"Work Sucks, I Know," Dead Mall Deliver Cautionary Tales On New Album SUPERLIMINAL
“Ruairi don't read but he sure loves movies”
SUPERLIMINAL and Beyond: Dead Mall’s DIY Road to a New Heavy Sound
There’s something unmistakably electric happening in Newcastle, Australia right now, and Dead Mall are sitting right at the center of it. The band’s debut album SUPERLIMINAL lands as a loud, restless, genre-scrambling statement from a group refusing to sit in one lane. Across its runtime, Dead Mall tear through hardcore, alt-rock and power-pop — stitching it all together with the kind of unfiltered energy that only comes from a band building a world entirely on their own terms.
Lyrically, the record unfolds like a fever dream set in corporate purgatory. The songs orbit a single character — a burnout in a suit, crushed by ambition and swallowed by the grind — who eventually snaps and spirals into a hyper-violent, almost comic-book level meltdown. As frontman Ruairi Burns puts it, the themes can be summed up in four words: “work sucks, I know,” though their interpretation is far more hectic than the familiar punchline suggests. The result is an album that feels both cathartic and cinematic, a 90s-tinged cautionary tale of greed, labour, and the strange places a person’s mind can go when they’ve finally had enough.
Part of what makes SUPERLIMINAL hit so hard is how deeply it reflects the band’s DIY heartbeat. Guitarist Darcy Long engineered and mixed the entire project, while Joe Willis arrived to the studio with a pile of wildly varied demos — riff-heavy bruisers, pop-rock detours, left-field rhythmic choices — that the band gradually transformed into something cohesive, loud, and unmistakably theirs. Recording sessions stretched from Durham Studios to Sawtooth Studios to Darcy’s house, where late nights and endless experimentation shaped the album’s identity. SUPERLIMINAL is world unto itself, loud and unapologetically over the top, built by a band who sound like they’re having the time of their lives burning everything down.
Here’s the latest edition of our Nice To Meet You series, featuring Dead Mall frontman, Ruairi Burns.
What was the process that led you to writing your first song?
I remember everything. Just kidding, my memory is basically potting soil at this point, but I do remember being asked to join the band. The pubs had only just re-opened in 2020, and I saw the Split Feed dudes (Adam, Joe, and Brad’s first band) out in the beer garden. Our previous bands had toured the east coast of Australia in early 2017 (a story for another time), and Joe mentioned he was working on new material since Split Feed had finished. I was very interested. I always liked the attention to detail in their songs, plus I liked hanging out with them. I told him, “If you ever need a singer…,” and I think he had the same thing in mind. Joe sent me one track, I recorded some demo vocals at home to test out the fit, but I sang the whole thing. I didn't realise he wanted to do a hardcore band — boy was my face red. Five years later, that song ended up being “Debt,” and sounds nothing at all like the first version I sent through. After that, we started working on material for the first EP.
Do you remember the first time you shared your music online — and what that moment meant to you?
RB: Looking at the Dead Mall catalogue, I had no idea it was “Cough It Up.” The one that really felt important to me was “Eyes,” the second single from our debut EP. All this time later, I still love playing it live. I shot the music video for “Eyes,” so I always felt connected to it. I hadn't shot anything on that scale before. I'd done a couple of videos for Jacob The Rock Band (my other band), plus a few “found footage”-style music videos that I ripped straight from VHS tapes. But this time I got to put my director’s hat on, as well as my giant lemon-head hat. Putting out “Eyes” felt personal in that way, and made me want to dive further into video work, so that one means a lot.
Was there a specific artist or moment that made you realize you wanted to make music?
My first hardcore show was the Boys of Summer tour in January ’06. I got my first mic grab to “Dogfight” by Evergreen Terrace and from that moment, I knew I wanted to sing in bands and make heavy music. I also got hit in the head by a dude jumping from the speakers on a boogie board — it was awesome. I started going to local shows a lot more, but back then there were a lot more all-ages shows. Once I saw people my age starting hardcore bands — shout out Crucial Dudes (members of Secret World & Succ) — I did the same thing. Unfortunately, there's not much left of K.O. Kick on the internet, but it will always be a part of me. In truth, it was the local scene and the friends that I made in it that made me want to make music.
What’s an album or song that still reminds you why you do this?
I still live in the mid-2000s, so please forgive me. But there was a lot of good heavy music then, especially heavy music that blended genres effortlessly. These days, I still go back to those albums when I'm thinking about Dead Mall. Sing The Sorrow (A.F.I.) was huge for me. I always push that album onto the band. It has its roots in hardcore but pushed the genre into somewhere new and exciting — not that I comprehended it at the time. A Types by Hopesfall is another album like that. I still play it from start to finish all the time. But when I'm in the mood for something heavy and sexy, I go to Introducing… by Bars. I don't think Bars were as popular as the other bands they played in, but that album has stuck with me for a long time.
What’s a sound, sample, or texture you’re currently obsessed with?
Speaking of heavy sexy… but genuinely, that's been the mood going forward. Bars has it, The Big Dirty has it, being hit by a boogie board has it, and Dead Mall are trying our best to have it.
What inspires your approach to writing lyrics?
I personally write visually a lot of the time. I like things to come across as if you were in that particular environment or experiencing that feeling. It comes both from my obsession with movies and television, as well as listening to other singers that do the same thing. Saves The Day quickly comes to mind. For instance, the first verse of “Under the Gun” is essentially a recipe for a bomb — but the kind of bomb you'd find in a book like Homemade Explosives for Dummies.
For SUPERLIMINAL, our debut record, we all wrote lyrics throughout the album, but it always felt like we were writing from the perspective of one person.
The way I see it, he's a Ferrari-driving desk clerk who, after years of climbing the corporate ladder and being stepped on every step of the way, becomes inhabited by a foreign (possibly alien) entity and goes on a city-wide rampage. Not for the money — but for the thrill. It's a cautionary tale of corporate suburbia, greed, labour, and a person pushed too far. Oh, and it's all set in the early ’90s.
What is something you're proud of?
I don't want this to come across as a brag… but we heard through a friend, who heard through another friend, that one of the dudes from Fall Out Boy loves Dead Mall. Take that as you will, but that friend is very credible (we swear). We all love Fall Out Boy — Split Feed essentially tried to be Fall Out Boy — and I actually burnt copies of Take This To Your Grave for my entire Year 7 class. That’s probably the coolest thing that's happened to any of us music-wise.
What’s a recent performance, film, or book that left a mark on you?
Ruairi doesn’t read, but Ruairi sure loves movies. There was something about the themes of The Hidden (1987) that I plan to capture inside a Dead Mall song. I also watched Amy (the documentary) for the first time recently, and that one really resonated with me as someone who loves music and hates bullshit.
What’s your greatest challenge right now — and how are you working through it?
The best and hardest thing about Dead Mall is the fact that we swerve into a lot of different genres. The band started with intentions to be a hardcore band, but we’ve since dipped our toes in many different styles — which is incredibly satisfying from a creative perspective but can sometimes make it hard to find a bill that fits. We’re often too heavy for the rock/indie crowd, or a little too soft for the heavy crowd. No one wants three-part harmonies while they’re spin-kicking someone in the pit — and we think that’s perfectly fair enough.
In saying that, we’ll probably just keep doing that and see what happens.
What's one piece of advice you’d give to artists just starting out?
Start bands with your friends, make the music you want to make, and learn skills from the people in your community. If I didn’t see another band printing merch before their show, I wouldn’t have started doing it myself for Dead Mall. DIY or do it together.
What’s the biggest goal you have for your music at this moment?
Although we all love it — it's really, really fucking hard to be in a band. I don’t think people realise how much time, energy, and money goes into it, and we’ve all been through the ups and downs in other projects (as well as this one) before. The biggest goal for us is that we keep it as sustainable and enjoyable for as long as possible, so we all want to keep doing it.
We do everything in-house — from mixing and recording, to our PR and marketing, and even our merch — so we have complete control over it all, and we will likely keep it that way (unless some label offers us 1 million dollars — then we’re more than happy to sell out straight away).
We’ll just keep making what we want to make and playing shows, and whatever comes with that is a bonus.
Follow Dead Mall on Instagram at @deadmall
