Reliqa, Photograph: Kane Hibberd (Supplied)
Reliqa arrived on the Australian metalcore scene with the back-to-back EPs, Afterlight and Eventide, in 2018. The latter sprouted the single “Doomed,” which brought Reliqa to the attention of listeners not just in Australia but also Europe and North America.
But for the Sydney band’s four tight-knit members, that all happened eons ago. In the years since the pandemic lockdowns lifted, Reliqa have supported the likes of Spiritbox, Halestorm and Northlane, performed at Unify Off the Record and Karnivool’s Monolith festival, and maintained a steady stream of new music.
On their third EP, 2022’s I Don’t Know What I Am, Reliqa seemed hellbent on putting the progressive in progressive metalcore, throwing in bits of djent, alt-rock, technical metal and hip hop, alongside a zesty garnishing of vocal hooks. The formula worked, landing Reliqa the aforementioned support slots and securing contracts with German label Nuclear Blast Records and Melbourne’s Greyscale Records.
With the labels’ financial backing, Reliqa felt ready to make their debut album, but they were keen to shake-up their creative methods. Namely, they wanted to see what would happen if they sat in a room together and tried to build an album from scratch. This approach posed certain challenges, but, as vocalist Monique Pym explains, it allowed Reliqa to shed their fear of being boring and create their most polished body of work to date.
Secrets of the Future is out now and Reliqa will carry out an Australian album launch tour in the second half of June. Below, Monique Pym talks us through the creative reorientation that made Secrets of the Future what it is.
Changing course
We knew we wanted to start writing an album from January 2023. The first thing that we did at the beginning of the process was we went to the Snowy Mountains and we hunkered down for a week and we wrote. We conducted a lot of experiments with our writing style. More so than the subject matter, it was the actual style of writing that was a conscious change from previous records to now.
We used to do things in what I like to call a production line style of writing, where one of the members of the band will bring forth a fully-fledged demo and then each member will contribute their part and eventually we’ll have a full song. This time we approached it by actually getting into the room together and trying to build something from the ground up.
That’s why, I think, the record is inherently so diverse, because each of us had something interesting to say and some kind of input there.
Counterbalancing tension with trust
It was a super challenging process. We were learning things about each other and about ourselves that we didn’t really know and finding who clicked better with who. So, tension was definitely there, but it was just a matter of trying to be authentic with each other and just be honest.
We basically grew up together, so we all care about each other a lot as a family. But when making the album, we would always chase an idea and not be held back by the more political side of things. Like, band politics; we didn’t want to be held back by that. If we found something that we liked and we were in a good pocket, we would try to chase it as best as we could.
Exercising creative restraint
We released I Don’t Know What I Am in September 2022 and it’s all in the title – I Don’t Know What I Am meant, “anything goes.” We wanted to put together a tasting platter of everything we could do and we were throwing different ideas at the wall and just running with them.
We did that through this album as well, but there was also a lot of restraint in there and that’s something that we have not exercised before. Like, we used to make songs way too long or songs that would go from one idea to the next way too quickly without sitting on the feel for enough time to flesh it out.
That creative restraint makes the album feel more cohesive and a bit more polished than anything we’ve made before. Rather than throwing everything at a wall and just keeping it there, we would throw everything at a wall and really pick apart what sticks and what doesn’t. We wouldn’t do that in the past out of fear that we would become boring – which is crazy, because it’s very difficult to make progressive metalcore boring.
Learning as you go
I’m very grateful for every lesson that I’ve gotten from everything we’ve released. That’s part of the reason why we haven’t taken our old material off streaming services. We have a lot of reverence for those times in our life, those little snapshots of where we were at the time. Our streaming services are like a scrapbook of Reliqa’s progression to now.
If people love our old material, they love it. I have no power over that. And if anything, that’s kind of the beauty of it. Same with this album: once it’s out in the world, it’s no longer ours, it’s the world’s, and they can interpret it however they like and we will remain gracious about however they interpret it.
Reliqa 2024 Australian tour
Friday 14 June – Unibar, Adelaide*
Saturday 15 June – Bergy Bandroom, Melbourne
Thursday 20 June – The Brightside, Brisbane
Saturday 22 June – Bootleggers, Sydney
Sunday 23 June – Drifters Wharf, Gosford^
*w/ Caligula’s Horse
^Never Had So Much Fun w/ RedHook, Tiali, Leyeza & Foiled Fishing Plans
Tickets on sale now
