RVG announce third studio album, 'Brain Worms'

Renowned Melbourne post-punk band RVG have announced their third studio album, Brain Worms.

It’s the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2020’s Feral, which itself followed the band’s equally excellent debut album, 2017’s A Quality of Mercy.

Feral was released just as COVID-19 was about to lock the world down, relinquishing the pressure ever so slightly on RVG. That’s why Brain Worms finds them at their most cohesively confident to date.

“Hype is scary. After two years of COVID it felt like the hype had gone down so we were able to just do stuff,” lead singer Romy Vager says. “This time around we were like, this is what we’re doing, we’re taking control, we’re taking risks, and we’re going to make an album that sounds big so that when we hear it on the radio we want to hear it again… If we could only make one more album, it would be this one.”

This newfound confidence is evident on new single ‘Nothing Really Changes’, a pulsating rock anthem that considers the raw wounds of a fresh breakup. “I don’t wanna fight / I just wanna know are you doing alright,” Vager implores in the song, before anger soon seeps in: “every time I think of you, it makes me so mad / why did you have to go and do something like that.”

According to the singer, ‘Nothing Really Changes’ was actually born from a songwriting experiment to write an obnoxious riff in the vein of the maligned ‘Smoke on the Water’.

“It’s a song about missing someone but protecting yourself from being hurt. We were rehearsing it a lot leading up to recording the album but couldn’t get it to sound right on our own. James really helped us to orchestrate the parts in the studio and make it feel like an RVG song,” she says.

The RVG news doesn’t end there. The band have been welcome into the Ivy League, joining the likes of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and The Teskey Brothers on the label’s formidable roster.

They’re also about to begin supporting Julia Jacklin on her Australian tour, beginning in Sydney this Saturday, February 25th (more information here). Following that supporting slot, the band will fly to the U.K. to back up punk star Billy Nomates on tour. 2023’s set to be a busy year for RVG.

RVG’s Brain Worms is out Friday, June 2nd via Ivy League Records (pre-save/pre-order here).