Australian metallic hardcore crew I Killed The Prom Queen are enjoying their time on the Vans Warped Tour, in support of their latest album Beloved. While on the tour, they quickly learned about the other fellow Aussies who will be taking part on the tour with them.

Guitarist Jona Weinhofen spoke about some of his fellow country people, and how he detects if that person is actually Australian. “I know there are but I can’t remember the names. They’re bands I don’t know personally. It’s the thickest accents. You can hear it within ten meters from where you are.”

Being that he is currently situated in the United States, he found himself getting more in touch with his Australian roots. He shared his thoughts on staying true to that plus how he sees his home country from afar.

“Honestly since moving away from Australia, I think I found myself a little more patriotic. It’s one of those things – you don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve lost it. It goes with the place you’re living as well. When I moved to America – I love it here in California. There’s so much opportunity, beautiful weather all the time and so much cool stuff to do all the time, but I did find myself missing certain things about home and that made me appreciate things about my home country a little bit more”.

“If you hear me around Warped Tour putting on a thick Aussie accent, that’s me trying to regain my patriotism,” he said, with a smile.

In recent years, he also spoke about another band he is very familiar with – Deez Nuts. The band features two former members of I Killed The Prom Queen – frontman JJ Peters and bassist Sean Kennedy. Weinhofen explains the connection between the two bands and his thoughts on his former bandmates’ new venture.

“He was our original drummer, JJ Peters. He was in the band with the reformation in 2011 and when we wanted to go full time again, he was already doing Deez Nuts full time. They have a huge following in Europe, so he left Prom Queen to focus on Deez Nuts. We’re totally cool with that. Our old bass player Sean Kennedy left the band for personal reasons and joined Deez Nuts the second time.”

“The Aussian music industry, especially with the heavy music with punk rock, hardcore – is quite incestuous. Everyone knows everyone, everyone’s played in everyone else’s bands. Our bass player Ben [Coyte] played in Deez Nuts. Our singer Jamie [Hope] played in Deez Nuts. I played one show with Deez Nuts. Everyone’s good at maintaining friendships no matter what band’s doing what.”

I Killed The Prom Queen’s newest bass player comes out of Day of Contempt, a veteran of the Australian hardcore scene. “Our bass player Ben used to be the vocalist of this band called Day of Contempt from Adelaide. We basically grew up and they were our idols. They were the Adelaide band we had to play with. I think they were the first Adelaide band to sign to an overseas hardcore label, the first Adelaide/Australian hardcore band to really come over and tour the US hard. I know they did some tours with Terror, Bleeding Through, 18 Visions and even Good Charlotte. They did some really good tours. They were a band we always looked up to. When he approached us to join the band, we were like ‘duh – let’s do this!’ “

By Rei Nishimoto