5 Questions - Dave McCarthy (Gravitate)

Who are you & what do you do?

I'm Dave, and I drink coffee. I also play guitar in Gravitate, but mostly the coffee part.

Where are you from?

Naarm / Melbourne, born and raised.

How did you get into the music you listen to today and what's 3 of your most influential bands?

I got into music at a super young age, some of my earliest memories are of digging through my Dad's cassette rack to put on Zeppelin, Hendrix, etc, so i naturally gravitated (ha) towards guitar-based rock music. When I was 16, I caught Machine Head hosting Rage, and that was a big eye opener - Slayer, Suicidal Tendencies, Biohazard, Sepultura, Kyuss, Fear Factory, Down... every hard metal band that was levelling up at the time, I discovered that night, so that pretty much set the musical trajectory. For writing hardcore, the influences tend to change from week to week, just depending on what I'm vibing, but Converge, Indecision and Mindsnare are pretty consistent guiding forces.

What/who is the inspiration of Gravitate?

Musically, we draw from a lot of mid 90s-to-early 00s hardcore and metal. There's a lot of Turmoil, early Converge, Buried Alive and Shai Hulud-inspired bits in there. Lyrically, Cat looks at personal experiences and socio-political ideas.

How would you describe Gravitate to someone who's never listened to hardcore before?

Take all the slower heavy parts from Ride The Lightning and Hell Awaits, and the noisiest parts of a late-80s Sonic Youth album, and mix them with some fast punk rock bits. Then put really aggressive vocals over it and imagine you're sparring at a kickboxing gym with someone way bigger than you while that's playing, and you get the idea.