Little Known & New Facts About The Making Of Sunk Loto's Classic LP 'Between Birth & Death'

Culling Down To 12

First up, we wrote 40+ songs for Between Birth & Death. I would actually say probably more. I remember when we released Big Picture Lies, we felt like we were rushed and were disappointed; we felt like we had more to offer. So, we were like: let’s make a pact to not stop until we come up with something we feel is as good as it can be. But a little-known fact in that is that we wrote 40-50 songs to get to the final 12 songs. There was a lot of fighting, a lot of like: “The band’s over, that’s it, we’re done”. But we got there.

A Two Parter

Also, Between Birth & Death was written in two parts. We'd written all those songs, and Sony pretty much just said: “We don't like what you have; we don't think there are radio songs here”. And basically, we were given the ultimatum that they were going to drop us unless we came up with the goods. We thought that we had the goods. But that did create a bit of tension in the band; I was over everything at the time, and we split. We just took a big break from each other, and that's when the other half of Between Birth & Death was written.

Ro Stevenson’s Full Circle Moment

For Ro, our new guitarist who we love, Between Birth & Death is one of his favourite albums of all time. It's nice for us to hear that, and he feels like he's now playing in his dream band. It's really cool, and it's like it was meant to be.

Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter

A Livid Moment

I don’t think I've ever actually said this in an interview before, but when we did the Livid tour - we'd previously toured with Linkin Park when they first came to Australia. So, we did the Hybrid Theory tour with Linkin Park, their first tour, which was so cool. And then they were on Livid a couple of years later when Between Birth & Death had just come out. Chester [Bennington] and their guitarist both came backstage, and they were like: “Man, that fucking new track Everything Everyway - we love it, it's so good!”.

We were just hanging out, catching up and drinking; it was us, Linkin Park, Frenzal Rhomb, The Living End and Shihad, just all chilling. And then someone started a food fight backstage in Brisbane - and it got sort of carried away. I kicked a dinner roll that had been sitting out in the sun all day; they're already rock hard, to begin with, so it was like a fucking rock. And I just sort of drunkenly kicked it out into the distance, and it hit Joe [Hahn], the Linkin Park DJ, in the face. He stormed up to me, and Linkin Park had these Marines on tour with them in full kit.

So, they'd come in and sweep the backstage area with all these mirrors on sticks, and they had these big fucking US marines as their bodyguards. When I kicked this bread roll, and it hit Joe in the face, they were on either side of him, walked up and were like: “What the fuck, man?!” - and just smacked me in the face; they dropped me. I would’ve been around 18 at the time, and it just sort of spun me out a bit.

And everyone was like: “Whoa, man, what the fuck? I can't believe that just happened?!”. Then Chester came up and was like: “We're so sorry man, we're so embarrassed, and we're so upset”. I was like: “It's all good”. But then later we got a crew together, and we're like: “We're fucking angry about this, and we were going to go confront him at the after party in Brisbane”. But then I was like: “fuck it, just leave it”. We might need a round two, I reckon. I mean, I don’t have any beef, but I’d accept a buttered dinner roll as an apology.

You can catch Sunk Loto on their upcoming tour dates of Australia with special guests Ocean Sleeper, Red Bee and Amberdown. Tickets are available here.