In the early nineties Bow Campbell and Davis Claymore, two Sydney musicians, suddenly lacked direction after an argument cost them the rhythm section of their previous group right before they could record their opening material. The timely arrival of Perth transplants Pete Kostic on drums and Richard Corey on bass felt fortuitous. The four began shaping raw punk songs and registered under the working title Front End Loader simply to submit an entry for a Sydney University band contest. A 1993 Big Day Out slot led straight into an unbroken string of live dates. Convinced that Australia’s scale would let them reach a different stage almost nightly if they kept moving, they criss-crossed the country until 2000, pausing only long enough to cut three studio albums: their self-titled debut in 1993, Let’s Ride! in 1995, and Last of the V8 Interceptors in 1997. The last of these, titled after the Mad Max film, contained “Pulse,” an ode to assisted suicide that became their emblematic song. In 1999 they contributed a version of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” to the Timelines compilation pairing young bands with artists over sixty, on which Barry Crocker supplied the vocals. Domestic life eventually tempered their relentless schedule. They still managed to release How Can We Fail When We’re So Sincere? in 2002 and the mini-album Ape Got Fire, yet the following period stayed comparatively inactive. Pete Kostic’s concurrent roles in the Hard-Ons and Regurgitator made shared time even scarcer. Their 2008 double album Laughing with Knives paired one disc of selected rarities with another documenting a 2004 performance at Sydney’s Annandale Hotel.
