Melbourne band Kingswood has certainly made an impact on the Australian music scene. Their sound takes the best of many genres and fashions it into something that is raw-yet-polished (a testament to the past days of rock ‘n’ roll) while being modern and accessible to all audiences.

They’ve had a big couple of weeks. Kingswood has launched their debut album, the boys are midway through their album tour, and two video clips are being filmed for upcoming singles.

Their long-awaited debut album, Microscopic Wars, was recorded in Nashville, with Vance Powell as producer (think Jack White and Arctic Monkeys to name just two). Guitarist Alex Laska describes him as insanely talented, in a sort of non-standard way. While they arrived in Nashville with about 70-80% of the song writing done and a pretty good idea of what they wanted to do with the album, Alex describes Powell as being able to drive and direct them.

He would say “OK, I’m leaving for two hours, you’d better have this finished when I get back.” And we’d be like, “What?!” but then he’d come back and be really happy with what we’d done.

Powell also offered a lot of expertise and experience, such as ensuring the best drum (and also guitar and vocal) sound was achieved in the recording.

Kingswood are no strangers to being compared with other bands. With such a diverse album, it’s hard not to compare them with bands such as Led Zeppelin and Queens of the Stone Age. But do the comparisons ever get tiring? Apparently not – Alex tells me that it’s just part of being in a band, otherwise people have no way to gauge a sound.

And really, there are worse bands to be compared to; they’re two of my favourites!

But where does the diversity come from? According to Alex, many sources – his own classical and jazz background, mixing with the punk background of Justin and Fergus (who used to play in bands together pre- Kingswood days), and melding well with Mango, with whom Alex has played music for many years.

I think that’s why we work so well together – because we’ve known each other for so long… We know how to fight!

Alex also cites some of their other influences, for example – movies. In fact, their video clip for single Ohio, is a Tarantino-esque video named Some Motherfucker’s Gotta Pay that features many familiar faces from the Australian music scene.

It’s entirely Tarantino! That’s the whole idea! Alex informs me. I’m a huge Tarantino fan. We started doing it and it grew, and we realised we can actually do this.

And can we expect more? From the two clips they’re currently filming perhaps?

Definitely. It’s certainly set a precedent – an expectation for ourselves anyway.

As for the upcoming tour – the best songs to play so far?

So Long… I Can Feel You Don’t Love Me (which I’m still getting used to singing on)… Piece By Piece… But all of them really, they’re all a lot of fun.

Does touring feel different now that Kingswood has finally released their album? Apparently not a lot – The main difference is really just that we have an album to tour.

Alex assures me that the reason the album took so long wasn’t to create anticipation. If we could have got it out sooner, we would have. However, whether intended or not, it certainly worked to build hype about the album’s release. In fact, Alex tells me that their show at The Capitol in Perth on the album launch day is one of the crazier ones they’ve had for a while.

Two people jumped on stage and started making out – then they crowd surfed and were still making out. The whole gig was pretty crazy for security, and not really in a good way. And we didn’t really help it, as we were encouraging everyone. At the end of the gig all five of us (five because we also have a touring musician) just jumped into the audience and were crowd surfing. It was pretty great to have such a packed gig so far from home.

Kingswood are hitting ANU bar on September 25 – a gig not to be missed! Click here to buy tickets