CRY CYCLOPS
Launch their debut LP ‘Nightworld’ at The Old Bar Saturday 1st August!
Bad Batch caught up with Sorcerer Records boss and drummer, Dave Lang ahead of the show…
Melbourne quartet Cry Cyclops have released their debut full-length, ‘Nightworld’, through the local institution Sorcerer Records. A twelve-track slab of unhinged, noisy Rock that arrives loaded with pedigree, history, and a reputation for chaotic live shows that precedes the record itself.
Cry Cyclops didn’t spring from nowhere. The band is made up of three-quarters of the Melbourne outfit formerly known as Bits Of Shit. Those guys released an LP on Homeless Records, put out a string of 7”s through Total Punk, Lexicon Devil and Matador, and toured the US and Japan before going into hibernation for near on a decade. When they eventually reconvened, the brief wasn’t merely to resurrect the old, but to create the new. The goal, as the band put it, was to jam, write songs, and trying not to sound too much like what came before.
What emerged instead is a sound that draws on early US Hardcore, scuzzy Aussie Noise-Punk, and a heap of obtuse Post-Punk influences filtered, inevitably, through the muscle memory of a band that already knows how to turn a room upside down. Anyone lucky enough to have caught Bits Of Shit at packed Melbourne shows, a rare Sydney appearance, or those Japanese and US tours will recognise the same confrontational brio in Cry Cyclops. A live show more than one witness has described as genuinely intimidating, in the best possible way.
We put that question directly to Mr Lang… Cry Cyclops shares three-quarters of its lineup with Bits Of Shit, a band with a serious reputation. How much of a conscious decision was it to sound different this time around, and how hard was that in practice?
“OK, to answer this question... my brother, Andrew (BOS’s guitarist) rang me in about January of last year and said: Dave - Danny, Eli and I are going to get a new band together, and we want you to drum for us. I hadn’t played in a regular band for 15+ years, and given that those three guys were all in BOS, my response was: You getting the band back together? I don’t want to be in BOS and you always swore you’d never do a reunion (or something like that). So, to make a short story short, the intention was something slightly DIFFERENT, although the comparisons will always be made. Which, of course, is fine, coz they were a great band, especially the Elias/Pete lineup that most people know. But we wanted to mix it up a bit, with perhaps a slightly less linear sound. We were keen to mix up the aggressive punk sound that we simply can’t escape (it’s what we love to play) with other kinds of music we like, such as early PiL or Australian underground bands from the ‘80s like feedtime, Grong Grong, etc., which are basically part of our musical DNA, whether we like it or not (we like it). Was it hard to forge a kind of new identity? Yep, but we’ve made a mantra of trying not to repeat ourselves (too much).”
The band has playing regularly around Melbourne and its surrounding regions. Confident they had something worth documenting, they booked in studio time to commit the songs to tape.
‘Nightworld’ runs twelve tracks deep, and is indebted to hardcore forebears like Black Flag and Flipper, as much as to homegrown noise-rock troublemakers such as Sick Things, X and Lubricated Goat.
The album was released on 3 July 2026 through Sorcerer Records, the Melbourne label whose catalogue already runs deep with Australian underground heritage - Lubricated Goat, Died Pretty, X, Kev Carmody, Whirlywirld and more sit alongside ‘Nightworld’ in the Sorcerer roster. True to the label’s ethos and the format’s collector culture, the release has come wrapped in vinyl variants. A limited run of 100 on green colour vinyl exclusive to Bandcamp and live shows, and 200 copies pressed on classic black wax for wider release. Some of which have circulated as band-signed copies through independent record stores.
‘Nightworld’ as a title carries a certain mood. What does the phrase mean to the band, and how did it come to anchor the record?
“Well, Danny is our lyricist, so such opaque references are perhaps best answered by him, though I don’t think he likes to explain himself too much, either. It’s the name of one of the songs on the LP, and we threw a bunch of names around as suggestions (I think the original idea was to make it self-titled), and it was the only one we could agree on. Read into it what you will, but don’t take it as being a theme of ‘darkness’, as I don’t see the band as being like that. We are too old to be edgelords.”
There’s a particular kind of anticipation that surrounds a record like this. It isn’t a debut in the conventional sense, there’s no “unknown quantity” element, because all four members have already proved themselves capable of something wild and have done it on stages across two continents. What ‘Nightworld’ represents instead is the same appetite for confrontation and noise, rebuilt from scratch, not simply repeating old tricks.
From a label perspective, what was it about Cry Cyclops that made this a record Sorcerer needed to release?
“If we were to release anything, there was never any question of it being on any other label. I mean, if you can’t release your own band’s music, why have your own goddamn label? We had interest from another label who were very keen to release it (which is nice), but I’m also a control freak, so I had to do it myself.”
For Sorcerer Records, the release slots comfortably into a catalogue built on exactly this kind of lineage, bands and artists connected to Australia’s underground Rock and Punk history, whether through direct membership or shared spirit. It’s a label that trades in continuity, and ‘Nightworld’ is very much a continuation story, even as the band insists on charting its own course.
Sorcerer’s catalogue spans decades of Australian underground music, from Lubricated Goat to Died Pretty to Whirlywirld. Where does ‘Nightworld’ fit into that lineage, and what does it say about the label’s direction going forward?
“I hope it fits in there somewhere among such musical giants(!), but that also probably sounds a bit conceited. I don’t think we’re in that league, but hey, I also think we’re pretty good. I’m going to be reissuing feedtime’s debut album on Sorcerer later in the year, a band that was absolutely pivotal for us growing up (especially my brother), so being in such company is surely not a bad thing. It’s nice to know we’re on the same label as Lubricated Goat, GOD and feedtime.”
With the record out and both the green and black vinyl pressings moving through independent stores, attention turns to what Cry Cyclops do with the well deserved momentum. So, with ‘Nightworld’ out and the pressings moving through stores, what comes next for the band — more shows, more recording, or something else entirely?
“Yes. The most important thing right now is to sell the album. There’s 300 of ‘em and we gotta move ‘em! We have the launch coming up soon, then a few more gigs booked, and then the next priority is to write some new material and hopefully record it. Like I said: we don’t want to repeat ourselves. Perhaps in due course we will record that difficult and experimental second album...”
Cry Cyclops are set to launch ‘Nightworld’, at the Old Bar on Saturday August 1st with support from Techno 666, Cloven Fang, Alma Rink and curated by veteran MC Jonathan Schuster. Tickets are available now from Oztix - https://tickets.oztix.com.au/outlet/event/46a76c09-f32c-4b43-b6a8-d067a6652744
‘Nightworld’ is out now via Sorcerer Records on black and limited green vinyl, with digital and streaming versions also available -sorcererrecords.bandcamp.com
Photos by Brooke Hampton
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