It’s been a long seven years since Zebrahead last hit Australian stages, but the wait is finally over.
This month, the genre-bending Orange County crew will return for a five-date run of sweaty club shows, bringing their high-octane mix of punk, rap, funk, and metal to fans who have been hanging out for their comeback.
For founding members Ali Tabatabaee and Ben Osmundson, the countdown feels both like a homecoming and a mission statement. “Seven years of not getting to come back to Australia was rough,” Ben admits. “So we’re just super stoked and we just want to make it clear we’re going hard this trip, because if it took us seven years to get there, this could be the last time we get to come. So it’s time to go hard.”
This time around, Zebrahead are skipping the big festival slots in favour of intimate clubs: Amplifier in Perth, Lion Arts Factory in Adelaide, Max Watts in Melbourne, and back-to-back nights at Sydney and Brisbane’s Crowbar.
For Ali, those sweaty, in-your-face rooms are the ultimate proving ground. “Personally I prefer the small sweaty shows just because the crowd is right there and you can feel the energy in your face,” he says. “It’s a very visceral experience. You can literally see them, smell them, feel the sweat.”
Ben puts it even more simply: “Chaos always wins.”
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The trade-off, of course, is that festivals run on strict schedules. “At a festival, you’re looking at your watch going, ‘I’m running out of time, man. I got to hurry. I got to hurry,’” Ben says. “But at a club show, you can be much looser. If you have a few drinks and feel like telling a stupid joke, then you can tell a stupid joke.”
These shows will also mark the first time Australian fans meet Adrian Estrella, who joined Zebrahead in 2021 after long-time co-vocalist Matty Lewis departed. From the outside, lineup changes in veteran bands can feel risky. But from day one, Adrian has been the right fit.
“We’ve been pretty lucky,” Ben explains. “The only way we wanted to continue as Zebrahead was if the person had an amazing voice and was fun enough to hang with, because you’re together so much. Adrian fits in seamlessly. He’s a lot of fun, and it’s so fun to watch him in new places just doing dumb shit. Can’t wait to see what he does in Australia…”
Mid-sentence, Ben breaks off to swat at a fly buzzing around his head. “It’s the problem of having chickens in my backyard,” he laughs, before Ali shoots back: “You’re just preparing for Australia, bro.” The two crack up, proof that after nearly three decades sharing tour vans, their back-and-forth banter is still razor sharp.
Doing dumb shit, like maybe a shoey? “He doesn’t know about shoeys yet,” Ben laughs. “Maybe we’ll get the crowd every night to have him do one. It’s his breaking into Australia, it has to be him.”
Ali asserts fans will be impressed right away. “The feedback from Europe has been that they love his energy on stage,” he says. “He’s amazing live, and offstage he’ll be the first to meet everyone at the bar. He’s really made an effort to connect with fans, because he’s catching up with a fan base that’s known us for decades. People are going to love him.”
Zebrahead’s refusal to slot neatly into a genre box has always made them outsiders in the best possible way.
“I never felt like we totally fit in,” Ali says. “We had rap, punk, funk, metal — so we were always in between all the genres. I always felt like we were the stepchild kind of vibe. We toured with punk bands, we toured with Cypress Hill, we even toured with bands like (hed) PE. Nobody really knew what to do with us when we came out.”
And yet, three decades on, that misfit DNA has become their strength. “Our fan base has become a punk fan base, which is lucky because punk fans stick with you through anything,” Ali says.
Ben shrugs off any talk of legacy with humility. “We thought we’d do this two years, we blinked our eyes and it’s almost 30 years later and we’re still here,” he says. “We’re just the luckiest dudes on the planet.”
Longevity doesn’t happen without resilience. Ali remembers the rollercoaster well. “There’s going to be periods where you’re all over MTV, and then a few years later punk music is dead in the US and you’re asking, ‘What now?’” he says. “For us, the answer was Europe. You just have to ride it out, be adaptable, and not be too rigid, otherwise you get passed by.”
For Ben, the biggest lesson has been to hold onto joy. “If you’re not having fun, you’re going to be miserable,” he says. “Everyone wants to do what you’re doing, and if you forget that, you don’t deserve it anymore. We’re going to Australia to play rock shows — people might know the songs and sing the words back to us. This is ridiculous. We just embrace the fun.”
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That fan-first ethos even shapes their set lists. “The cheat code these days for us is using the Spotify for Artists app,” Ben reveals. “You can click on a city and it’ll tell you your top songs in that city. So we try to curate our setlist to what people are actually listening to there.”
Ali says it comes from personal frustration. “When we go see our favourite bands and they don’t play any of the songs you wanted to hear, it’s so frustrating,” he says. “We don’t want that for our fans.”
As for the craziest things they’ve seen in pits? Touring with Bloodhound Gang still takes the cake. “Evil Jared pulling cases across the stage with a piercing in his penis… we are lightweights compared to that,” Ben deadpans. “I love beer, but I don’t want to throw one up and then drink it again. That’s a little too punk for me.”
Once the Australian run wraps, the band won’t be slowing down. “We’ve been working on new music for the past year,” Ali says. “When we’re not touring, we’re writing. After Australia, we’re taking a break to focus on songs and go into the studio. Hopefully by summertime we’ll have new tracks out.”
For now, though, it’s all about giving Australia the kind of party Zebrahead have built their reputation on. Ben sums it up in his own way: “For me, a Zebrahead show is like going to the backyard party with all your friends, and waking up the next day not remembering that much — but realising you had the greatest time of your life somehow.”
Ali agrees. “We just want fans to leave feeling like they had the best time with their friends. That’s what this is all about.”
Find Zebrahead’s Australian tour dates here.
