Dunedin trio Die! Die! Die! has a new lease on life.
Formed back in 2003 by two wide-eyed Dunedin teenagers with a penchant for noisy punk and sneaking into local shows, the band has just released its fifth studio album, and is set to begin an umpteenth nationwide tour before tackling Australia and Europe later this year.
Despite all this, guitarist and singer Andrew Wilson laughs down the phone when I ask whether he and co-founder drummer Michael Prain set out with longevity in mind.
''Definitely not, no,'' Wilson says, laughing.
''I actually remember the very first Die! Die! Die! tour with Batrider and I remember Mikey and I having a band conversation after the last show and it ending up that we didn't want to do the band anymore. So it was a tumultuous beginning and I'm glad it's still kinda like that.
''It's definitely getting way easier [to be in Die! Die! Die!].''
But even after releasing its fourth album Harmony in 2012, tired of the stress and tumult, and probably each other's company, the band nearly considered breaking up permanently.
''When we stopped playing and got back to the root of it all, it was just two friends, and that was the right idea,'' Wilson told me at the time.
All the while the records, most of them gems, and the lengthy tours have kept coming.
Titled SWIM, the band's latest album is the first to feature current bassist and former Mint Chick Michael Logie (the best rhythm section in the country, now affectionately dubbed the Michaels), and for Wilson it feels like a fresh start, or even a completely new band.
He goes as far as saying it might have been the band's easiest record to make.
''I do liken it to maybe our first EP or even Promises, Promises [2007]. There was a lot of good energy surrounding the writing of it. With Form [2010], we kind of overthought a lot, and with Harmony [2012] there was obviously the problem of the band breaking up! [Laughs] This album seemed really fun. We're just much better at what we do.''
The album's title is an internet acronym for Someone Who Isn't Me, used to deflect culpability for questionable behaviour, also ties into this idea, Wilson says.
Throughout the album Wilson sings often about alienation, whether it's from a place he used to know when he was young, other people and their perceptions, or even his own perceptions of himself.
''I think my head space in the last two years has changed quite a lot, post-Harmony,'' he says.
''I think, me as a person, I've kind of cleaned up my act quite a lot. I'm not drinking anymore, though that's a recent thing ... Personally, I feel a lot more comfortable than I've ever felt.
''SWIM, the song, wasn't actually going to be on the album, but then it turned out really well. We were struggling with what we were going to call the album. We thought maybe Crystal. But then I thought that sounded a bit too much like meth or something, and there was the whole Breaking Bad thing going on at the time. I really like double meanings, and I guess I like swimming,'' he says, laughing.
''It ties into my feeling that this album is kind of a door closed on a part of my life. I'm starting with something; it feels like a new beginning.''
SWIM is the band's haziest album to date, densely layered, near shoegaze at times.
It is a bit different from the band's more brutal and corrosive Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies) recorded origins, but still very much Die!Die!Die!.
There's the raw guitars and impassioned yelped vocals from Wilson, Prain's always fabulous and inventive drumming, and Logie fits in perfectly with dexterous, musical and chuggingly solid playing.
First single Crystal is a moody mid-paced track, while the mid-album highlight run of Angel, She's Clear and Trigger all hit a fine balance between spacious, swirling noise and some very hooky punk-pop songwriting.
''It's a more melodic record, but it's almost tougher sounding,'' Wilson says.
''It doesn't pull apart so easily. It sounds a lot thicker.''
The band's original intention was to do something far more electronic, Wilson even referencing Radiohead's unsettling millennium masterwork of electronica Kid-A as a potential touchstone.
''With this record, we really wanted to go in and do a really electronically produced album, not exactly something sounding like Kid-A, but we wanted to do something electronically. But we just started jamming, and it was like 'oh, that's sort of a rock song; we'll put that aside and keep writing'. And then 'oh, that's another, we'll put it aside'. We kept writing these rock songs ...
''It sounds like three guys learning to play, and writing music together for the very first time. We went into the studio not having it all laid out, which is another thing. That was a purposeful choice, we went in with just verses and choruses.''
In the punk tradition, Die! Die! Die! will self-release the album within New Zealand on their own label Records Et cetera, the method the band also used to release Harmony.
''I'm really happy to be self-releasing again,'' Wilson says.
''When I formed Die! Die! Die! when I was 19, I wanted to form a record label. I wanted to be like Dischord, y'know? I'd love to start getting into doing that kind of stuff more, really. In New Zealand, it's pretty easy - everyone should be doing it.''
