By Alex Moore
Photo by Tod Seelie
The Death Set came spinning out of Australia like a Tazmanian devil at a kegger, drunk enough on the joys of music, life and partying not to notice that they landed in …Baltimore. Yep, Baltimore. But hey, Fuck it! This is a band fueled by enough self-sufficiency to make one of its best song hooks out of its own band name. The infectious “Motherfuckin’ Death Set!” chant at heart of “Intermission” embodies all that is best about the band—raucousness, swearing and an utter inability to take things too seriously. Singer Johnny Siera called in from a Kinko’s, where he was photocopying flyers for an upcoming show, to talk about life, Death Set style.
How did you end up in Baltimore from Australia? We’re from this town called the Gold Coast, which is kind of boring. I guess it’s similar to Miami, where retirees move to, where it’s warm and devoid of anything interesting whatsoever. We decided to move to Sydney. And then after that, we were like, Fuck this, let’s just move to New York. But once we got here we were struggling to survive, and all we wanted to do was tour. So we met some kids in Baltimore, and we realized that the scene down here is fucking rad! Just radder than anywhere I’ve seen in my travels before. Granted I wasn’t familiar with Todd P when I first got here, but I was just thrown into this rad community.The first show I saw was Dan Deacon and Ecstatic Sunshine. Dan was telling everyone to lie down on the floor—like hundreds of kids—and then at the start of the song he’d have them all spring up and spaz out. There wasn’t a hint of “cool” to it—it wasn’t pretentious, it was just fun, you know?
Dude, what’s up with that kid on the Australian news who threw that house party? The one who was all over YouTube?
Oh yeah, that kid who threw that party in Sydney?
Yeah.
I did actually see that the other day. Yeah, it was like he didn’t give a fuck! I thought he was a bit of a redneck, but I respected that he just didn’t care. We call kids like that “bogans.” It totally backfired on that reporter, which was pretty hilarious. That kid is infamous in Australia now. He’s infamous over here now, too?
