Band Hiatus Left Silverchair Album Unfinished

Promoting his new album Diamond Days with new project Bento, Silverchair drummer Ben Gillies talked to theMusic.com.au about the last days of his on-hiatus day job.

(Psst, you can stream the record in full here before it's released!)

In an Annandale studio Gillies admitted that Silverchair had been working on a new record when they decided to step away.

“I think we'd just hit a bit of a snag with the record we were working on, and I think we all felt like we needed to take a step back, do something else, and be able to come back and be excited again,” Gillies said. “We've done that for years, we've already had pretty extensive breaks – it just works for us. To be able to recognise it and make that call, that's why we've stayed together for so long.

“Internally we knew it was kind of coming, so it did give me a chance to go, 'Right. Bento's on.'”

SIlverchair's last album was 2007's Young Modern and they announced an indefinite hiatus last year. Gillies – who will release Diamond Days tomorrow – also added that they'll likely come back to the band.

“It was a bit of an odd one for us because we were almost writing in the studio, and we'd never really done that before – we'd always go into the studio with finished songs… It was good, but for some reason we just hit a bit of a brick wall and it didn't feel like it was flowing naturally, hence why we just made the call.

“When we come back to Silverchair I'll come back really refreshed and really excited because I have really stepped away from it.”

Bento made its live debut at an industry launch in Sydney during the week.

Watch parts of the interview below: