Vae Victis

ORIGINS: Sydney, NSW.

GENRE: Crust, Punk, Hardcore

YEARS ACTIVE: 2004-2008

 

MEMBERS:

• James - Guitar
• Kieren Hills - Bass
• Cathy - Vocals (2004-2007)
• Spider - Vocals (2004)
• Alex 'Dino' Wood - Drums (2004-2006)
• Fran Toller - Drums (2007)
• Kallie - Vocals (2008)

RELEASES:

• Pro Patria Mori (2006)
• 1. Mutually Assured Destruction
• 2. Suburban Assault Vehicle
• 3. Edelweiss Piraten
  
• 4. Immoral Harpies
• 5. Pro Patria Mori

• Self-Titled (2007)
• 1. Provocation
• 2. Salute
• 3. None Left Standing
• 4. A World in Flames

• Split w/ Give Up All Hope (2008)
• 1. Red Sky Morning
• 2. Compos Mentis

• Compilation-only Releases
• Answering Attacks (2007) - on Punx Against The Gold Mine (Deadbeat Empire compilation)

SUMMARY: Beginning as a dual-fronted crust project, Vae Victis settled with Cathy on vocals and played a range of shows within the DIY punk scene of the mid-'00s. The band made a strong impression in Australia before embarking on a European tour in mid-2007. Vocalist Cathy exited the band at the end of a subsequent Australian tour with UK band Give Up All Hope and was then replaced by Callie, with Vae Victis doing a tour of New Zealand and a couple of Sydney shows after this before calling it a day. 

 

SHOWS: 

• Bar Broadway, Sydney - 18th February, 2006
• Sandringham Hotel, Newtown - 25th June, 2006
• Punx Picnic, Sydney Park, St Peters - 19th August, 2006
• Maggotville, Marrickville - 23rd September, 2006
• Maggotville, Marrickville - 10th October, 2006
• Maggotville, Marrickville - 3rd November, 2006
• Maggotville, Marrickville - 24th November, 2006
• Punx Picnic, Sydney Park, St Peters - 3rd February, 2007
• Such is Life, Opoeia Eco Arts Retreat, Aireys Inlet - 28th April, 2007 [VIC]
• Sandringham Hotel, Newtown - 12th May, 2007
• Esslingen - 21st June, 2007 [Germany]
• Bremen - 22nd June, 2007 [Germany]
• Trashfest - 23rd June, 2007 [Netherlands]
• 21H, A La Zone, Quai de l'Ourthe - 24th June, 2007 [Belgium]
• Mainz - 26th June, 2007 [Germany]
• Nancy - 27th June, 2007 [France]
• St Etienne - 28th June, 2007 [France]
• Torino - 29th June, 2007 [Italy]
• La Spezia - 30th June, 2007 [Italy]
• Udine - 1st July, 2007 [Italy]
• Ljubljana - 3rd July, 2007 [Slovenia]
• Vienna - 4th June, 2007 [Austria]
• Bratislava - 5th June, 2007 [Slovakia]
• Koznov - 6th June, 2007 [Czech Republic]
• Obscene Extreme - 7th June, 2007 [Czech Republic]
• Wroclaw - 8th June, 2007 [Poland]
• Klub 007, Strahov, Prague - 9th July, 2007 [Czech Republic]
• Lepzig - 10th July, 2007 [Germany]
• Berlin - 11th July, 2007 [Germany]
• Hamburg - 12th July, 2007 [Germany]
• Yellowdog Fest, Saxony-Anhalt - 13th July, 2007 [Germany]
• Jubilee Hotel, Brisbane - 2nd November, 2007 [QLD]
• S&M Studios, West End - 3rd November, 2007 [QLD]
• Maggotville, Marrickville - 22nd November, 2007
• Ellen Melville Hall, Auckland - 7th December, 2007 [New Zealand]
• Underground Arts, Wellington - 8th December, 2007 [New Zealand]
• Maggotville, Marrickville - 22nd February, 2008
• Cutters Bar, Brisbane - 23rd February, 2008 [QLD]
• Russian Hall, Brisbane - 24th February, 2008 [QLD]
• Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle - 27th February, 2008
• The Basement, Canberra - 28th February, 2008 [ACT]
• The Arthouse, Melbourne - 29th February, 2008 [VIC]
• Brisbane Hotel, Hobart - 1st March, 2008 [TAS]
• Loophole, Melbourne - 4th March, 2008 [VIC]
• Crown 'n' Anchor, Adelaide - 6th March, 2008 [SA]
• Enigma Bar, Adelaide - 7th March, 2008 [SA]
• Kindred Stds, Melbourne - 8th March, 2008 [VIC]
• Sandringham Hotel, Newtown - 9th March, 2008

ORAL HISTORY:

JAMES: Cathy and I had been pretty good mates for a while - her band World on Welfare and my band Sewer Cider had played a lot of the same gigs and had toured together. We hung out in the same Sydney anarcho-punk crew, and we had been trying to get a band together for a while. Some of our early songs were actually relics of these aborted bands that had never gotten off the ground. I really admired Cathy's gift for writing lyrics and she had an incredibly powerful and dynamic voice. 

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: I came back to Australia in late 2004. The first thing I did musically when I got back was a short fill-in for Unclean. Their bassist Neil was away on holiday somewhere but they had a gig lined up playing support for Pungent Stench and didn't want to miss it. At the time, James was playing guitar in Unclean and I kind of met him then. A while later he contacted me and said he had a band he had put together and they were looking for a bassplayer - was I interested? I was keen and met up with them. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: Kieren had just recently come back from living in Germany. We didn't know each other that well at the time - we had met when I was quite a young punk before he had moved overseas; he was of a slightly older generation, having played in some legendary bands that I really looked up to like Oppressed Earth, Smut, and Bastardos. Cathy and I were quick to pull him into our plans. I was really stoked to recruit him and we quickly became close friends due to our similar shared love of hardcore punk and crust, etc., amongst other things. He and I clicked and we were really on the same wavelength in terms of what we wanted to achieve.

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

CATHY: We were all old friends and our old bands had all played and toured together - so we decided to start a band together!  I'd previously started a band with Dino (rest in peace) - it was a death metal band that sadly never got off the ground and, also sadly, the guitarist passed away. Luckily we just put our energy into Vae Victis instead. 

Cathy (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: The initial lineup with James on guitar, Dino on drums, me on bass, and Cathy and Spider on dual vocals. We jammed in an underground practice room in Redfern and wrote our first few songs there. Spider left pretty early on though as he didn't have time to do two bands at once and he wanted to focus on Smash 'n' Grab.

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

SPIDER: I was in Vae Victis very briefly - maybe only three jams. I joined because James and I had been in Sewer Cider together and were very close. I was also drawn towards Vae Victis initially because I wanted to be in a dbeat band, something that Sydney lacked pretty hard then (and I guess still does). Smash 'n' Grab started at the same time so I pushed on with that instead. Kieren and I were close back then but later became much tighter - we were going to play in many bands together years later.

Spider (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: Initially we were jamming pretty straightforward fast and heavy crusty anarcho-punk. Early on I was listening to a lot of No Security, Raw Power, Totalitar, Death Side, Anti Cimex, and was trying to write songs along those lines.

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: Me and James shared songwriting pretty much 50/50 and Cathy wrote almost all of the lyrics with some ideas or lines by James and one song from me. Early on, for the most part, me and James were coming to practices with pretty much fully-written songs. They might've got fucked with and changed around once we were all playing together but we were turning up with full concepts rather than writing in practice. Me and James kind of came from different directions musically and I think that worked well. I had come most recently from playing guitar for Murder Disco X in Germany, which was a fairly straight-out punk/hardcore band. I came into Vae Victis with a lot of energy from Murder Disco X and with a lot of ideas for new music. James was really into d-beat and raw punk at that point, although that changed a bit later. He had a very definite idea of how he wanted his guitar tone to sit and how he wanted things to sound overall. It was great. We met int he middle quite well. Later, I would go round to his place and we would jam on acoustic guitars to write songs. I remember ringing him and saying, "I have an idea, I have to come now!", and driving over and then jamming on this one riff for hours.

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

CATHY: My lyrics were motivated by inspirational figures of resistance throughout history - rage, resistance, passion, and protest. The madness of living in an insane world and everything from poetry to dystopian literature and satire. We discussed the band name for a long time before settling on Vae Victis.

Cathy (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: Everyone who played with Dino knows what he was like. You turned up with a song and you might have one idea in your head but then he would play flat out in the slow bits and heavy in the quiet bits and leave space in the fast bits and it would turn into something totally different from what you imagined. But it worked. It always worked. You would start playing a riff and - before you were halfway through - he would be battering out some twisted genius beat that you would never have thought of. Only very occasionally, maybe like 10 to 20 thousand times, did I have to ask him to shut the fuck up for a second and listen to the rest of the song. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: Dino drummed for us at first. An amazing drummer, but his approach wasn't really gelling, he was rocketing off at full blast on his own trajectory, in a different direction to Kieren, Cathy, and I. He ended up leaving after our first EP.

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: We recorded our first EP about a year after we started at The Brain Studios in Surry Hills (run by Clayton Segelov). That was the first time I met Clayton post-Quadbox but we got on well and I recorded with him a few times after that with different bands. For the first recording we did six songs - four went on the EP and two ended up on comps. The four songs on that first EP are a good representation of where we were at around that time. We were faster and more chaotic than where we ended up a couple years down the track. The drumming in them is perfect Dino stuff - weirdness and genius in equal measure and always unpredictable. For a long time I couldn't listen to it though - it didn't sound how I wanted it to in my head. I guess I didn't know as much about recording then as I do now and it probably shows. But listening to it now, well, it's pretty good aye. The song 'Edelweiss Piraten' (the lyrics are a translation of a song sung by an anti-Nazi group in Germany from the late '30s. It's about going into town and bashing Nazis) - I wrote the music entirely in a dream and woke up and came to practice the next day with the whole thing in my head. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: It's funny listening to that first EP again. The drum tracks Dino laid down were so damn fast, way faster than we had ever rehearsed, like playing a 33rpm record at 45rpm. It took me by surprise. Being quite green with the recording process, I was really struggling to keep up. Classic Dino, what a legend. An incredibly talented drummer whose life was cut tragically short. I'm sure in any history of Sydney 2000s punk he will feature prominently - Death Cage, Cream Soda, Massappeal, Altered Beast, and many many other bands. 

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: One night when we had finished recording the first EP, we were sitting outside of some shitty pub on George Street and having a couple of beers and feeling really excited about the world because we had just put down our first songs. Cathy started talking about this song she was writing, 'World in Flames', and we started talking about the concepts and ideas and she was there, taking notes on everything we all said, and then it all came together as the song. It's one of my favourite Vae Victis songs.

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: I feel like we handled that first EP badly. It was released on Endless Blockades and Spin Control, and I have always felt they they put a lot of faith in us and we probably didn't hold up our end of the bargain. We played gigs and toured and all that but we released a second EP quite quickly afterwards and, well, it is not how I would do it now. Like, there was no ill intent at all and I still release music and am friends with the guys from those labels today. Back then we did what we thought we should do but I think none of us really understood the game as well as we thought we did. I had been involved with a bigger scale underground label in Germany I definitely thought I knew more than I actually did. Live and learn though. There was a point there in the early '00s where EPs just became heaps less sellable. The price to content ratio blew out and they just didn't sell as well as they always had. And I feel that first EP was pressed at a time when they were still selling heaps but then released at a time when they weren't. So that press was 1000 copies or something like that - which was totally normal for as first press up until about then but it kind of unthinkable for an underground punk band now. Record pressing got expensive and music became easy to access online. Why spend $10 (now more like $50 or $20) on a 7" when you can have a band's entire back catalogue for free? 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: The first thing we played outside of Sydney was the Belladonna mini-festival in Wollongong. We drove down, played a set, slept on the ground in an empty block near the venue, then drove back the next morning. We played Canberra around that time too. Our first bigger distance shows were in Melbourne. That Melbourne trip... let's just say it could've gone better. It was the beginning of the end for Dino, although of course I didn't know it at the time. We were all so excited to go down to Melbourne and play. All our favourite bands were there - ABC Weapons, Pisschrist, Schifosi. They were our friends and our influences and a huge part of the scene. A lot happened on that trip but the thing I remember most clearly was we were about 5 songs into the set of the second gig and Dino looked at me from behind the kit, so fucking wasted, and said, "Last song. I can't do more". I was shattered - We came, We saw, We made fools of ourselves. There is a huge amount of me taking myself too seriously in there too but I wanted to show what we would do and instead we showed what we couldn't do. A while later Dino quit.

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

CATHY: I was also singing in Scum System Kill (an all-female crust band) at the same time as Vae Victis - things were busy! Especially when both bands would play a gig on the same night. 

Cathy (Vocals), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: It wasn't the last band I did with Dino that he suddenly quit. With Vae Victis we were most of the way through booking a European tour when he pulled the plug. I was so keen to get back to Europe and tour - I had only moved over a couple of years before and I missed my friends, and I missed playing around there. Cathy had spent a bunch of time there and had mates there too and James was mad keen to tour. But I never realised that Dino wasn't as excited about it as we were. He joined in the conversations and all that but with reservation. He wasn't ready to commit to it and I think he thought we weren't ready as a band either. And maybe we weren't. But we did it anyway. After Dino quit, I met up with Fran and asked if he wanted to jump in; mentioning that it meant touring Europe as well as just being in the band. He was keen so that's what we did. Recorded and released a second EP and fucked off overseas. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: After Dino parted ways with us, Fran ended up joining on drums. I feel like that's about when everything really fell into place for us and we properly found our footing. Fran was a veteran of the scene and had been in heaps of bands I respected and admired greatly - such as Stalin's Organ, Unclean, and with Kieren in Bastardos. Kieren and Fran knew each other very well and made a super tight and powerful rhythm section that I did my best to stay in time with.

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: We recorded the second EP at The Brain Studios with Clayton again. It was two of James' songs and two of mine. I feel our music had started to shift a little by this point; was not quite as fast and was getting heavier. Probably more influence from the likes of To What End? and Wolfbrigade, as well as locals like Schifosi and ABC Weapons. We were playing a fair bit and things came together quite quickly. The art for this EP is what became our logo - the skeleton bird on a pile of skulls drawn by Glenno Smith. I love that art and it was not possible to print enough shirts with that design - they just walked out the door the moment we had them done. This EP was self-released and it took a bit of fucking around to get it done. We had it pressed locally at a short-lived record pressing plant in Marrickville. I actually wandered down and watched the thing getting made. They were cool like that and did everything they could to help. Unfortunately they didn't last. At that time vinyl was still a thing just for punks and weirdos. Mainstream vinyl pressing hadn't come back yet. We got the covers printed ourselves from a local printer. Time was tight before we hit Europe and when the first printing run was done single-sided rather than with the lyrics, etc., on the inside, we ended up at a late night walk-in printing place across the road from the Vic on the Park, picking them up only a couple of days before we left. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: Touring Europe was a pretty noteworthy event for us, and was a bit of a whirlwind, as these things often are. Very few Australian crust bands had done such an extensive tour over there at the time. I think there was The Bigots, and Piscchrist, and that was probably it. It was quite an amazing experience playing at so many legendary squats and venues with bands that I had idolised. I spent half the tour sick as a dog though! At the time I was quite a lithe fellow and was very adept at climbing shit and getting up to mischief, and much less risk-averse. One day I guess I was a bit bored and decided to bound up a 12m high flagpole (something I had done 100 times before). When I shimmied down laughing, I remember Fran looking at me with a grim white face and pointing at my leg, "You alright?" I looked down to where he was pointing and just saw blood gushing out of a massive deep gash in my leg. Didn't feel a thing. If I wasn't a young dumb idiot I would have gone to hospital to get stitched up, but with our tight schedule and not wanting to let down my bandmates I neglected treating the wound and properly and got a really bad infection. I had the worst fevers and chills, could barely stand up and play. Never been so sick in my life. Looking back on it, I don't know how I made it through to the end of the tour. The wound left a big scar and gives me grief to this day; a memento from the tour.

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: The European tour was an incredible experience. We did like 21 shows or something like that. Played some amazing gigs through Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech, and Poland. We did almost all that tour together with UK band Give Up All Hope. I have a tendency to look back and see all the things I got wrong but all in all it was a great tour. My friend Peter from the band I played guitar for in Germany (Murder Disco Experience) drove us and he was a fucking legend at all times. He went way over and above the call of duty. We got to play a festival with Framtid and Seein' Red in the Netherlands. Got to play Obscene Extreme Fest, played support for Subhumans in Liege in Belgium, played a fest with To What End? and Wolfbrigade in Germany. Met up with old friends and made new mates who I am still in contact with now. We put in a lot of KMs and had a lot of fun. Partied a bit too hard sometimes, probably. Had the occasional argument but overall it was a blast. I am harsh on my younger self and so, looking back, I think I drove it too hard - we should've waited a bit beforfe going over, we should've done this or that differently, or at least I should've. But it felt right there and then. If we had stopped and actually thought about it at all it might never have happened. Fuck, that is pretty much the subtext to my entire life. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: When the new wave of melodic emo crust started emerging this became a big influence; I was finding this movement really inspirational - bands like To What End? Ekkaia, Tragedy, Madame Germen, etc. I had also become completely unhealthily obsessewd with Post Regiment. I got a long of songwriting inspiration and guitar ideas from their Czarly LP. I had learnt a lot more about playing guitar (I'd never been very skilled or talented but could hold my own within certain limits) and had become a bit more ambitious and confident, which allowed us to incorporate more complex layers and dynamics into the music. I always wanted to have a second guitar player so that we could pull off those soaring, epic, stadium crust duelling harmonies. There was some attempt to bring in a few different people on guitar but for various reasons it never ended up happening. It forced me to adopt a method of playing which mimicked that melodic sound as best I could but with just a single guitar. 

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: The third EP is a split with Give Up All Hope from London. Sometime through the booking process for that 2007 European tour, Give Up All Hope contacted and asked if they could tag along and play the shows with us. I think we were mostly booked by that point but it was fine with us, so they did. We met them in Liege, Belgium, and then played about 17 or 18 shows together across Europe. They  had their own van so we drove the whole thing in convoy. They were four people plus a driver, dog, and sometimes various friends. We were four plus occasional extras and we made our increasingly crusty way through Central Europe, playing shows and making party. Anyway, afterwards we talked to them about doing a split and having them come out to Australia and touring with us here. Which all came to pass. The split is one of those multi-label releases that were fairly common at that time and is still probably available from various distros around the place. It was two songs from us, two from Give Up All Hope. Much later, after Vae Victis was done, Cathy moved to the UK and sang in Give Up All Hope for a while. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: We played around 10 shows together with Give Up All Hope around Australia in 2008, this time in a single van with a box trailer - 5000 km of driving split between me and Fran. It was the beginning of the end for us. We started to run out of steam and patience - with each other and with everything really. We had different ideas of what we wanted to do and, as I've said, I was taking myself too seriously. I wanted to do as much as I possibly could with the band - tour, record, get an LP out, and tour some more. I wanted to put every waking moment into it, which wasn't realistic. We were burning out but we didn't realise it. 

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: At a certain point after releasing the split EP with Give Up All Hope, Kallie joined us on vocals. This line up had heaps of promise but was pretty short-lived. We never gained back our momentum and the band imploded. This has always been a big regret for me as we had about an LP's worth of our best material that just vaporised into the aether. A few tracks survive on a pretty rough rehearsal tape and I think some live videos. 

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: It was never going to end on the best terms - and it didn't. I am not particularly proud of the last months of the band. We changed singers in a way that is a bit painful to reflect on. Kallie joined on vocals after Cathy. Kallie is an amazing vocalist and a great person but it was never going to last and we should've just called it a day rather than prolonging the inevitable. We toured New Zealand and kept writing songs but it wasn't what it had been. It was the last throes of a dying band that probably should have pulled up stumps. Live and learn I guess. I am still friends (or again, rather than still) with everyone involved and I guess that is all I could ask for. It was a good time until it wasn't. I went on to play with both Dino and Fran again in different bands.

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: James never played in another band but left the country soon after to discover the world and himself. He sent me some songs he had written fairly recently and his guitaring still sounds like James. Last time I caught up with him he had been messaging me about guitar tones - he had always loved the tone of a certain Australian guitarist who had modelled their own tone on a UK crust band. But James had never managed to get it. Then he messaged me and said he had worked out what pedal said guitarist used and mentioned an obscure Boss pedal, long out of production. I was like, fuck, never heard of that. And then I stopped and thought - actually, that is familiar, where have I heard that name? And I realised I had one. I had been given it when a mate passed away but had never found use for it. So I sent James a picture of it and said, "That one? Do you want it?" and he came round and I gave him the pedal and he gave me a pedal he had made which he called Disclose in a Box, which I have on my board for Schkeuditzer Kreuz now.

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

JAMES: It's really just an all too common story of a DIY hardcore band that had a lot of potential but broke up prematurely and didn't document what they were doing very diligently. Vae Victis was just a little blip in the scheme of things I guess. I have many fond memories as well as a few painful ones associated with the band, but it is what it is. I hope other people have some fond memories too.

James (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KIEREN: Obsession is always an issue with me and sometimes it blinds me to how others might see things. I want to record, I want to tour, I want to do this and that. So surely everyone else does because for me it feels like the best thing in the world to do... But of course, they don't, or they can't, or not now, or not there, or whatever. People have a lot of reasons why they do or don't do things and a band, like any relationship, requires compromise. I guess it is probably not off topic to mention that I play solo these days.

Kieren Hills (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

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