Pitchfork: Do you see your music as political?

Georgia Maq: We’re a political band by default, because we’re all women, and that’s just been a thing from the start. I remember sitting at the kitchen table when I was 10, and my parents were discussing politics, and I was like, “Tomorrow I’m gonna go to the library, learn about politics, and I’m gonna become a politician.” And then I went to the library and I couldn’t find a book about politics so I rented the “Buffy” VHS instead. But I’ve always been very political and I can’t help expressing my opinions because I want to see the world change.

Sarah Thompson: We’ve all got very strong opinions on things and aren’t afraid to tell people what they are.

GM: We’re a bunch of bitches.

Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich: We’re just not scared. I feel like a lot of people in music try to keep the politics out of their music so they’re not gonna lose a portion of their fanbase, but we don’t care. If you don’t agree with our politics then you probably won’t agree with our music, because it reflects us as people.

What do you hope to do with a song like “The Opener,” which calls out sexist men in the industry? Was that just something you had to get off your chest?

GM: Yes, yes, yes. It was so cathartic to release that and be validated by people being like, “This is my experience!” I needed to do it, especially after the last year and a half. Since the last record was released, we just got criticized about everything.

ST: Every single line in that song is a quote.

KDH: “The Opener” is about the wider sexism you experience from everybody in the music scene, down to the people you don’t expect it from. Even our friends were [being sexist] in the way they would try and tell us what to do, as if we didn’t know. Some of the people who say they’re supporting you are the people who don’t realize how sexist they’re being, who don’t treat us like we’re capable. It was important for them to realize. And, after hearing the song, a lot of them did. They came to us and were like, “OK, yeah, you’re right.”

Camp Cope: "The Opener" (via SoundCloud)

A lot of the songs on the new album speak to our current moment in politics and culture in terms of abusers getting called out, especially “The Face of God.”

GM: I was scared to play that song in front of people because I didn’t want them to ask me questions about my experience. But when #MeToo happened, we were like, “It needs to go on the album. It needs to be heard.”

Why do you think so many men in the music scene are abusive?

ST: It’s all power. If you’re not a man in music you have to do 10 times as much to be recognized even in a slight way. So every time you achieve something, it’s like, “Oh wow!” instead of being like, “Well, obviously everyone loves me and I’m the best and whatever I say goes.”

KDH: Something that really scares me about all this stuff—especially when you look at 2000s emo and all the problems that are arising from it—is how these positions of influence probably attract a certain kind of person who would think, “If I’m famous and in a popular band, it doesn’t matter what I do. I’ve got power over all these young women, and they won’t question it.” That’s why it’s really important that it’s out now, and that people are watching what people do, because maybe those same people won’t be attracted to those positions of power anymore. It’s important that bands are getting criticized, and that labels and tours are dropping bands. If you’re a teacher and you abused your power, you can’t teach anymore. If you abuse the power that you have, you shouldn’t legally be allowed to be in those influential positions. These men shouldn’t be allowed onstage in front of 14-year-old women.

Camp Cope: "Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams" (Buy on Bandcamp)

You’re still very DIY, but as you you become more popular, are you tempted to work with bigger labels, managers, or booking agents?

KDH: [Management and agents are] the biggest scam of the music industry—to make old white men money. Do you know how disappointing it is to see all the amazing Australian female artists, and then, behind the scenes, it’s just all old white men sitting there with their new expensive cars, capitalizing on these young women? Those sorts of people see the end goal as units sold, how much money, how much exposure. It just doesn’t interest us. I feel like if we told a major label or a booking agent that we care about how safe a show is more than how big it is, they’d be like, “There’s no money in that.” We’d just constantly conflict with how things are run.

ST: I do this for a job anyway, so why would I pass it on to someone else who doesn’t know what we want? Anything we do we decide ourselves. We don’t have to do anything because somebody decides that it would be good for us. If it’s a shit decision, then we’ve made it and we’ll live with it. We’ve been told from the start that we do things backwards, so we’ll just keep doing things backwards. It’s fine.