Saturday, March 1, 2025

Sewer Cider


ORIGINS: Newtown, NSW
GENRE: Crust, Punk
YEARS ACTIVE: 1998-2002
 
MEMBERS:
  • Spider Death - Vocals
  • James G - Guitar 
  • Jade - Bass
  • Dave Hate - Drums (1999-2002)
  • Spikey Mike - Drums (1998)
RELEASES: 
 

  • We Will Only Be Free When the Last Capitalist is Hung with the Guts of the Last Bureaucrat (2001)
    • 1. Side Effects
    • 2. Acid Rain
    • 3. This is Your Life
    • 4. Desensitised 
    • 5. The Party's Over
    • 6. No Use For a Name
    • 7. Officer Kamikaze
    • 8. D Beat Nightmare
SUMMARY: Sewer Cider was a Newtown based crust punk band who were well-known for their involvement with the Punx Picnics in the early 2000s. The band released one demo and did some shows interstate before finishing up in 2002.
 
SHOWS: 

ORAL HISTORY:
SPIDER: Moving around between Australia and San Francisco influenced me quite massively - I was living in the Bay Area during the birth of powerviolence. I saw bands like Spazz and Dystopia quite regularly. At the time I was more into traditional street punk but seeing bands like that really shaped everything out of me.  
Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
SPIDER: We started the band in mid '98. We were all living in share houses around Enmore and Newtown at the time. All of us were really obsessed with bands like Concrete Sox, Deviated Instinct, etc. There wasn't really anything around like that at the time so we just started playing. The songs were about animal liberation, the nuclear reactor in Lucas Heights, bashing the Nazis, etc. We were all about direct action and we also had a hatred for armchair anarchists who would read essays in coffee shops... it didn't lead to much conflict because we were pretty insignificant to everything at the time - and a long way away from smartphones. 
Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025


SPIDER: The first Sewer Cider show was at a studio in St Peters, with World on Welfare, Bestiality, The Bigots... Our first drummer Spikey Mike, who had never played drums before, was on that show. He did alright considering but retired from drums after the first couple of shows. 
Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

DAVE: I was good mates with Spider already, I guess through Ramraid playing Hornsby and Sydney shows. I had seen his band Kermit the Fascist and had them on a CD comp with a bunch of Hornsby bands. I met the others in the band when I went to watch Sewer Cider play a show with Mike on drums. They were fuckin' sick! I loved what they were doing. I remember seeing them at one of those weird parties at the old dodgy rehearsal studio in St Peters. It was chaos. Fuckin' great bunch of people.
Dave Hate (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 

 
SPIDER: Touring outside of Sydney - we played in a squash court in Canberra once. It was an old sports centre that had been transformed into a venue / rehearsal room. In Brisbane we did a harbour cruise with World on Welfare; it was a messy affair. I almost went overboard. In Melbourne we played the Pink Palace, which was a massive deal. The show was a tribute to Tom, who was a prominent figure in the Melbourne scene who had passed away (I'm sure he played in Soberphobe and a string of other bands). 
Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
DAVE: There were some Brisbane shows we flew up to play - I think that was pretty soon after I joined. I remember Jade got her bullet belt confiscated at the airport and the bomb squad got called. They reckoned two of the bullets were live but it all worked out somehow... I think they were just revving us up. We played a boat cruise after and a couple of shows with Sausage Chopper. They were wild.
Dave Hate (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

REVIEW: Sewer Cider (...) set out to inform the punters about the evils of prescription drugs, police and big brother (not the TV show) watching us all, set to old UK crust-metal, ala Discharge and Extreme Noise Terror.
Neil, In Till Stumps Issue 2, July 2001

SPIDER: We recorded about six months in and only two songs were good. Then we later recorded everything as an album, which just ended up as a tape maybe another six months later. 
Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 

 
SPIDER: I faked my own death as an April Fool's Joke once. It was a dumb April Fool's Joke - I knew the Drum Media was coming out on the date, so I just thought it would be funny to write in to the Letters to the Editor section... I didn't think much of it at the time, just knocked out a eulogy, emailed it off under a fake name, and kinda forgot about it. It blew up a bit - the landline in our share house was going off when I got home from work. Everyone knew it was a joke but some people were pretty off it. Rightfully so. But hey, I was a dumb kid, haha.
 Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
DAVE: We recorded with Fred from Iron Sausage. It was this two storey house where he set each room up as a booth but we tracked it live all together just listening through headphones. I think he did a good job. I was a pretty shit drummer not playing to click tracks or anything, but yeah - it's always fun to record.
Dave Hate (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

SPIDER: We played this massive line-up show at the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre, with Unclean, The Blurters, Iron Sausage... I remember Craig Edge yelled out something sexist when The Spitz played. Dan Stewart followed him into the bogs and bashed him. It was a pivotal moment of the younger generation standing up to the shitty views of the older crew. 
Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025
 
DAVE: We played a few Punx Picnics out at the old brick works in Sydney Park in St Peters. Always a killer day - someone brings a PA, other people bring a backline, somehow a generator gets plugged in and it kicks off. You might get a stall or two like Black Rose Books, Food Not Bombs, Con Barcode selling records and shit. It was always a good time.
Dave Hate (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025


SPIDER: A lot of things contributed to our break up, I guess. Dave was sick of driving to Sydney from Gosford and he was never a drummer, he was originally a guitarist. At the time Stronger Than Hate was starting for him too. I was pretty hard to deal with at that time and started using hard drugs. As a band, at the time, it kinda felt like what else could we do? Money and resources were limited and I guess it just ran its course. After that James moved to either Melbourne or Barcelona. Jade and I started Farce with Derek from Stalin's Organ and Danny from Red Stain.
Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

RELATED BANDS: Kermit the Fascist, Vae Victus, Farce, Smash 'n' Grab, Ramraid, Stronger Than Hate, Against, Mauristatia, Old Music for Old People, Deathcage, Nobody's Driving, Fatalitas, Degenerate, Mischka Mischka





















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