We recently spoke about the confounding way the ARIA Awards nominations are conducted. The fact that bands and labels are allowed to submit their releases to whichever category they feel they have the best chance of winning in is a point of contention for many members of the local music industry and has sparked controversy in the past.
Almost immediately after this year’s first round of ARIA Award winners were announced, members of Australia’s classical music community came out slamming the ARIAs for awarding the gong for Best Classical to Sydney electronic dance duo Flight Facilities, who were nominated for their collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Now, Australia’s heavy music community is up in arms over Melbourne psychedelic collective King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard taking out the award for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album with their most recent album, Nonagon Infinity. King Gizzard beat out more traditional heavy bands Hellions, Parkway Drive, The Amity Affliction, and Twelve Foot Ninja.
“Hey [ARIA] you can just go ahead and exclude us from any further nominations from your circle jerk awards plz and thank u,” Amity Affliction bassist Ahren Stringer tweeted yesterday. “Ps not salty about not winning, just sad to see the fat cats of the Australian music industry so unappreciative of our 15 years of screamo.”
Stringer insisted he was not upset that his band did not win the category, arguing that Hellions should have received the ARIA for their latest album, Opera Oblivia. “Not to throw shade at any bands who won awards but Hellions made one of the best records of all time,” Stringer wrote.
“It’s not about us losing, trust me we know after this many years we’re always going to lose. We hate the ARIAs as much as they hate us,” Stringer later added. “It’s about how ridiculous is it is for a band that isn’t even a heavy band to win a category. It would be like Donald trump winning…”
The consensus among bands seems to be that King Gizzard are a great band, but did not belong in the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal category. Stringer’s bandmate Joel Birch also gave his two cents, writing on Twitter, “Hahaha Hey [ARIA] can you tell me how many Aus bands have three consecutive #1 records please? I suppose though, in defence of [ARIA] I probably (definitely) would have just pissed on the award.”
Speaking to Music Feeds, Twelve Foot Ninja guitarist Stevic MacKay admitted it was frustrating to see the award go to King Gizzard. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t irritated by the only band who shouldn’t have been in the category actually winning,” he said. “If any other band in the category had won, it would have made sense.”
“King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard had a great year but they are not a hard rock/metal band so it feels like the category was discredited somewhat by the outcome.” In a statement to Music Feeds, Parkway Drive manager Graham Nixon expressed similar sentiments to MacKay.
“Unfortunately I don’t have too much to say about the situation other than it’s odd that a band wins a category in which they aren’t ‘Hard Rock or Heavy Metal’. Between the success of both Parkway Drive and The Amity Affliction, it’s surprising one of those didn’t do enough to win that specific category.”
Speaking to Fairfax following the Flight Facilities controversy, ARIA CEO Dan Rosen was unapologetic. According to Rosen, the ARIA Awards are “self-policing”, with each category left to its own devices in deciding what’s eligible for their own category. “If a judging school, because they’re experts, don’t feel that [an album] is worthy of that genre then they don’t vote for it,” he said.
