravitated to music that has more chaos than structure in it, like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Poison the Well, or Scogin's next band The Chariot. I still smash this record all the time, along with the rest of Norma Jean's catalogue. In my opinion they have never missed, even with a totally different line up.
Jared Roberts (Drums)
Cradle of Filth – Cruelty and the Beast (1998)
This album was one of my first forays into extreme music in my mid-teens. I was blown away by the soundscape created on this album. The songs and performances were incredible, although arguably the production on this album was a bit of a let-down (Cradle of Filth’s “...and Justice for All” !!)[*]. Nick Barker’s drumming was hugely inspiring and locked me in as a fan of his for life. To this day, I still play along to the Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir and Lock Up songs that he performed on.
[*Eh, the 2019 "Re-Mistressed" version doesn't hit nearly as hard.]
Dave Matthews Band – Crash (1996)
Say what you will about this band or their style, but Carter Beauford is one of my top-three inspirations for drums, hands down. I use his influence in everything I do, even extreme metal. Dave Matthews Band have a unique blend of styles, instruments and songs that nobody else has, and Crash was life changing for me, no doubt about it.