Mustang
Cut Up Rough
Born in the summer of '96/'97 the Year of the Hellpig Mustang burned their way out of downtown Tasmania as a social experiment. They got away with a fair bit, others might not look the same for less They pissed it up and broke stuff and brought that chaos to writing bangers and looking at each other sucking XXX Ales at 'rehearsals' and taking minutes at very important 'band meetings'. Mustang poured petrol on their Tasmanian wasteland before consuming 7.69 million square kilometres of Earth's landmass, where they "dominated" in the Black vinyl 2 only way they knew how: loud, angry and on their own terms, taking hoards of willing partygoers on the journey. Across three non-studio albums and a spattering of small releases, Mustang built a catalogue defined by beer, speed and stubborn independence. No gloss. No trend-chasing. No bending over for the man. They rode in, drank what you had, and left heads ringing. Cut Up Rough (2015) was their swansong born in a hay barn on the ragged outskirts of Tasmania's home of rock. Recorded over two sleep-deprived, beer-soaked days, the album was ripped into existence through ad-libbed drum takes, cranked guitars and instinct. The band quite literally lived in the barn during tracking shat in the grass, slept among empty cans, and let the isolation and absurdity bleed straight into cheap microphones. It was deliberate. If something sounded too clean, they shat on it. If it felt too safe, they didn't give a shit, but it had to be nasty-safe. Tracked live, left bleeding and defiantly unpolished, Cut Up Rough was a snapshot of Mustang exactly as they were from conception to the end: fast, loud and rough as guts. After two decades of noise, broken gear, broken lives, broken ears and glorious excess, Mustang decided to call it a day in 2017 to the chagrin of nobody but themselves. No soft-focus farewell. No reinvention. Just one last blast of nuclear distortion and sweat. Cut Up Rough wasn't a gentle goodbye. It was a final middle finger from a band that never quite belonged and never wanted to.