Revisiting Ill at Ease with The Mark of Cain

Adelaide rockers The Mark of Cain are touring Australia celebrating the first-ever vinyl release of their breakthrough album Ill at Ease, performing the record live in its entirety for the first time. With previous tour plans postponed due to COVID and a serious cycling injury for bassist Kim Scott last year, their arrival in WA for a show at Freo.Social this Saturday, January 13 has been a long time coming for the band and their passionate fans. SIAN CHOYCE caught up with vocalist/guitarist John Scott to look back at their definitive record—and look forward to this weekend.

Thanks for taking the time today. I know you guys are more than halfway through the Ill at Ease tour. Did you think you guys would still be touring around in celebration of this album with fans this many years after the original release?

(Laughs) No, not at all. I actually discovered something interesting the other day in some letters I was writing to a friend in another band back in the 90s. In fact, a band from Brisbane called Screamfeeder. They’re a great band. I found in some letters I had written with Kelly, the bass player. I must’ve been talking about dissolving The Mark of Cain in like ‘94/’95 just before all this happened, which is really weird.

It must be very cool to just be able to see a moment in time like that and think about how close it all was to maybe not happening.

Yeah, definitely! I don’t remember it, but I must’ve been considering it enough to tell someone and have it written there. So, something must’ve been going on there. As the years have gone by, though, we’ve realised that was like ‘the’ release for us.

Obviously, we’ve done a whole lot of albums, but Ill at Ease was the one that put us on the map, so to speak, in the ‘90s. We hadn’t considered that chronological thing where we go, “Oh, that album is 20 years old now, so we should tour it again.” You know, for Battlesick, what was that? Like ’89, ’99, so 2009.

Yeah, that was a ridiculous amount of time ago! (Laughs) So, we didn’t do a ’25 years’ of that. But we had originally planned to do this back in 2020. Then COVID hit, and it got pushed back and pushed back. I think 2020 would’ve been 25 years for this. But back to the original question: no, I did not contemplate, even back then, that we’d still be playing now.

So, not playing at all? Not just not playing this album?

I don’t know; I wasn’t really considering that future thing and whether or not a band could be the future. I didn’t know, so this has all been lovely.

Do you think the formation and early success of TMOC were helped along by the live music scene and the Australian music scene at the time? It was a bit of a golden age.

The ‘90s? Oh definitely! Look, I always break it into almost pre-Nirvana and post-Nirvana because we were playing in the ‘80s. By the end of ’89, we were one of the headlining bands in Adelaide; we weren’t that well known anywhere else. We’d done a couple of shows in Sydney and Melbourne, but not really well known.

Then there was a period where I went away for 18 months, working overseas. My brother ended up overseas for about 12 months. Then, when we came back and really started again in ’92, this was the post-Nirvana world. Triple J had morphed into this much bigger thing. You used to go there, back in like 1989, and it was this small place with a small number of listeners to this huge radio station in the early ‘90s now that most of the youth are listening to.

It felt like it went from almost a community radio station vibe—you know, not many listeners. There was that “ooo, they play really’strange’ music” sentiment from a lot of people (laughs). Then that popularisation of grunge and everything just opened it up for a whole lot of people. The kind of people who, when I was at school, said, “You got s**t music taste,” they’re now listening to all that music. They’ve caught up. When we gained that later recognition, it was almost like people thought we were a new band.

Oh, they didn’t realise you already had all that experience behind you?

No. They were almost like, “Oh, where are these guys from, Adelaide? Wow, nothing good comes from Adelaide!” That’s the other thing that used to be around at the time, and it’s like, “Excuse me, plenty of great bands come from Adelaide, thank you very much.” People just think it’s a big country town. Which can actually be good because it means sometimes we, as Adeladians, were sometimes a bit aloof about cues from Sydney or Melbourne on what our music should be. We just did our own thing.

Do you think starting somewhere like Adelaide, as opposed to Sydney or Melbourne, gave you a chance to not be thrust into that spotlight too early and take time to find your sound? I think Perth has a similar vibe to Adelaide, with that big country town feel.

I think in those days it might have. There’s much more visibility for bands no matter where they’re from now. Adelaide and Perth have a very similar vibe. You had bands like The Scientists that came out of Perth; they were huge. But not that many people knew of anyone else. And, I think you’re right, it gives you a chance to not be trying to do whatever Sydney and Melbourne think you should do so you can hone your sound and then present it. I don’t know if it holds now, but maybe back then, I think.

Well, like you said, it’s a very, very different approach for bands now. You get something up online, in some cases, before you’ve even played a live show. That idea just didn’t exist back in the day.

Exactly. So for us, back in the day, performing was the only way to get yourself known because there was no other social media or anything like that. You know, it costs money to do a film clip. Where was it going to be played? The only place it might get played was on Rage.

And your point that now there are so many avenues, which I think is great, means it takes away the influence of the larger record companies trying to influence a cash cow that they think people want. Now you can just go online and find it instead.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine from the same era. We remember a time when you used to go to record shops, and they had a listening booth. You would go in and say, “Hey, I want to listen to this record, please.” And you’d go and put on the headphones and decide whether you wanted to buy the record.

It’s such a different experience to the idea of streaming and all that now. If you explained that process to a kid now, they’d just stare at you.

You’d be reading about these bands, so you’d have to wait to get them on import; they’d usually say around a six-month wait. Then you could listen to it and decide whether you wanted it or not. So, it was a lot of work, actually (laughs).

It’s almost the opposite now, where someone gets a chance to immediately hear a stream and wonders if they want to search out a physical copy to purchase or simply to keep streaming. You guys have released a 2LP edition of Ill at Ease on gun-metal grey vinyl to coincide with the tour. Do you find it heartening that some people are swinging back to that physical media again rather than just digital streaming?

Absolutely. It’s interesting that there’s been some people going, “Is this going to be available on CD?” It’s like, I don’t know? There has been an enormous swing towards vinyl and the idea of holding that whole artistic concept in your hand. That’s something we all loved.

The needle is physically moving over the vinyl to create the sound…

Yeah, it was very real. You’re connected; it’s generating the music. But at the same time, you’d have to find storage space for all these fucking albums. So it was like, you know somebody loves their music when you go to their house and they have that dedicated square record space in the hallway or loungeroom or whatever (laughs).

Yeah, I’ve got a couple of friends in Adelaide actually, who are huge heavy music fans, and they have some amazing limited edition pressings of albums on vinyl, and I always wonder where they find the space! I do think it speaks quite highly of how the band feels about an album when they take the time to get vinyl pressed, because I’m sure it’s not the cheapest process.

No, you’re right. And it’s about enjoying the process as well. We all used to love getting a double album with a gate-fold sleeve and having the artwork and everything like that. It was magic.

So, this tour was pushed back a few times, first with COVID, then with that terrible bike accident. How is everything going there?

It’s interesting, actually. Before he went out for that ride, he’d been thinking, “Yeah, this is the last one I’ll do because it’s getting close to the tour and I don’t want to take any chances.” Kim’s really into bike riding. He’s the kind of guy who you’d see at 7 a.m. and ask what he’s been up to, and he’d say he’s just finished a 250-kilometre bike ride, and you’re just like, “I hate you” (laughs).

But that’s what he loves; that’s what motivates him. But in that accident, someone just backed out of their driveway. Two of the guys he was with swerved and managed to avoid being badly hit; two of them braked, then Kim’s front tyre hit the back of another tyre, and it just flipped him off. They think he went into a tree because of the amount of damage.

He broke his clavicle, had four huge sutures in the back of his head, and I think he fractured his pelvis. Because he’d done damage there before, they ended up having to go in and put a brace on it. It was like scaffolding when he moved around. There was also a bleed, and they had to try and find out where it was coming from. Scary times.

Other accidents have just been; this is broken, this is broken… that’s it. Whereas this one was a concussion and an internal bleed. But when he was ready to get the scaffold off, he was raring to go. I think he got it off on Thursday, and by Saturday, he was like, “Yep, let’s practice on Saturday!” He was walking very gingerly, though. I think the six weeks in the scaffolding really affected his muscle tone and stuff. He had to work hard to get to his bass stands and stuff. But he’s been really good; his rehab has been good, and he’s fine.

It’s good to hear he’s nearly back to doing cartwheels ahead of the show. So, any teasers for what fans can expect at Saturday’s show?

Yeah, we are playing through the whole album. We play everything in order, except for two songs. Originally, the album finished with LMA, but Point Man has become such a staple that it makes more sense to end with it rather than have it in the middle of the set. Then, at the end, I think we go off to catch our breath more than anything. But just a little finger clap, a fairy clap, will bring us back out for an encore. Then we play about five songs. A mix of stuff from all the albums.

So they’ll definitely be getting some bonuses on top of just Ill at Ease? Lucky ducks.

Yeah, we have no plans to just play it and disappear. We always hang around afterwards. We say to people that if they want anything, like us to sign anything or whatever, we’ll either be hanging out front or clearing the stage afterwards. They’re more than welcome to come up to us.