The New Justice Team

ORIGINS: Sydney, NSW

GENRE: Hardcore

YEARS ACTIVE: 2004-2009

 

MEMBERS:

• Jo Donovan - Vocals
• Cameron Mackin - Guitar
• Luke Holmes - Bass
• Luke Bartolo - Drums
  

RELEASES: 

• Rehearsal Session (2004)
• 1. Cultural Hyjack
• 2. Darwin's Theory of Revolution (no vocals)
• 3. IFB
• 4. Not Just Boys Fun (7 Seconds cover)
• 5. Po-Mo-Phobia
• 6. Rise Above (Black Flag cover)
• 7. Stale Enertia
• 8. This Song is Not For Sale
  

• Demo (2004)
• 1. This Song is Not For Sale
• 2. Smiling to Death
• 3. Clique, Bang... You're Dead
• 4. Wake Up Call
• 5. Last Laugh
• 6. Cultural Hijack
• 7. Po-Mo-Phobia
• 8. Darwin's Theory of Revolution
• 9. IFB
• 10. Hurt Babies 'n' Puppies 'n' Stuff
• 11. Not Good Enough
• 12. Not Just Boy's Fun (7 Seconds cover)
   
• Queensland Tour EP (2005) [split with ROFL]
• 1. Caterpillar
• 2. Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
• 3. Brain in a Vat
• 4. First Failure (Gorilla Biscuits cover)
  

• The Peasants are Revolting (2006)
• 1. So the Caterpillar Has Emerged from its Coccoon as a Shark with a Gun for a Mouth
• 2. Break My Jaw
• 3. Cultural Hijack
• 4. Them
• 5. Murderers Are People Too
• 6. Resistance is Fertile
   
• Self-Titled (2008) [Split with Imperial Leather]
• 1. Sylvia Plath/Darby Crash
• 2. Bleach Blonde Australia Policy
• 3. Othering and Smothering
   
• Unreleased Demos (Recorded 2008, released 2025)
• 1. Cut Sick
• 2. The Last Laugh
• 3. Butterfly
• 4. Smiling to Death
  
• 5. Rip It Up (Adolescents cover)
  

SUMMARY:

 

SHOWS: 

ORAL HISTORY:

JO: I don't know when it was, but there was something about the intensity of hardcore music that caught me. There is a kind of desperation in it that I related to. When I felt that there was so little in the world that I had control over, there was something comforting about thrashing, screaming, yelling and doing it with other people who felt the same way.

Jo Donovan (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

CAM: Jo and I wanted to start something. We had both played in bands that weren't our vision or our thing musically. We were listening to stuff like Kid Dynamite, Gorilla Biscuits, Adolescents, etc., and wanted to do a hardcore band. We were at a show at the Green Square and Luke Holmes was there (he was only 17 still too). I went to school with his older brothers and knew he played bass. I'd never heard him play or knew how good he was, just knew he played. We asked him if he wanted to play and he was keen. Then I messaged Luke Bartolo on the Bombshellzine forum about playing drums. I'd met him briefly 'cause I'd come out to his house to grab a Nirvana B-sides CD he'd burnt for me.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

LUKE B: It was 2003 and I'd tracked down all these obscure Nirvana demos and B-sides online. This was years before any of these songs were released officially. I thought it was so cool and for some reason I made a bootleg compilation of them and offered copies to people on the Bombshellzine forum if they were interested... I didn't even charge money for them, just wanted a blank CD to be supplied for me to burn the songs onto. Cameron was one of the people who contacted me. I'd met him before at a party at my friend Spilsy's house in the city and Cam later came to a big party I co-organised in Cranebrook (my 'hood) called National Beer Day, and that's when he asked me to play the drums in a hardcore band. I was playing bass in Earth to Nigel at the time and was feeling the itch to play the drums again - but I remember I had to pre-warn Cam that I didn't have a car or even knew how to drive, meaning I'd be relying on them to get to practice. I feel bad about that in hindsight, haha. I found it really hard to learn how to drive, I didn't get my licence until I was 29 years old

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

JO: Cam and I just wanted to do a hardcore band. Something thrashy and fun. The sort of thing we wanted to listen to. Then we found the two Lukes and it was just an awesome combination straight away. It was pretty lucky. We all just clicked.

Jo Donovan (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

CAM: I think our first practices were at Party Pig studios as we had to pick Luke B. up with his drumkit. 

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: There was this guy named Anthony, I think he was a friend of Cam and Jo. He came to one of our practices and recorded us playing... at the time it just seemed like he was watching us play. Then he put out a bootleg of the rehearsal, maybe like 10 or 20 copies? At the time some people in the band were annoyed because there wasn't a conversation about it. I only remember it because I've still got a copy of the case the burnt CD came in. Wish I still had the CD as it has two songs on it we never recorded!

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

CAM: Our first show was at the Bat and Ball with Extra Limb. I'm pretty sure Alex Sepansky (from Extra Limb) put us on the lineup. We started putting on shows ourselves pretty early and chucking on bands we enjoyed like Pure Evil Trio or jumping on shows with friend's bands.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

LUKE B: One of the things I enjoyed about the band was that any of us could contribute to the songwriting in whatever way we felt like. Generally we wrote our own parts on our respective instruments and Jo wrote most of the lyrics, but on the first demo Jo wrote the chords for 'This Song is Not for Sale', Cam wrote lyrics for 'IFB', I wrote guitar and lyrics for two songs, and Luke Holmes wrote the music 'Not Good Enough' and I think 'The Last Laugh'. We had such diverse influences between the four of us, so it was fun to see that mix together. Like, we were very much a hardcore band, but it's hard not to do a ska breakdown like the one in 'Darwin's' when you have a gun like Luke Holmes on bass.

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

CAM: I wrote 'IFB' with Jo sitting in my car somewhere after I had been fired from my job at a company called IFB. I guess it was somewhat therapeutic. 

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

JO: Our main influences lyrically are Sylvia Plath (I must rip her off thematically a fair bit) and bands like the Weakerthans and Jets to Brazil - you know, overly wordy and sentimental.

Jo Donovan (Vocals), Highly Flammable Issue #2, 2005

CAM: Bands at the time seemed to start playing shows, record a cheap demo, and would then go from there. It was Jo's idea to do the screen-printed fabric case. We recorded the demo at Party Pig Studio. 

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

LUKE B: I drew a different picture on every demo CD that went into one of those screen-printed fabric cases. The back of the case had a pen and a sword crossing each other - the pen was symbolic of Jo's intellectual lyrics and the sword was the anger we felt about the status quo at the time.

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

REVIEW: What we have here is a demo CD from relatively new Sydney band The New Justice Team. As someone who doesn't get into hardcore too much, I must say I really liked this and I wish there were more bands around like them. They a play a no bullshit, 80s sounding style of hardcore with really great, creative lyrics. Their sense of humour is quite refreshing as well as the genre seems to be saturated with bands who take themselves far too seriously as of late. The fast heavy bits reminded me of F-Minus and the more melodic bits reminded me of Allergic to Bullshit.

Review of Demo by Matt Ford, Nerf Jihad Issue #4, December 2004

 

REVIEW: No offence but chick singers and hardcore usually ends up like Grandma Borket's muffins. Not that TNJT are hardcore, but if they were they would pull it off very well. I say that because I saw them one time in Sydney and thought that they were hardcore. Not that their demo is disappointing at all, it may be a little softer than their live efforts but my point is this, TNJT gel very well. I like their very independent Agnostic Front / Black Flag style self-titled release and I liked their live performance. They are a very good band. This release features 11 songs of intertwined vocals, overactive bass, and solid lyric delivery.

Review of Demo, The BlackList Issue #1, June 2005

 

REVIEW: Wow! For just $3 you get 12 tracks from Sydney punk/hardcore band TNJT who are making quite a name for themselves. Female vocals from Jo Donovan are a great change from the male-dominated hardcore scene and while I myself am not the hugest fan of the genre, I really get into these songs. Rancid-esque basslines flow through all the tracks, chunky riffs, raw vocals, it has everything a hardcore release should - and the covers are all screen printed - totally DIY. Favourite songs would be 'This Song is Not For Sale, 'Wake Up Call' and 'Darwin's Theory of Revolution'. Top lyrics, catchy, intense tunes; a 7 Seconds cover - awesome. 

Review of Demo by Rhys Lewis, Dropkick Zine Issue #3, 2005

 

LUKE B: Our third show was in Port Macquarie. Some guy contacted me over an internet messageboard and said he could pay for our petrol and provide accommodation if we'd come up and play an All Ages show he was organising. When we got there he told us the accommodation had 'fallen through' and he couldn't give us any petrol money. It wasn't great. I think he ended up giving us $20 and admitted that he lived with his parents and it was their decision for us not to stay at the house. Turns out he was like 16 or something. While we were playing the actual show, on about the fourth song, the house drumkit fell apart from underneath me. I got up and just danced around a bit while the band played 'Rise Above' and then someone lent us some equipment so we could finish the set. We were lucky that our friend Bones, one of Forster's most legendary citizens, had come along to watch and he let us all crash at his place after. About a week later I got an email from the guy who organised the show telling me I had to pay to get the drumkit fixed! There was no way that was going to happen. It was a fun trip though because I got to hang out with Jo, Luke, Cam, and Bones. 

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

 

CAM: Jo and I loved Draft Dodger (QLD hardcore band). Geordie from Dick Nasty had sent $3 for the demo taped inside their new CD - I sent him his money back with the demo. Apparently Neil from Draft Dodger had pretty much stolen Geordie's copy of our demo and he got in touch with us about coming up to Brisbane to play some shows. Good times ensued. I liked the bands, the shows, and the people. I felt pretty welcome and accepted by a scene relatively new to us. I remember the police turning up when a bunch of bands were playing basketball at night - us, Draft Dodger, Dick Nasty, Black Maria, The Wastas. I met people on that tour that I might not see often but still somewhat keep in touch with. I was in Hobart last February and got to catch up with Joey from the Wastas after over a decade. 

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

MICKO: The Brisbane tour was pretty wild. Teeroy (ROFL) and Luke Holmes made a split CD one night at their Enmore house to take on the tour. The CD sucks because of the tracklisting going back and forth between the two bands. Which is cute if the volume levels were even... geez, what else do you want to do with poor people's eardrums. Anyway we played three gigs in about 24 hours on that tour. 

Micko Lemur (ROFL drummer), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: It's crazy - we would drive all the way to Brisbane in one car and with only one set of clothes each. Such a big adventure. And then we'd play and our sets were typically only around 15 minutes (we could usually fit about 10-12 songs into that time). I wouldn't change that experience for the world though. That first Brisbane show... we were in a warehouse and it was just bedlam, people flying everywhere, equipment falling over, stacks-ons. There was so much energy. It was great. 

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

 

CAM: We recorded our 7" at the house Jo was living in with Shogun and Shortty in Northmead. I also remember Jo lost the artwork ideas and references she had worked on the night we went to Torin's to put it together so it was pretty haphazard and last minute, haha.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: I cribbed the title of the 7" from a Blackadder episode and I envisioned the cover to be an image of an angry French Revolution crowd with giant beetles crawling all over them. It looked really good in my head but I couldn't make the drawing happen on the page. Luckily Jo was able to put something together.

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

CAM: We played the Belladonna Fest in Wollongong, which led to us playing the Pink Palace Farewell Show in Melbourne, which is actually just down the road from where I live now. After that we played some Bewilderbomb shows in Sydney. We did two tours to Queensland - one with ROFL and one with The Faux Hawks. We also played Canberra three times - two Territory Clampdowns and a show that was part of our leg of the Vitamin X tour. We played Maggotville a lot because we just liked that scene and the bands it involved. It was more our thing than the Resist Records-inspired scene that was also happening at the time.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: On the first Melbourne visit, we weren't even playing at the Arthouse but a band room there was organised for us to stay in. A backpacker was already in there but it was okay. The venue gave us a key for a storeroom to use for our equipment, which was very kind... In the hostel, Luke H. falls asleep while playing bass. He started out by playing along to something I was playing on the guitar but fell asleep halfway through, his fingers poised above the fourth thret of the third string. We watched him for a bit and he actually played a little bit while asleep, his finger pulling at the top string. The next day we caught a bunch of trams to the Pink Palace. It looked every bit like the Melbourne equivalent of Maggotville, only bigger and with a lot more history... The next day Luke H. decides to forego tissues and blows his nose into the bin in our room by placing his entire head into it. He subsequently wipes his nose on the carpet. 

Luke Bartolo, extracts of Melbourne Trip diary, CTW Issue 9, April 2005

 

CAM: Other shows that stand out... the show with Limp Wrist was fun. Playing with Just Say Go at the original Paint It Black. Anytime with Brisbane pals or ROFL was fun. I always enjoyed the car trips and stuff. The Top of Judges in Penrith was great too. I also remember terrible shows too like the first time we went to Port Macquarie and the Youth Festival at Glenbrook where they kept telling us to turn it down.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: We played heaps of shows with rad bands like ROFL, Anarchoi, Draft Dodger, Dick Nasty, Faux Hawks, Bewilderbomb, Steppin' Razor, Extra Limb, Kampei, Chaz H. Scally... I loved playing the All Ages shows at the PCYC in Penrith. I lived just around the corner and would wheel all our gear down to the PCYC in shopping trolleys. 

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2024

 

JO: Favourite shows include any of the shows in small spaces, where people are forced to watch, you know? Or Brissie or Melbourne, they were fun shows. The Pink Palace Farewell was a really important weekend for all those Melbourne people so it was really an honour for them to have us. I felt like I was pretending to be part of the 'cool' group - because Melbourne people are just very cool.

Jo Donovan (Vocals), Highly Flammable Issue #2, 2005

 

LUKE B: I loved the Maggotville shows. I just loved being in that space. At the time I worked all around Sydney and its wider suburbs in those temporary bookstores you see in the middle of shopping centres, and I'd catch public transport to meet up with Cam for a $5 dinner at the Lansdowne and then we'd go to Zen Studio to practice. Afterwards, I'd crash at Maggotville on a mattress on the ground because Cam lived there at the time, and then I'd catch public transport back to a temp site the next day for work.

  Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

 

CAM: Over time our music became a little more focused. We kept it short, fast and melodic. Jo always had good lyrics and we used Luke's bass playing to our strength a little more.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: I remember just Luke H. and I were driving back in his car from a show in Newcastle and somewhere on the highway he just puts his blinker on and says, "I'm feeling tired, I'm gonna take a nap". He pulls over on the side of the highway, flips his chair back, and goes to sleep in the driver's seat. Figuring there wasn't much else to do, I tried to nap too, but we were so close to traffic still that every passing truck sent the car rocking side to side, so I had no chance of sleeping. Luke H. can sleep through anything!

 Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

 

CAM: Our last recordings were done at Maggotville with Lachie. Glenno Smith did the artwork and I sent the tracks to a bunch of bands we liked and Imperial Leather got back to us so we did the split with them. I still feel bad 'cause they never got their copies of the record. I spent over $250 sending them overseas but they never picked them up and the records could returned to my parents' house while I was living in London, haha. 

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: The second Melbourne visit was a bigger tour that we did in support of Dutch band Vitamin X, who had been brought out by Anarchoi. We did the Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne part of the tour, and we all went down in a van that the Anarchoi guys had organised. That was a really fun trip. When we got to Melbourne we arrived at a share house that someone had organised for us to stay in and, honestly, it was a bit junkie-ish. I couldn't bring myself to eat the donuts that had been liberated during a dumpster dive, and I remember walking into a room where everyone was sleeping and it was wall to wall with garbage and people in various states. I opted to sleep in the van that night, which came with its own challenges as there was a really hectic storm and I swear the tree next to us got struck by lightning. That's probably my most enduring memory of that tour. That and the Vitamin X guys insisting on stopping at every town on the way from Melbourne to Canberra, risking us all running late for the next show... they just could not be told how far apart Australian cities were.

 Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

 

LUKE B: We occasionally had to pull out of shows either due to mental health or car accidents. In the last two years of the band, we actually had to cancel two separate shows because of two separate car accidents. The first was when Jo crashed her car at a roundabout in Penrith - she was understandably pretty shaken up so we all went back to my place to calm down and we watched The Commitments. The second time was the day after I finally got my P plates. I packed my drumkit into the car and felt so proud that I was actually driving myself to a show in the city for the first time. I got onto the M4 and there was this semi-trailer in the lane to my right. The truck merged into the lane behind me but didn't see my car at all - it clipped the back of my car and I spun around in front of the truck and it pushed me along the highway for 800 metres until the driver realised I was there and was able to stop. Helicopters, fire engines, cops, tow trucks... the works. One of the firefighters told me that if I'd put my foot down on the brake while I was being pushed then the car would've flipped over. My car was a write-off and I didn't drive on the M4 for a long time after that. Maybe like three years.

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

 

CAM: We played less towards the end, I'm pretty sure our last shows were the Teargas shows. One night at Maggotville and the next night around the corner at a place called Louie's. We stopped because Jo was going to Oxford. I also don't think she was in the best mental state at the time too from memory.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

LUKE B: The New Justice Team is one of the things in my life that I'm 100% proud of. I didn't really know any of the other members before I joined the band but we really did just all click. We'd be ridiculous together and laugh so much, and we just seemed to have a deep connection with one another. We had such different tastes in music and different backgrounds; I remember we were driving up to Queensland once and were listening to all kinds of different music and then a Weezer song came on and we all sang along to it together. Cam then said, "That's the first song that we've all sung along to". I don't know why but that's just stayed with me ever since; how little our musical taste sometimes seemed to cross-over as a band. Cam, Jo, and Luke - I haven't seen them much or at all since the band finished but they still feel like family to me. I loved TNJT so much.

Luke Bartolo (Drums), Noise Levels, 2025

 

CAM: The New Justice Team was my introduction to a lot of people that have become the friends I still have today. Most of the people in my life are somehow connected to the punk scene that we played in, in some way or another. The scene we were in wasn't connected so much by the style of music - it was a broad range of punk music. It was the DIY ethic and politics to some degree that actually connected it. It was left-leaning, community-based, anti-mainstream ethics. I think the DIY aspect was the main thing. Labels, zines, bands, organising shows on a small scale without managers and stuff. The Maggotville warehouse was part of that - I didn't know the first guys that started it but the rooms there didn't come with it - they were built by people who lived there at the start. Maggotville would have finished around 2009 I think. It was just a cool, creative space. A good representation of having shows outside of commercial venues.

Cameron Mackin (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

 

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