Forest are a five piece post-rock group made up from the scattered remains of Almost a Square’s Kelly Montgomery (Guitar) and Samuel Jansen (Vocals & Guitar) alongside Salacious synth player Peter Bullis (Keys, Vocals), Odious bassist Kyle Ronaan (Bass) and random office worker Harley Davis (Drums).

Together the Quintet create a sound not unlike that of Thrice, Brand New and Moving Mountains, though there are hints of the members more hardcore and metal musical backgrounds scattered throughout certain tracks.

Forest will be making their debut, relaxing an E.P and seeing off founding member Kelly Montgomery at the “Meow Meow” night at Cairns German club on Saturday the 17th of Jan along with a host of other great acts including Jeremiah Johnson, Jobstopper and Ray Danes.

I caught up with Sam Jansen from Forest for a quick chat..

TM:- Why is Kelly Leaving?

SJ:- Kelly is going to Melbourne to chase his other dream; he wants to become the ‘Cat Whisperer’ well not really, but probably. Last time I checked he is heading to Melbourne to do Animal Studies and eventually become a cat himself. When he told us, we were gutted, speechless even. I think the first thing I said to him after he told us was “Jerk”, because insulting your friends after they’ve told you something like that is the easiest way to avoid any actual sign of caring.

TM:- Any news of a replacement? Are you looking for one?

SJ:- The plan at the moment is to get our current bassist Kyle (also the bassist in Odious) to move into Kelly’s position, I don’t know how many people are aware but Kyle is actually an awesome guitarist, Kyle is one of those musos that couldn’t find placement in a band as a Guitarist so he sucked it up and rocked the shit out of bass. As for finding a new Bass player? We imagine that is going to be a difficult fucking task because we don’t just want a boring ass bass player. If you listen to the two songs we’ve released so far you’ll notice that the bass doesn’t spend it’s entire time sleeping on root notes being boring, it has character and that’s not easy to find.

TM:- Soooo, whats with the “Meow Meow” stuff?

SJ:- Kelly’s only other love that isn’t music or AFL is cats, so after not much thought we titled the gig Meow Meow Night in honour of Kelly and his love for cats. I also saw this as an awesome opportunity to cover Cairns in cat posters and fill a room with cat lovers.

TM:- Where was the EP Recorded?

SJ:- The EP is being recorded at Pete’s house, he has a sweet studio out the back that is perfect for recording. We are almost done, just one song left and the whole thing should be ready and DIY’d before the gig on the 17th. We have called the EP Behaviours as not only does it work well with the multi-genre sound you will find on the EP, Behaviours was actually the name we were writing under before we decided on Forest.

Todd Macalpine

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