The Mark Of Cain: The 25th Anniversary Of 'This Is This' and a New Era

Adelaide's own hometown heroes The Mark Of Cain are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their landmark album This Is This at Hindley Street Music Hall on Saturday 21 November. Alongside a selection of This Is This classics, they'll perform fan favourites while also debuting brand-new material as they prepare to record their sixth album, their first full-length release since Songs of the Third and Fifth in 2012.

"The reason we did this is mainly we just wanted to get out there, plus, because of me coming out," says vocalist Josie Scott, in reference to her decision to come out as transgender earlier this year.

"Let's just fucking get this over and done with and let people understand that nothing's changed when we play. The other thing was, we've got new songs that we really want to play as well, and road test them."

Although This Is This was written 25 years ago, the band can still remember where they were when they wrote the songs. Revisiting the songs in rehearsal has been a reminder of what they accomplished. 

"Sometimes we do look at it and go, musically, how the fuck did we write that?" questions bass guitarist and Josie's brother Kim Scott. 

"Almost in awe, like, 'my God, how did we do that with that?'..."

"Why the fuck did we do that?" Josie laughs.  

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This Is This was co-produced by Gang Of Four lead guitarist Andy Gill. Josie remembers travelling to the UK to work on a number of those songs with Gill and it being a major moment for her. 

"I'd been such a fan of the Gang Of Four when I was younger. Andy Gill was in one of the bands that I just absolutely worshipped. So to work with him was fantastic. It was just back in the day when things had been pretty good for us. Ill at Ease was a very, very strong album for us, and we'd struggled a bit since that, '96, '97, '98 with having a drummer that was solid. At that point John Stanier [former drummer and Tomahawk and Battles member] entered the schema; there were a few times when he was over when we were touring and we were rehearsing or jamming on some songs and some I'd already written and he just came and helped finish that album off."

"It was pretty good, it was the early 2000s, everything was in its infancy. iPhones didn't exist yet, thank god. What a simpler time it was," Josie remembers longingly. 

"I was saying the other day, if you're going to go back in time, you would not go back in time to kill Hitler. You would go back in time to kill the people who invented social media and the internet, and you'd come back to the future and go, 'Oh my god, look at it, it's like the 1950s'." 

It's been 12 long years since their last album, Songs of the Third and Fifth, and the band anticipate new material will be officially released in 2027. So with new music ready to go, what does new The Mark Of Cain sound like? 

"Our manager, Tim, listened to some of the tracks that we're demoing. We've got about eight pretty well in final form, with maybe some lyrics to come on a couple of them," Kim reveals.

"Tim sort of listened to them and said, 'Wow, sounds like mid-'80s to '90s', which I don't know if that's particularly accurate, because I think it's kind of…I wouldn't say it's modern, because we're just gonna always play what we like, but it's not too far from our standard kind of songs. I don't know if a couple of them maybe could have easily gone on This Is This or Ill At Ease, I reckon. So, yeah, it's not going to be wildly different. There's a couple of others that have been written of late that are a little bit different.” 

"Eli [Green, drummer] has brought along some of his songwriting ability," Josie shares. 

"He's got a very good, solid background. Not only in his own bands – and also as a multi-instrumentalist – drums is just one of the things he's good at. He's one of those people. He's also been with us since he was like 21 and has had these formative 12 years. He also gets it, so he's like, 'Oh, I've written a few songs and I've written something'. [We] bring it in, listen to it, and it's like, ‘Wow, okay, yeah, that's us', and it has a little bit of him on it. But by the time we also work on it, it just becomes this amorphous The Mark Of Cain song." 

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Green joined the band by chance after – of all places – Josie went to her doctor's daughter's music recital at TAFE and unexpectedly ended up scouting their longest serving drummer to date. 

"She was finishing her music diploma and I went along to it. I saw this kid come up and play this really complicated drum thing to this very odd syncopation to this electronic-type music. I was like, 'Fucking hell, he's really good'. I thought 'I'm gonna collar that guy, and I'm gonna ask him if he can help out and rehearse with us'. Because at that time it was still John Stanier, but he [was] away and we were trying to rehearse. 

"Then I found out that he was my doctor's daughter's boyfriend. So, we're weirdly connected. I just said, 'Hey', who I was and he'd never heard of the band. But he was like, 'Yeah', and he turned up. He was so together, he'd already listened to everything, he had everything sort of mapped out on sheet music. I kid you not. Walked in, put it down there so he could play along to some of our complicated stuff. Immediately both Kim and I were blown away."

"When he walked in and asked for a music stand, we thought, 'Fucking hell'," Kim laughs. 

"Then he corrected Josie on how to play 'Point Man'."

"That was his first mistake," Josie jokes.

"The fact he survived..." Kim laughs. 

Catch The Mark Of Cain performing at Hindley Street Music Hall on Saturday 21 November. Tickets on sale at moshtix.com.au.