Tropic Gold: “If someone has their darkness dampened by our music, we’re happy”

Since forming in 2018, Brit alt.metallers Tropic Gold have slowly built a name for themselves as they've built up an impressive sound made up of rock, electronics, metal and occasional moments of cool ambience. Fans of Bring Me The Horizon and Sleep Token will already love it (you just don't know it yet).

This Friday they release their new EP, What A Wonderful Experience, their first through Australian powerhouse UNFD. A super-confident statement, it sees the quartet proudly exhibiting their skill with pulling a spread of diverse sounds together, as well as the depth of their lyrical insights.

They've revved up for long enough, now's the time to meet them properly, as the band take us through five (of the many) reasons you need Tropic Gold in your life right now.

Metal, electro, punk, pop, house… there's no colour Tropic Gold would rule out of their palette. In the six tracks on What A Wonderful Experience, they stick their hands in at least a dozen different styles. Crucially, what comes out is one massive ball of energy that's less about what it sounds like as how hard it bounces.

"We're big fans of a niche opening that's been created by a playlist-driven generation, where songs can all have different influences and be at home together or in different playlists," they say. "Because we love writing different styles of music, from house to heavy rock, we're not afraid to go against the genre of other songs we've done.

"We will blast everything from heavy music to ethereal movie soundtracks," they continue. "We quite like it when people struggle to stick us in a genre, that's just reflective of where the music comes from. One day of listening to music in our studio can end up being anything from Bad Omens to Hans Zimmer to ABBA."

Is What A Wonderful Experience a boast? Sarcastic? A genuinely content thumbs-up about what they've done? Whatever you think, you're right. The title "summarises the multifaceted journey of life..."

"We're all floating through space on a rock and sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's euphoric," say Tropic Gold. "The title reflects the contrast between the highs and lows, the joy and despair, that we all encounter in our own ways. The EP delves into the moments of sheer brilliance and the instances of darkness that exist within us and the world around us. The title navigates and can be applied to the intricacies of human experience, be it a grateful or sarcastic tone, reminding us that even in the most challenging times, there is something strangely beautiful about the tapestry of existence."

The final single from the EP takes a good hard look at a problem that many face. It'll sound familiar to a lot of people reading the lyrics…

"In a generation of undiagnosed and mistreated mental health conditions, Maniac lays out how people often think they’re going insane and that they’re not normal," the band reveal. "There’s a constant struggle people live with, not knowing why they feel differently to others, and Maniac talks about the attempt to find the alternate inner version of yourself that feels hopeless."

The rest of the EP, like Maniac, has a heavy, relatable heart. Take Get Over It, in which doubt eventually shows it can be bested by hope. Eventually…

"Amongst the daily, cloudy torment of what feels like never ending noise, Get Over It comes from a place of seeing a glimpse of a version of yourself you want to be, like being reunited with a loved one," they say. "The chorus hooks onto the sense of 'I've been waiting for you', after not knowing whether you should bother anymore because it looks like that person might not turn up. Someone only needs to see a glimmer of hope to push them back into a more stable head space. God only knows how long it'll take."

Feel Okay, meanwhile, is about putting up a wall and pretending you're fine when you're not.

"The common response to, 'How are you?' is, 'I'm good, thanks,' whether or not you're actually good. Telling someone how you actually are nearly always feels like putting a burden on them, and it's not easy to move past that. This song goes into the feeling of someone actually noticing that you're lying about being okay."

On the EP's final track, DTTTH, they close with a look at longing for yesterday, and how that can hold back your tomorrow. Frustrating a topic as it is, it also comes with an unexpected sense of hope.

"DTTTH is about having a part of you that you used to love and losing that completely. It joins the feelings of losing a loved one, to losing that part of you that you loved. The feelings are near on the same, regret, remembering the times you were happiest, what would that version of you be doing now if they were here. People go through this every day and just sink into themselves behind closed doors, regret is a progression killer."

Of course, you don't need to be exactly on that wavelength and feeling lost to love Tropic Gold. But as well as being an absolute riot of fun live, if that actually helps pick someone up a few notches, that's the other, more important part of their job done.

"One of our goals has always been to bring people together and have them connect with us and each other," they say. "Whether that's 100 or 10,000 people, if we can help some lost or struggling souls feel they are a part of something and that they do belong, that's everything to us.

"Some people want to just bang their heads and dance and that is just as important to us because if people couldn't do that to our music we wouldn't be doing it right. We talk and think so much about how people are coping, and if even one person feels like they can listen to our music or come to a show and have their darkness dampened for that time, then we're happy."

What A Wonderful Experience is released on October 6 via UNFD

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