“I f*cken love the Hard-Ons!” – Eamon (The Chats)

“The Hard-Ons were – still are – amazing. Musically, but also for what they were. This multi-cultural band. They were fearless. Ray and Blackie always came to Dirty Three shows in Sydney early on, and I always felt that we were somehow aligned attitude-wise. They were awesome live, with that power that only a trio can have. They also wrote the best singles! Beyond that, they always did whatever they wanted. “
– Warren Ellis (Dirty Three/Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)

Cheersquad Records and Tapes are exhilarated to announce the forthcoming new album by Oz-punk tearaways the Hard-Ons, “I Like You A Lot Getting Older”

I Like You A Lot Getting Older will be the third album by the band’s current line-up of Blackie, Murray, Ray and Tim, and follows 2021’s Australian top 5 debuting I’m Sorry Sir, That Riff’s Been Taken and last year’s the Australian Top 30 debuting Ripper ’23. An exclusive limited edition green vinyl pressing (250 only, with different colour on the cover) will be available via the album’s UK distributor Forte.

The new album’s release will precede the band’s recently announced 40th Anniversary Australian tour (and coincide with their 40th Anniversary European tour), and the premiere of the feature length documentary on the band, The Most Australia Band Ever. Today’s announcement follows the release of the new single and video “Buzz Buzz Buzz”. It’s the first single from the Punchbowl band’s forthcoming long-player, their third album since co-opting You Am I’s Tim Rogers in 2021. Guitarist Peter ‘Blackie’ Black describes the song as “Our best collaboration so far. When Tim said ‘I wanna get a little left of centre with the melody on this,’ I was BLOWN away (but not surprised :-))” The video was shot live last month as Hard-Ons opened for Radio Birdman by Jonathan J Sequeira, director of the Birdman documentary Descent Into The Maelstrom.

It’s been a long and punk-rocky road for our heroes, who formed the band while still in highschool in the multicultural South-West Sydney suburb Punchbowl. Reflecting that multiculturalism, the core band (despite members come and gone) comprised three kids of East Asian, South Asian and Eastern European parentage – not your typical punk rockers of that or any other era. Weened on high energy rock’n’roll (Kiss!) and then the early punk and post-punk eras (with a focus on local Australian sounds, in particular the ’76/’77 punk of The Saints, Radio Birdman, Victims, Psycho-Surgeons and News, and the anarchic noise of The Birthday Party), the new group appeared on a Sydney scene that took itself fairly seriously. With one foot in the Ramones/Radio Birdman-influenced garage-punk scene and the other in the spikey-haired punk-inspired scene of the early ‘80s, the Hard-Ons found a common denominator of noise and energy and appealed to a young crowd who was open to anything. With their youthful and unforgiving band name, transgressive and hilarious graphics and diverse ethnicity, they also found plenty of resistance.

Following the release of their first EP in 1985, the Hard-Ons quickly began to build a large following. Not content to repeat themselves, new elements entered their sound, including thrash metal and psychedelia, which were previously unheard in Australian punk. Their unruly and un-stylised look, which soon came to involve shorts, thongs and bare torsos, became something of the look de rigueur in punk circles as the decade wore on. The Hard-Ons had become trendsetters and were welcomed with open arms in international punk circles.

In their original incarnation, the Hard-Ons shared bills with the likes of the Ramones and Nirvana and appeared on numerous Big Days Out. They scored a never-bettered 17 consecutive number 1’s on the Australian independent charts and in 1989 were the only Australian band still based in Australia to hit the top 5 in the NME charts!!

Despite a break-up, the formation of another band (Ray & Blackie’s other ongoing band Nunchukka Superfly – that band’s original line-up recently launched the long-lost album Nunchukka Superfly ’95 in August!) and, in Blackie’s case, a solo career, the Hard-Ons regrouped in the new millenium and found a whole new audience – kids who knew of their influence on subsequent groups like the Meanies and Frenzal Rhomb. New recordings ensued, and in 2018, by which time fans of another new generation of bands, including Clowns and Private Function were onboard, they undertook their 19th European tour, when they played the massive metal festival Hellfest, alongside Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Joan Jett. In 2021, the core pair of Ray and Blackie and “new” drummer Murray found themselves a new front person in the form of longtime fanboy, Tim Rogers of You Am I.

Over the years, the Hard-Ons have won the vocal support of artists like Dave Grohl, AC/DC’s Malcolm Young and Jello Biafra amongst countless others.