Five AUSTRALIAN Bands You Should Know!

So it was actually Australia Day on the 26th.
It's a day to celebrate the birth of my home country "Australia".
Except indigenous people have been living here for ages, and was basically just taken by force by English people.

....Then eventually adopted by a whole manner of people from around the world, which is great, unless if you're indigenous of course.

Anyway, in a sort of commemoration to that, I decided to give you a "My top 5 list" of Australia bands for you to listen to!

Although you may not have notice, Australians have actually developed quite a lot of great music  and some artists being well known worldwide such as ACDC, Bee Gee's......Olivier Newton John (lol?) and Kylie Minouge (lol!?).

But there are also many more that aren't quite as well known outside this  country, and so, being blessed with half of its nationality, I feel a desire to let you know of just a few of our prime bands. Maybe I'll do a different genre next year! Assuming that I'm still alive. I probably will be, so don't worry too much ;p.



Living End
You might know these guys if you've played Guitar Hero actually (Prisoner of Society and Carry Me Home). They are a three man band hailing from the city of Melbourne, in the south eastern corner of Australia. They've been a major act in Australia for about 15 years and are heavily influenced by rockabilly and punk music, so their songs are mostly fast paced and energetic. 

It was fairly hard choosing which song to link to since I like a lot of them, but I might as well just give you the one that they're most well known for, "Prisoner of Society".







Spiderbait
A lot of great Aussie bands emerged in the 90's. Spiderbait is another one.
You also may have heard this band if you ever played Need For Speed Underground 2. Their cover version of "Black Betty" was on there, and I think it was a mild hit in America or somewhere. Spiderbait have quite a alternative but heavy sound and often have trippy music videos. They have two singers, one being a guy who also plays drums, and also a lady that plays the bass. They get a diverse sound this way as they can have the guy sing in hard rock tunes while getting the girl to sing in plastic pop-ish ones.

Here's the song "Shazam!" but also check out some others like "Calypso" or "Glockenpop" to hear their pop side.







The Vines
These had a fairly big international success with their album "Highly Evolved". They're another loud, garage/punk/alternative type band quite common in Australia. However, they're style sound a little more old fashioned than the others I've mentioned so far.

Here's their song "Ride" but also check out some called the three Autumn Shade songs.








TAME IMPALA
So these guys really just became big in the past two years or so in Australia. They're a psychedelic rock group and are getting some major recognition now.






JOHN BUTLER TRIO
This isn't really rock but it's still a band, so good enough for this list. These guys are huge in Australia, their past 4 albums have all gotten platinum status from sales in this country. The lead man and guitarist, John Butler, used to be a busker so their music centres around his acoustic guitar. I was surprised to find that one of their videos of an live performance of an instrumental track called "Ocean" had over 17 million views on youtube. So maybe they're pretty well known internationally too then?







There are still many great musicians from Australia that I'd like to mention but just to keep the list short I'll leave it at that for now....

Until next year perhaps.