Shady Nasty embrace tough tenderness on their debut album, TREK

Eora/Sydney three-piece Shady Nasty have released their debut album, TREK. First gaining cult notoriety with the release of their 2020 EP Bad Posture, a release that saw the the classically trained musicians ditching orthodoxy and mash together technical post-hardcore instrumentals with bombastic rap vocals and painted heavily stylised portraits of contemporary Sydney life.

TREK captures the band at their most most robust and direct—it’s a lean and potent eight-track debut that is unashamedly honest about the less-than-glamorous grind of simply existing while chasing ambition. Vignettes of their world are told through Shady Nasty’s singular harbour city twang; stories of friendship, living to work and working to live, and the push-pull of social norms are sound tracked by ghostly samples mangled into airy synth drones, punchy drum fills and bass melodies and crystalline guitar stabs.

RTRFM’s Matt Perrett chats with Kevin and Luca Watson from the band, first asking about what their priorities were while writing and recording TREK.

This interview contains explicit language.