Northlane plot heavy new direction

Heavy metal juggernauts Northlane are set to hit the road for their first national tour in three years, marking their final run before heading into the studio to write new music. Featuring performances in towns and cities right across Australia, the Northlane Regional Australian Tour 2025 heads to WA for live shows at Shelter Brewing, Busselton, on Friday, August 15, and Magnet House, Perth, on Saturday, August 16—with tickets on sale now. ANDY JONES caught up with vocalist Marcus Bridge to discuss their next record, video games, tour memories and more.

Marcus Bridge, inspiring vocalist from the almighty Northlane juggernaut, thank you so much for chatting with X-Press Magazine today. It’s an incredibly massive honour to be sharing this moment with you, man.

Before we dive into the heavy questions, you’re rolling into Busselton on Friday, August 15 then Perth on Saturday, August 16, with Ocean Grove, Mirrors, and Darkmatter in tow. If this tour were a heist movie, who’s the loose cannon, who’s the brains, and who’s accidentally blowing something up backstage?

That’s a good question (laughs). I reckon the Ocean Grove guys are a bit of loose cannons; they’re a pretty wild bunch. That being said, I reckon Josh in our band is probably organising the whole heist. I’m not sure about the rest. I guess the other two would fill up those other spots!

What’s the most memorable moment that’s happened to Northlane during a West Coast set?

It’s probably not during a set, but there was one time where we played Amplifier Bar and there was an afterparty after the show, and it was also our last night of tour for the whole run. I’ve got some mates over in Perth as well, and I ended up staying out until 6:00 in the morning until the place closed and ended up rolling back to the hotel as our crew was heading to the airport to head back home. So, I feel like Perth’s always a time where we let loose a little bit and have fun with the locals!

You’ve collaborated with Ian Kenny from Karnivool on your killer Mirror’s Edge EP and Sean Harmanis from Make Them Suffer on a Slipknot cover with the Void of Vision crew. Who are some other Perth artists you’d love to one day collaborate with, Marcus?

Oh, that’s a really good question! Damn, you’ve put me on the spot!

Testing your knowledge of the Perth scene!

Yeah, absolutely! There was a band, I’m not even sure if they’re still around. They used to be called I Said the Sparrow. I think if they’re still around, they’re called Sparrow. They’re mates of mine from years back from old bands, and I love that they turned into a full industrial metal kind of sound. Down the lines of Fear Factory and like Static-X kind of vibes, which suits your background as well! I loved that they flipped it and went off in a completely different direction.

My knowledge of Perth bands is definitely from back when I was starting up and doing the local band scene. There are a lot of bands that I don’t think are around anymore that I really love, but Sparrow is one that pops to mind.

You’ve toured the world, supported Slipknot, and lit up Euro Fests, yet you’re still coming back to regional Aussie venues. What keeps you grounded and hungry to keep hitting places like Busselton and Perth instead of chasing global arenas?

There’s always time for going around the world, and we always hit different spots around the world. But for coming back to do the regional stuff and hitting up the locals, that’s where we all started. For local bands heading over to the west coast, you’ve got to show some respect to where you come from, and we love playing the smaller shows and bringing something that doesn’t always make it over to Perth.

It is hard to get over there sometimes, so for us, we always make a point of playing Perth shows on the regional tours, or even if we can fit it into the capital city tours. We always try our best to come back to Perth, and that goes for everywhere on this run as well. There are a lot of places that we’re playing where we all grew up going to shows there or playing shows at, such as Panthers in Penrith and even places like Chelsea Heights in Victoria. There are all these spots that were milestone places for us, so it’s important to go back and make sure we’re not, like, leaving them behind and reminding them that we still give a fuck.

Darkmatter opening the Busselton and Perth shows adds a local twist. How important is it for you to give space to upcoming heavy artists in regions that often get skipped over?

It’s incredibly important to us, especially on the regional tours. I’m pretty sure we always have a local opener, and Darkmatter are really cool. I was checking them out earlier this week to familiarise myself, and it’s so awesome to see that there are heavy bands doing something different and bringing these new elements for the modern age.

Whether that’s electronic influences crossed with heavy, I think it’s just so important to help build those bands up, give them an opportunity to reach a bigger crowd as well, and hopefully, especially for bands in Perth, give them a bit of leverage to come over to the East Coast. So yeah, it’s really exciting to have a band like Darkmatter on this tour.

Thank you so much for indulging me with the Perth bias; I really appreciate it!

Coming back to Mirror’s Edge, it feels like it’s a detour into cinematic intensity. Playing that material live, especially in smaller sweatbox venues like Magnet House, how do you envision balancing intimacy with all the incredible sonic dynamics on the EP?

That’s something we always have to consider when we’re coming to these smaller shows. When we’re writing this stuff, we always imagine it as big as it can be while trying to think about how the visuals and all of that will work together to make the show work.

But, for me, when you come back to a smaller venue, I really just care about the music, the energy in the room, and making sure that the crowd is, like, feeling that and having a good time. When we’re writing music, we think about how it’s going to come off live, and I think that’s in terms of the show, our ability to play it, and our ability to translate it into a live setting.

So, in the end, I feel like the regional shows are really about the intensity of the music and making sure that everyone’s having a good time and everyone’s moving, and that’s something you see on the regional runs, because if they’re not, they’re not getting as many shows as the capital cities; they’re really eager and hungry for whatever bands are coming through. It’s really exciting to play these new songs live, and I can’t wait to play them in these smaller venues to see people go a bit crazy!

Do we perhaps see a guest performance?

Oh my goodness! I would love that, if you’re hinting at what I think you’re hinting. I’m not sure if Ian lives in Perth! Obviously we’d love to have him out to do that, but even if not, when we’re playing some of those songs that have a guest vocal spot, we either bring someone else in from one of the supporting bands to fill that spot, or I’ll just end up singing it. We are mates with the Ocean Grove guys as well, so maybe we could have a special live show only guest vocal. We’ll see how we go! Now I’ve said that, I better have a chat to Dale!

Good stuff! So, just recently, Welcome to the Industry dropped as part of the soundtrack for Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson, and it’s an absolute fucking belter, man! I love it!

If you had to create a Northlane video game, what would it look like?

It would probably look like Cyberpunk 2077. I feel like that’s our vibe: futuristic cyborg, technology-focused video game. I think that’s the kind of energy we like. I know John’s played the hell out of that game. John in particular is always joking about going full cyborg, getting mods to turn him into a cyborg, so I feel something that’s got character building where you’re getting tech added to you—that’s definitely our kind of vibe!

Dig it, man. Love the sci-fi. So, are you much of a gamer yourself, Marcus?

I am, but I’m pretty casual with most of what I play—games I can just pick up and play for 20 minutes or half an hour and then put down. I feel like my attention span isn’t very good, so I’ve been playing a lot of Marvel Rivals at the moment, which I feel like is a really easy and fun game. I play a couple of rounds, then get frustrated and put it down for a little bit, then come back to it a bit later.

I like Fortnite, and I like simple jump-in-jump-out kind of games. Nick and John, they’re deep into games with big stories, and I know, yeah, John loves completing a game to 100% while exploring every single inch, so that’s more his kind of vibe. But, for me, I’m super casual. It’s just something to take my mind off things.

I haven’t personally busted open my Steam account in over a decade, but I might have to change that when Fretless drops on May 22. How did that opportunity come about for the band?

We were really lucky! We just got approached by Rob and also the company putting it together. I think the whole premise of the game is that they wanted to have it mixed with a bunch of YouTube personalities, as well as heavy bands and other kinds of musicians in the scene that would help set these different tones for the game.

We were given the task of writing the villain’s theme, so I think they must have heard our music and known there was a bit of a darker side to it. They gave us the challenge of writing something that was from the perspective of the villain, so we saw it as a really cool opportunity. We wouldn’t, in terms of writing a song, usually approach it that way—being the bad guy isn’t something that I like to write about, so it was a fun challenge and just a lucky opportunity.

This tour is the last chance fans will get to catch you before you bunker down and get to work. Are you going into that writing phase with a definitive plan, or are you approaching it with more of an open mind?

I think we always approach writing with an open mind. The beauty of Northlane is that we’ve always gradually been building on what we’ve done before, and it has never been too dramatic a shift. With that in mind, it means that we can just keep on doing whatever we want to do.

Bands can divert and go in a softer direction or a direction that’s maybe quite different from what they’ve done before, and it keeps going in that trajectory, which works for some bands. But for us, I think we’ve been able to tread between the light and the dark but never leave any of that behind.

So, that means we can write a softer or more electronic song, but then we’ll still be able to put out a heavy song, and it won’t feel too strange. I think it’s really important to us that when we’re writing music, it still embodies everything that we’ve built on over the years, while still trying to step forward and add new elements and hopefully create something new and unique, but without leaving everything we built on.

Awesome! So if we peeked at the whiteboard in the Northlane War Room right now, what themes or sounds are floating at the top for the next chapter? Do you have any hints, or are we going to be completely in the dark up until the drop?

We’ve been slowly chipping away at stuff, but we’ve been making sure to give ourselves some breathing room and not put too much of a time constraint on what we’re doing. With Mirror’s Edge, we made sure we had enough time to really be sure of the songs. We didn’t rush anything, and I think we’re trying to do the same this time around.

That being said, some of the stuff I’ve heard so far that John’s been working on (we’ve been kind of back and forth on) is still heavy. But, I think we’ve brought a bit more of that electronic element back to it while still having it be quite heavy, like Kraft off the new EP. So, it’s really hard for me to say, because we have always been picking and choosing parts of our whole sound over the years to build something new. So, it might be a bit of a wait-and-see situation.

Northlane’s Regional Australian Tour 2025 hits Shelter Brewing on Friday, August 15, and Magnet House on Saturday, August 16, 2025. Tickets are on sale Friday, March 21, from destroyalllines.com