A friend group. A gig. A movement.
Thursday, the 16th of April. We were sitting down that shallow hallway off the corner of P Block. Me, Jonas, Alex, Andre, Nash, and a few others who were here. To be where shit happens.
Alex was halfway through telling us how he and Jonas pulled up to a McDonald's drive-thru and one of them got out and started yanking on the service window like a maniac just to clock the worker's face. Nash is telling us the story of how he took a photo of himself and sent it to a bunch of people to show off how handsome he thought he was. Before we even got the chance to answer he pulled out a utterly biblical AI deepfake someone made of him. Someone made a cannon from carrot sticks and a yoghurt punch; the reactions were all we needed. It felt like the shit you got up to at gigs with your mates, waiting for the next.
Band. Lightning Fuze has Alex on guitar. Some might say he's the best player in the school; lessons from a young age, classical lineage, even his sister plays. Andre on second guitar with the rockstar look. Their drummer goes to JMC and dances in Bollywood productions. Penut on bass.
I told them straight: Dork Diaries are better. We just are. Technical chops don't make a room mosh. The proof's in the pit.
That's why we're putting on the gig.
The Battle
Coorparoo Hall. Saturday, May 23. The Battle of Brispunk. Dork Diaries vs Lightning Fuze for the title of the best Brispunk band, with Perpanic and a surprise secret band as the special guests who make the night legitimate.
Same suburb that birthed Ixara of Antidismal. Same air Violent Soho came up in. Same patch of ground The Jungle Giants stood on before they were on every speaker in every share house in the country. Same school prac rooms No Clue jammed out in before we all ended up having a clue about them. We're not pretending we discovered fire. The fire's been here the whole time. Somebody just had to light it up again.
You haven't been to one of our parties. You should have been to one of our parties. Alex's house, last term, everyone crammed into a backyard. Someone showed up with a fucking aviation light to ref a boxing match between two of the lads. Exchange students walked through the door and I ended up in a room with two French girls having a good and proper conversation about the fucking meaning of life.
Every time someone new came in we jumped and screamed like it was a FEIN function. Nobody bossing anyone around. Nobody making anyone feel left out. The only thing that decided whether you were the wallflower or the talk of the town was what you thought of yourself.
That's the energy we're bringing to the scene. It needed it a long time ago.
What Brispunk Is
Right now the scene is run by community organisations putting on gigs that feel like a corporate teambuilding exercise. Half of them are at Redcliffe; the bumfuck middle of nowhere. Nobody hears about it and nobody can even get there. Barely any all-ages gigs in the city where the all-ages gigs are supposed to be. Bands that all look the same, sound the same, act the same because they're all trying to sound like Nirvana or some pop starlet they've never met. Landfill indie. Beige. The industry got the message and hung up the phone.
Brispunk is what comes out the other side.
It's the sound of you and your mates taking the piss in a room with no adults. It's madferit energy except it's the main event. It's every Brisbane band that doesn't sound like every other Brisbane band. Different sounds. Different songs. Same spirit.
Oasis didn't sound like Blur. Blur didn't sound like Pulp. They all came up in the same year and they all got called Britpop. We're called Brispunk because we come from Brisbane and we share the work ethic to do it ourselves, fund it ourselves, own it ourselves.
DIY or die. Same thing Kaleb Collings was doing when he founded the scene we love. Same thing Project Punk and Gormless Records carried on. We've done the dreaming. We've done The Big Break. It's time for The Battle.
We want fame. We want money. Our music deserves both. Bands who say they don't want either are lying to make themselves feel righteous. The audience can smell it from the back of the room.
You know the story. Fifty-five people in a room that felt alive in a way no gig has felt in a year. That was the breakthrough. The Battle of Brispunk is the follow-up. What happens when you've proved you can do it once and now you do it bigger.
Live. Raw. Direct. No mixing desk, no light show, no bullshit. Drums, amps, voices, bodies. You came for sound design, you're at the wrong gig. You came to feel something, you're home.
Meet Dork Diaries
Jett and Andy on vocals. Jett doesn't sing. He gets in there like Chester Bennington. Andy's the arty one, the guy sketching in class, the guy who actually read up on the culture before he resonated with it. Yin and yang. Two heads of the same hydra, both unforgiving.
Jonas on drums. Doesn't talk when he doesn't need to. When he does it's because he has something important to say. Likeable, in tune with the room, locked in when he's locked in. Keith Moon energy with the rhythm, pushes the song forward instead of just sitting on it.
David on bass. Quiet professional. Knows what to play, plays it, doesn't make a scene. The thump that sits behind your sternum.
Me on guitar. I lock the rhythm so the vocals can soar. Wall of sound. That's the role.
We weren't always Dork Diaries. We were Creambait first: Jett and Andy's anything-goes lunchtime band with a rotating cast of Andre, Alex, Nash and Rueben swapping instruments like it was a buffet. Sometimes Jett was on drums. Sometimes the band was basically backing the Fuze. It was fun and it was nothing.
Meanwhile me and Jonas were jamming in the room next door. First time we played together we just locked in. No talking required. We just knew what to play.
Eventually Creambait landed on Jett and Andy out front, David on bass, Jonas on drums, Alex on guitar to fill the gap. They got songs down. Then Alex realised his real band needed him, so like Dave Mustaine he dipped at the wrong time. They needed someone to lock the rhythm down. Jonas pulled me in. First jam, we had a sound. Jonas said we'd invented a new genre. I said it was hardcore.
Hardcore is just the word.
We changed the name because Creambait was the old version. Dork Diaries is who we are now. Same lads. Different beast.
Meet Lightning Fuze
Alex on vocals and guitar. Brazilian background, classical lineage, family portraits on the wall of him and his sister holding their guitars. The most technically gifted player at our school. The band is his big fat baby and it's a good baby.
Andre on second guitar. The rockstar look without trying. The kind of guy who makes you put your guitar down and reconsider your life.
Matthew on drums. Goes to JMC. Dances in Bollywood productions. Absolute machine.
Penut on bass. Picked up, locked in, doesn't ask questions.
Influences: Creed and Metallica. Alex calls it 'good boy music' because he writes songs about his life and he reckons his life is happy. I don't know what he's on about. The lad throws Project X-grade parties. Maybe he just hasn't entered his emo phase yet.
Lightning Fuze is the Blur to our Oasis. Same scene, same lads, different sound. Only one of us closes the night.
The Special Guests
Perpanic. Gold Coast-based hardcore legends. They're the guys who live and breathe hardcore and blow the fucking roof off and have proven time and time again that they know what to do and how to generate insane crowd energy. They make this legit.
Another secret special guest to be announced soon. They're the band who were there for the rise and fall of the scene and are now part of The Battle. They're the band who made us know that a scene even existed. They're the band that showed us the way.
Both bands are part of the lineage and part of the launch. The Battle of Brispunk doesn't happen without them on it.
See You There
Saturday, May 23. Coorparoo Hall. Doors at 6. Four bands. The Battle. Our scene's Knebworth.
The reason we're doing this isn't complicated. The talent at our school has no business being stuck in a prac room. The scene we love has no business being run out of nonexistent venues in suburbs nobody can get to. The bands worth seeing have no business being supported by bands trying to sound like other bands. Somebody had to put it on. Turns out it's us.
Brispunk '26.
Loud. Proud. Ours.
ARE YOU MADFERIT?
From the archive. Gig manifesto · 23 May 2026 · carried verbatim.