After almost ten years, and having released two landmark albums in the meantime, Sydney garage punk-rockers Royal Headache have taken to Facebook to announce that they are no more.
Following months of speculation as to what the group were up to, Royal Headache posted a rather simple message on Facebook yesterday afternoon which stated “2008-2017”, indicating that the band have broken up following months of inactivity.
https://www.facebook.com/royalheadache/posts/1662644640438489
Royal Headache’s last performance took place in Los Angeles in July of 2017 for FYF Fest, with their last Aussie shows having been performed back in June of last year.
While this news might come as a surprise for many fans, others may recall how close the group came to calling it quits back in 2014, months before the release of their landmark sophomore effort, High, in 2015.
“I don’t know, life got kind of bad and I was doing these songs and I didn’t feel like I was emotionally able to commit anymore,” former frontman Shogun explained to Billboard in 2015.
“I felt like I was dialling it in and really was at a point where I would have rather just gone and played some really noisy, aggressive hardcore. It just seemed like it was all getting a little bit too cute, you know what I mean?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqmvSKsT-k
“I was also getting stressed out by the shows and maybe by the attention because we had gone from being a punk band to a mid-level band in Australia and I started to feel a little bit pigeonholed and I wanted to quit and do this really noisy, weird, depressive sort of music,” he explained.
“And I did write some of that stuff, but of course it never saw the light of day, because I need the guys in Royal Headache sometimes. They’re a bit less erratic than I am and I need them to help me get my shit together.”
During their time together, Royal Headache also saw some very impressive success for an Aussie band, with an appearance on US TV which saw them perform live on Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2016.
The band revealed back in 2015 that they had been writing music to release on an EP in the future, but at this stage its not clear whether this music will see a posthumous release from the band, or whether fans will have to rely on YouTube videos of unreleased material from here on out.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that Australia has lost one of its most promising and unrelenting bands, and Royal Headache will be sorely missed within the Aussie music scene.
Check our Royal Headache’s ‘Another World’:
