ARTICLES

Fresh Talent: Full Nelson

Author: Chris Leggett

Auckland's Full Nelson are of a particularly fine punk rock pedigree, the members schooled at Green Bay High alongside the likes of The Bleeders and Foamy Ed. With an (as yet untitled) six track EP on the way, produced by Cobra Khan's Milon Williams, the West
Auckland punk/hardcore act are surely one of our most promising prospects of the genre for 2007.

Their having already supported such international punk and hardcore legends as NOFX, Lagwagon, Terror, Most Precious Blood and Madball doesn't hurt either.

The Full Nelson sound straddles the line nicely between in-your-face hardcore aggressiveness and the punk pop melody, but vocalist/guitarist Max Hannan has a hard time describing the band's lyrical focus. Baxter is more than happy to field this one for him, however: "Girls and how much he hates his job."

Full Nelson consists of Dean Baxter, Max Hannan, Aaron Burton (vocals), Aaron Goddard (guitar) and Jimmy Goodfellow on drums. They played together for the first time at the birthday party of Bleeders' drummer King George in May 2004. It wasn't until immediately after a comprehensive nationwide tour supporting Blindspott on their 'End the Silence' tour at the end of last year, and making the appropriate contacts, that the boys decided to bite the bullet and record an EP.

"Without any real plans or anything, we were just like, 'Right, we're doing it next weekend'," explains Hannan.
"It was a good idea really," adds Baxter. "We had the songs really down and stuff."

The EP was recorded at The Lab in Auckland and engineered by Nathan Sowter. The Full Nelson is currently negotiating a label to release the EP, and is currently in talks with Deadboy Records (run by Bleeders' frontman Angelo Munro), and also Dean Cameron's (Cobra Khan) ElevenFiftyseven Records. They're also not ruling out the possibility of a self release in May.

They've commissioned animator friend Doug McFarlane, who worked on 8 Foot Sativa's Chelsea Smile video, to produce the sleeve artwork for the release. All of this, the boys hope, will contribute to a release that justifies a profile shift, and maybe even payment for their services.

"I'd like to get paid. Just once," jokes Hannan. "The majority of places you play, you end up paying to play. That's depressing."