Filling the Girl Punk Voiid

Walking into the Foundry early, I was pretty keen on the night's line-up. There was a crowd starting to mill around the stage and a bit of a buzz to be honest, tonight’s headliners are the irrepressible Bleeding Knees Club with The Pinheadz & Voiid supporting…this was not the first I’d heard of the ostentatious girl group.  In fact I was looking forward to seeing some girlshreik, it had been a while since I’d heard an all girl punk band that impressed me to be honest.

The girls were all so comfortable in their skin on stage, an electric presence that flaunted true punk ego. They sauntered onto stage, and with an almighty bass line they launched straight into it as did the crowd. Voiid certainly have built a local following and everyone was writhing & cascading all over the joint with enthusiasm. Obvious influences came shining through, I decided I needed to have a little chat with the girls to spread the word on the hot asfuck sounds hitting my earholes…

So you got together in 2015 & started making some noise in your bedroom, how did you all meet initially & find your mutual interest in producing this genre of music?

Anji and I (Kate) met at high school in Rockhampton and became best friends who would hang out and try and write songs. We played one house party when the band first started with members of other bands on bass and drums but when I moved to Brisbane I was set on finding 2 more gals to complete the band. We all came together by knowing mutual friends and just loving music and having a good time. We all meshed really quickly and easily although not knowing each other for very long.

You started playing shows around Bris pretty quickly, have just finished a tour with The Pinheadz & now on a killer line up for Shaka Fest. What an awesome journey in just 18 months, what's your goal for the next year?

Goal for next year:
Probably just playing some bigger shows, touring and hopefully some festivals along the way too. We'd love to start playing out of QLD more often, and would be especially stoked to get to Melbourne at some point!

With an EP under your belts titled "Pussy Orientated", it's so refreshing to see some sassy young chicks carrying the torch for face melting, garage punk. Who are your biggest personal influences?

Our biggest influences would have to be L7, The Runaways, and Hole.

Anji Greenwood - Vocals | Kate McGuire - Guitar 

Antonia Hickey - Bass | Jasmine Cannon - Drums

Like the Riot Grrrl movement of the 90's, do you see your music as a voice for feminism and rejecting conformity in a youth culture that disparages individualism?

Well while we don't necessarily link ourselves to the riot grrrl movement (however we do enjoy a lot of bands that were involved such as bikini kill, an obvious influence) as it was trans exclusive and that's not what we're about.. We would like to consider ourselves a somewhat 'feminist' band, but what really is that? Being a feminist should just be known as having common decency in our opinions.. But all in all we would consider ourselves a voice for female aggression that we unfortunately don't see projected enough in the music industry, and it is needed. We encourage any and all females and female-identifying people to pick up an instrument and start screaming.

It's clear that lifestyle is a major influence on your lyrics, who drives the songwriting process, or do you write collectively?

I (Kate) do the majority of the song writing. Although the songs are written by me, most of the time when we jam out the song the rest of the girls will come up with parts to add that weren't already there. We all work really well together with creating music so whenever someone brings forward an idea it'll more often than not fit perfectly with the sound we want. Lifestyle is a big influence on the song writing process but I don't really plan for it to be. I'll just kinda write about life experiences and whatever comes to mind. It's not always a serious thing.

Massive congrats on signing with Premier Artists! Super awesome career move. You have an LP in the works, can we expect a release anytime soon?

Thanks! We're heaps psyched on it, we've admired Glenn's work for ages. Anyone that brings D.R.I to Australia we're down with! We've been focusing a lot of our time on the LP, and we haven't exactly set a deadline or specific release date for it just yet. We're taking our time on it because we want to take it to a whole new level, make sure it's sounds exactly how we want it to, and is the best it could possibly be. We're planning to release a single or two by the end of the year, and you'll just have to stay tuned from there!