Published
It all starts with an information vacuum. Very little has been written about GRUB, a five-piece from Fremantle, Western Australia, and they have released even less music. That is precisely why the impact is greater.
You discover them and you do not forget them. Five musicians on stage with a frontwoman who takes over the whole space: Matilda Beales, songwriter, lyricist and vocalist, now recovered from cancer. The band’s name suits them: dirty, organic, visceral.
Their sound is brutal. A perfectly executed collision of garage-punk, post-punk and dark-disco made for sweating in basements. Think of the rhythmic tension of Viagra Boys or IDLES run through the filter of a club at three in the morning.
“Shake It”, the third track and first preview from their self-titled debut album, which will be released on 9 October through Wing Sing Records. It is the definitive statement of intent.
According to Matilda herself, the song was conceived as “our offering to dark disco and to dance”, written under the influence of B-movie horror films. This is not a hedonistic invitation to dance; it is a physical necessity. Ekic’s bass hammers away like an anxious pulse, Bibby’s drums are dry and martial, and the guitars of Strachan and McDonald cut like rusty blades. Above all of it stands Beales. Her performance is the gravitational centre. She does not sing “Shake It”; she spits it out. With razor-sharp black humour and a contained rage and anxiety that verge on the theatrical.
If this is the standard of the first preview, GRUB’s self-titled album is shaping up to be one of the bombs of the Australian underground in 2026. A band that understands that twenty-first-century post-punk is not only listened to with your head down; it is danced to as well.
Remember the name. People will be talking about them.