CIVIC

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One of the most exhilarating bands to emerge in recent years, CIVIC have reimagined the reckless intensity of proto-punk for an era of endless uncertainty. On their 2021 debut album Future Forecast, the Melbourne-based five-piece offered up a barrage of songs matching their frenetic sound with both self-aware outpouring and incisive observation of the world around them—a dynamic that’s earned massive critical acclaim as well as admiration from the likes of punk legend Henry Rollins. As further shown on their upcoming sophomore full-length Taken By Force—an album the band aptly sums up as “1984 meets Endless Summer”—CIVIC joyfully obliterate the line between furious catharsis and unbridled fun, introducing a vital new energy into today’s musical landscape.

Hailed by Stereogum as “an unholy lo-fi pile-up of garage rock, punk, and ’90s-style noise-rock,” CIVIC inject every song with a visceral urgency hinting at their shared history in the local hardcore scene. As frontman Jim McCullough recalls, the band first took shape back in 2017, when he and a friend dreamed up a musical project inspired by iconic Australian punk acts like Radio Birdman and The Saints. “We were in a bowling alley in Japan and came up with a very strong focus for what the band could do, which was take that three-chord ’70s punk sound but get a little more thoughtful with the melodies and songwriting,” says McCullough. Upon returning from Japan, McCullough soon recruited a full lineup featuring Lewis Hodgson and bassist Roland Hlavka. Within six months, CIVIC had banged out their debut EP New Vietnam—a powerhouse 2018 release that prompted Vice to crown the band “Melbourne’s New Kings of Wild Rock And Roll.”

Over the next few years, CIVIC made their name as a captivating live act defined by masterfully controlled chaos, embarking on a European tour in 2019 and taking such esteemed stages as Victoria’s Golden Plains Festival. “With our live shows we’ve always made a point of being super-loud and in-your-face,” says McCullough. “As an audience member I’ve always enjoyed that feeling of really believing in the band but also feeling like everything’s teetering on the edge of falling apart at any second.” With the arrival of the rapturously received Future Forecast—praised by NME as “an album that rivals real-life gig-going”—CIVIC found their fanbase expanding far beyond their homeland, inking their deal with ATO Records in late 2021. After a lineup change, with guitarist Jackson Harry and drummer Matt Blach joining the fold, CIVIC next set to work on Taken By Force.

For the making of Taken By Force, CIVIC holed up for a week at Harry’s father’s house deep in the Castlemaine countryside, enlisting Radio Birdman frontman Rob Younger as producer. “Instead of recording sporadically over six months or something, we wanted to build our own ecosystem in this space and allow for a bit more spontaneity,” says McCullough. Mainly recorded by Blach, Taken By Force lifts its title from a jangly yet bombastic track perfectly encapsulating the album’s underlying narrative. “It’s a song about the collapse of the Western empire and the rise of a new one,” Hodgson reveals. “An empire’s collapse can take hundreds of years, but this was a vision of a quick complete takeover—a sci-fi ending to an archaic reign, but with surf elements added in for fun. At the time when we wrote the album it felt like the Western world was headed for a quick death, and ‘Taken By Force’ was an expression of all of the fear coming from every media outlet.”

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