After chaos, a return to the Butterfly Effect

The alternative metal band is back with a new single — and a fresh small-batch ale.

Ben Hall, Clint Boge, Glenn Esmond and Kurt Goedhart. Picture: Kristina Wild

After raising a glass to toast the band he co-founded 20 years ago, Ben Hall has his eyes on a few sentences printed on the blue beer can in his hands.

“A great collaboration begins here,” reads the drummer. “We had an idea, a spark and a drive to create something new and exciting. Just like the seamless pairing of rhythm and melody, we’ve combined our love of music and booze to create a beer that goes all the way up to 11.”

On a Wednesday night in August at a bar in inner-city Brisbane, three members of alternative metal band the Butterfly Effect are sitting across a table from one another, laughing and celebrating a collaboration with local brewery Green Beacon to produce a small-batch beer named Amplified Ale.

As well, the quartet — minus bassist Glenn Esmond, who lives in Sydney — are toasting the release of their first new music together in 11 years. The song is named Unbroken, and its lyrics are taken directly from the band’s own tumultuous past.

The combination of Kurt Goedhart’s hard-edged guitar sound and singer Clint Boge’s distinctive sense of melody found national airplay on Triple J with its self-titled EP in 2001. The group was a forerunner to a subgenre of Australian rock that became popular in the mid-2000s and that included acts such as Karnivool, Cog and Dead Letter Circus.

Its last two albums reached No 2 and No 3 on the ARIA charts, respectively. But behind the scenes, dysfunction reigned for much of its history.

When Boge announced he was leaving the band in 2012, the Butterfly Effect undertook a national tour before the musicians went their separate ways. The three remaining members found another singer and released a single song before eventually calling it quits in 2016.

The new song, then, is a return to what the four original members have always done well together: pairing striking guitar tones and melodies with a rock-solid rhythm section, while Boge’s singular voice adds colour and character to complete the picture.

“That’s what Unbroken is about: going through all of that turmoil, and having relationships break down — not only with the band, but my marriage fell apart, and trying to explain to my kids why their parents aren’t together any more — and having the balls and the gumption when the opportunity was presented to say, ‘Hey, this is really important’,” Boge says. “It’s nice to not only have a break but to refocus, mature — and have kids and families — and come back and find out that what we had was actually really good. But now it’s better because the relationships have been strengthened through that (desire) to go forward.”

To its fan base, the story of the Butterfly Effect is one of squandered opportunity. If only those four young men could have sought counselling to address their communication problems, then perhaps they’d be working on their eighth great album rather than poking their toes in the water with a single song, to see whether they’ve grown up enough to put their differences behind them for a possible fourth full-length release.

That the singer and guitarist are having a beer and a laugh together is remarkable in itself, as this pair once went an entire six-week tour — around the release of second album Imago in 2006 — without speaking to one another.

For Hall — who Boge describes as the band’s “glue” and mediator — their chronic distance and dysfunction was troubling, for those two musical ingredients were central to its appeal.

“It’s always been that way,” the drummer says. “When he writes something,” he points at Goedhart, “and he sings,” he points at Boge, “that’s the only reason that people ever came to watch the band. It involves distorted, melodic guitar and a great vocal; it’s quite simple. If these two guys can get that magic again, then there’s nothing to stop the band.”

In the years since they last vis­ited a recording studio together, they’ve each been working as cover musicians or in the construction industry. That hefty dose of reality may help with mending fences for the greater good.

The band is frank about its concerns that the world may have moved on, for much has changed in musical tastes, trends and technology since the group released its third album, Final Conversation of Kings, in 2008.

There’s only one way to find out, though, and with its upcoming five-city tour — in mid-size theatres whose bars will stock the aforementioned ale — the four musicians are gearing up to give it another crack together.

Hall reads aloud the final sentence on the blue beer can stamped with his band’s name: “Amplified Ale is clean, crisp and dry with a refreshing bitterness, dry-hopped with subtle flavours of fresh grapefruit and tangerine. It will have you screaming for an encore.”

As the musicians call for another round, they’re also hoping that last bit is true of the audiences at these upcoming shows, too.

The Butterfly Effect performs in Adelaide on Friday, followed by Fremantle (Saturday), Brisbane (August 29), Sydney (August 30) and Melbourne (August 31).