est. 1976 – dec. 2026
The Scene
Is Dead
The Classic Era, the Substation, and the case that the scene needs infrastructure, not another industry pipeline.
Two years ago I walked into the Woolloongabba Substation knowing nobody and walked out an hour later having met everyone who would matter to me for the next two years. That doesn't happen anymore. And every single person with the platform to say it out loud has either signed with the Broncos, retired into a law degree, or pivoted to selling "industry insights" to teenagers on TEDx.
So I'm saying it.
It's May 2026, and I'm done pretending the scene is fine. It’s dead. I joined a little over two years ago, which puts me at the tail end of what I'll call the Classic Era of the Brisbane underground music scene, roughly 2021 to 2024. I know that sounds like a big thing to say, naming an era like I'm writing some Wikipedia entry, but if you were there you know exactly what I'm talking about.
The Classic Era was when Kaleb Collings, fourteen years old, sat in his bedroom and said fuck it and started Casualty Records because no proper venue would book his band Absolution and the scene needed somebody to do something. It was when Ixara Dorizac, also fourteen, founded Antidismal because no venue would book her either. It was when George Roberts, fifteen, founded Project Punk because the bookers wanted commercial acts and the scene wanted the real shit. The whole thing came out of teenagers refusing to wait for permission, the same way that fifty years earlier The Saints had refused to wait when they boarded up a brick-smashed window at 4 Petrie Terrace and painted "Club '76" over it to make it official. Every wave of this scene starts with one person who decides they don't need anyone's signoff. That's the lineage.
It was a community. Not a brand. Not a hashtag. Not whatever Antidismal is currently pitching itself as on their new website. A community is when you walk into a room and the people are there because they want to be there, not because they want to be seen being there. If you had a thing, photography, jamming with your mates in a shitty school rehearsal room at lunchtime, writing reviews and doing interviews, you found your people. While everyone in your daily life thought you were a bit weird for caring this much about bands no one had heard of, the scene was where you could become a fucking legend.
You know what the scene actually was? It was getting a text from Arran McKenzie asking where you were and to come down to Spring Hill Hall for a gig, while you were already in the Valley having just finished some English narrative assignment in the back room of a community space and waiting for copies of your zine to print from the laser printer some grandad donated in 2009, then walking over to the Valley Metro Karl's Jr for a greasy gormless feed and noticing Tani in her sunglasses and her Japanese-inspired gothic kinda style just out there, and texting her, and the two of you sitting having a chat about the gig you were both about to walk to round the corner, then rocking up and finding a dodgy dance class still in the hall having gone overtime, and Java of Bubblegum Haircut and George of Shock Value taking turns jumping off the tiny wooden stage and landing on a cushion the class forgot to pack up like they were doing the long jump at the Tokyo Olympics, and old Cliff being there because Cliff goes to every gig full stop and Cliff doesn't even play, and Arran being so fucking drunk he could barely play his own songs so David covered both lead and rhythm guitar, and George smearing butter on the doorknobs before Heavy Liquid came on and then walking out of the kitchen with mayonnaise on his face like Iggy Pop, and Jackson Moore from Pimp throwing hardcore dance moves at a gig that wasn't even hardcore, and Tani taking a photo of you and Arran together that looked like it was from someone's birthday party, and thinking, somehow, that this was how it was going to be for the foreseeable future.
It wasn't. As it turns out.
Plate 01 · xeroxI checked Antidismal's website the other day. The original one, the one for the all-ages gigs at AHEPA Hall and Paddington Hall. Expired. Non-functional. The new one is something else entirely. Antidismal in 2026 pitches itself as a "youth-led, culture-forward creative business" that's "expanding into the educational space" with a new initiative called Sound Riot, "designed as a bridge between culture and industry" and offering "mentorship and industry insights" to "young artists" who want to "navigate and reshape the music world on their own terms." Direct quotes. From their site. Right now.
That's not a record label. That's a TEDx pipeline. The Antidismal that booked Sunday Service and Phantasm Street is gone. Casualty Records' archive is offline. Project Punk pulled its own rock-and-roll suicide back in 2024. Gormless Records did one last run before the community halls jacked their fees so high that even Arran and Johnnie couldn't keep it going, and now Arran's deep into a law degree and saying in interviews that rock and roll is dead. SkatePUNK isn't at a skatepark anymore. The Woolloongabba Substation banned gigs. The Albion Peace Centre, Paddington Hall, Ithaca Hall, the venues that actually mattered, are either gone or hostile. Kaleb's trying out for the Broncos.
What's left is better than nothing. More gigs than this time last year. Not a total drought. But a lot of those gigs are run by corporate community orgs or by interstate touring bands who play "all-ages" shows to a crowd of art school dropouts in their late twenties. Different faces every time. Which is great if you measure scenes by foot traffic. But it means nobody knows anybody. Strangers passing through a room. Nobody coming home having met ten new mates. The connective tissue is gone.
It's a bit weird, realising I'm now one of the people who has to carry this thing. I won't pretend it doesn't feel good. But it also hits different when fourteen-year-olds at their first gig have never heard of Casualty Records and don't know who Kaleb Collings is and don't realise that the scene has a history they're standing on top of.
When I interviewed Arran for issue 11, he was ranting about 4ZZZ playing pay-to-play interstate bands instead of supporting local kids, and he said: "they need to start listening to children. The youth are the new torchbearers." That's the line. Not me calling myself one. Arran. Who started Gormless, who taught me what The Saints actually did, who was the first adult apart from my parents who took my passion for music seriously. Arran saying the people who keep this thing alive are the kids who refuse to wait.
What the scene needs is infrastructure. Not a directory. Not an arts grant. Someone listing the gigs. Documenting; writing about the bands. Distributing the history before it expires off another dead website. Demonstrating; showing the new kid at their first show who to talk to and when the next one is. The boring, unglamorous, unpaid work of being the connective tissue between the people who actually give a shit.
That's what Breakbone is. The Big Break was the first gig I ran myself, in April, where for a few hours it felt like 2023 again. May Metal Mayhem at Coorparoo Hall, where Rupture and three other metal bands played, was the first time in months a gig actually felt like the scene. There's more coming. Come find me. Send a DM. You've already seen what I do.
Are you mad? Properly mad? Mad like Kaleb was when he started Casualty Records? Mad like Project Punk was back in 2023? Mad enough to be a DOER and not someone who let it DIE?
Do you want it, THE SCENE, more total and radical than anything that we can yet today even conceive?
If you are, rise up and let the storm break loose!
I don't care if you're in a band that wants a slot. I don't care if you've got gear that's gathering dust in a garage. I don't care if you've got nothing but the fact that you'll actually turn up. If the music means something to you, YOU are the scene and the scene needs YOU!
From the Breakbone back catalogue, re-set piece by piece. More from the archive ›