It's Been A Long Time Coming But The Fumes Are Back On The Scene

The Fumes were at their zenith when the glue came unstuck, and for frontman Steve Merry it's been a seven-year process recovering from the fall. That revival is the sap flowing in the roots of his new LP, Bloodless. You only need to look at the cover art — a withered plant forming (or possibly growing from) a skull — to see the death and rebirth motifs at play.

Not that Merry seems unduly concerned about all that. "Lexi Land did the artwork," he says, "She's a good friend, I gave her the music a fair while back and just said see what comes out, and I guess that's what came out…   She calls that one Skull Fucker." Merry's earned the casual outlook. He's touring with a fresh Fumes line-up and a collection of likely his best work to date, not something many manage after the systematic "breakdown" of several "areas of [their] reality". Still, it's not unthinkable that the man might be a little cagey about being back on the road, something he's partly attributed to The Fumes Version 1's splintering.

"We were just going bananas. Fuckin' touring 'round Australia, touring through the States, touring through Japan on you know, on nothing."

Merry says it's chalk and cheese. "'Back on the road', so to speak, isn't exactly what you'd call what we were doing at the end of sorta six years ago — 'cause we were just going bananas. Fuckin' touring 'round Australia, touring through the States, touring through Japan on you know, on nothing," Merry chuckles, "except what you're getting poured down your throat the whole time. It was getting a bit too hectic. So it was good to take a bit of time to get out of that routine.

"I've been trying to get the third album out ever since, you know, it's just hard to do with no money and the breaking up of the band and a few other personal things going on. So it just sort of took up a lot of time…  There were a few different false starts in recording, finally Ryan [Hazell] got on board and we managed to get it down over about two years."

It's been a long but worthwhile wait. The name is the only thing about the album that's bloodless. It's a heartfelt blues-rock pump 'n' grind, the years allowing tracks time to "grow and settle" and the crew additions giving the already raucous Fumes a sonic mass previously unattainable — not to mention a fresh approach to songwriting.

"It's pretty limiting being a two-piece, you know," Merry muses. "I had all these songs I couldn't do justice to without adding more to it. So Jake [Mann] came on board first and then Ryan. I mean, a lot of the songs were already written, but we finished them and put them together. Jake's definitely got a lot of good ideas, I mean both of them do, both come from different places.

"We definitely come to blows on ideas," jokes Merry. "I'm definitely pretty excited and interested to start the next project too…  It'll be interesting to go in and start to, you know — I mean I've got ideas — but just to go in and start rehearsing and see what comes out."