TONKIN PARK | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW

Tonkin Park write with the double consciousness of people who grew up on nu metal and stayed. The Perth band, made up of members in their thirties and forties, spent their formative years inside the primal screams and haunting melodies of Linkin Park, System of a Down, Deftones and Evanescence, and never quite left. What sets them apart is the second inheritance sitting behind that one. Their Filipino heritage plugs them into a deep pocket of the early 2000s metal genre still thriving on the other side of the ocean, in bands like Urbandub and Imbue No Kudos, a looping time capsule of nostalgia and power. Tonkin Park sit at that intersection with clear eyes, borrowing from both without becoming a tribute to either.

Their debut single Pressure was recorded with producer Japhet at ALL BARK NO BITE in the Philippines, and it started life with far more layers than it ended up with. The band pared it back until, in vocalist Mish's words, the song "just made sense." That instinct for release runs through everything Tonkin Park do. Pressure is a song about the artist trapped inside a person who hasn't given themselves permission to create, and putting it into the world was the exact thing the title describes. In the interview below Mish talks about the monstrous raging creature that guards the hurt inner child, why aggression is often just fear wearing armour, why she felt safer in a metal crowd than most other rooms, and what she'd want a first-time listener to feel by the end of the song.

TRACK REVIEW - Pressure

Pressure kicks off with panning guitars that hit like heavy rock vertigo, off balance in the best possible way. The riffs are on point, tight and confident, and there's a subtle backing vocal treatment drifting side to side with a radio-panning effect that quietly keeps you locked in.

The lead vocals are huge and squeezy, that specific compressed nu metal quality that suits the genre exactly right. Powerful, sitting right up front. Then the scream lands and punches straight through the back of the head. Some serious Roar has come out of Tonkin Park, and the song has fired me up, full of emotion and talent that pulled me in.

Nu metal exploded because it gave people permission to be vulnerable without sounding soft. Why do you think that emotional honesty still resonates with people more than twenty years later?

We're collectively ranging from our 30s to 40s in Tonkin Park. So as people who grew up in the 80s/90s and were navigating early/younger adulthood in the 00s era, we can all remember the impact that bands like Linkin Park, System of a Down, Evanescence and Deftones first had on us. Part of the appeal, I think, was this emergent foray into the world of the primal scream and rage expressed through extreme vocal techniques alongside those haunting melodies, shifting from pain to beauty. My theory (Mish, vocalist) is that having this extreme primal energy adjacent to those iconic, beautiful melodic arrangements created this unique experience for listeners of inciting both our rage and sensitivity at the same time. An appreciation for the monstrous raging creature that guards the hurt inner child, who lives inside all of us. I think that blend still resonates to this day, as established adults, because there's just so much to be angry about in these times, so much injustice, inequality and fear, and yet as humans who experience both loss and hope, we find beauty in the pain, regardless.

Tonkin Park draws from both Perth and the Philippines. Do you ever feel like you're creating a conversation between two music cultures rather than simply belonging to one of them?

Our band members are influenced heavily by beloved Filipino nu metal bands such as Urbandub and Imbue No Kudos. There's a deep pocket of the early 00s metal genre that is thriving in the Philippines, like a looping time capsule, so nostalgic and so comforting and, still, so powerful. Our band's first song 'Pressure' really pays homage to that genre, and I think the band's Filipino heritage contributed massively to that. We have some new band members who have joined us since with some amazing experience and we are excited for our sound to continue to evolve to include a more contemporary feel. So, in many ways, it feels like right now, we are having a conversation between the past and the present, which is a beautiful and exciting place to be. Music and cultural heritage are both aspects of life that constantly evolve over time. As a band, with those unique influences, we want to continue to evolve into "our" sound, whatever that is and will be.

Bands like Linkin Park and Deftones shaped an entire generation, but nostalgia can become a trap. How do you honour that era without becoming imprisoned by it?

I think as artists and appreciators of art, we are often highly sensitive people who feel and think deeply. Nostalgia is such a beautiful, heartfelt emotion, I like to think of it as being like a place that we can visit when we need comfort or reconnection with our roots, or a familiar home cooked meal that nourishes us when we're hungry. Sure, there could be a way to be "trapped" by nostalgia, musically. Like, is this a genre that audiences still resonate with? Is creating in this style adhering too much to a previously established script? Are we using a formula to avoid expanding into something new? Because Tonkin Park are a new band, we started with what we know and love. We are music fans and lovers first and foremost, we've all played in cover bands for years, because we are music nerds. I love the work of Rick Rubin, a music producer who strongly advocates that artists simply write what they love, and let the audience decide for themselves how to respond. It feels like we did that with our first song 'Pressure', we wrote something we love, that we can headbang to and replay on our work commutes. Our next song is already sounding different, because we love a lot of different sounds and styles. Hopefully we won't become imprisoned by what we love but instead encouraged and inspired to evolve by it. Like a safe base to explore from.

'Pressure' is a word everyone understands differently. When you were writing the track, whose pressure were you actually talking about, society's, each other's, or your own?

Actually, we've jokingly started saying 'no pressure' amongst ourselves every time there IS a sense of pressure about something! Turns out that there is quite a lot of pressure happening right now, post 'Pressure' release! There's the pressure to write the next song, pressure to be a good team and collaborate fairly and kindly so we can have longevity as a band, pressure to write something that we love but that also contributes something unique and new to the heavy music scene, pressure in the balancing of working and child rearing with making music. Artists face a lot of pressure in 2026, not only financially but also in terms of simply sharing music online, getting your music known and heard. Generating social media content creates unique pressures, let alone touring and merch and the logistics that go with that. There's also another kind of pressure that I think a lot of people who love music would be familiar with, the lifelong pressure of the creative person to simply create art. If you stagnate for too long, push the artist inside down, whether due to a sense of hopelessness or feelings of inadequacy or fear, then it's like an internal pressure cooker. The art wants to come out, the artist wants to express, but it isn't given permission. It starts to eat you alive from the inside, you slowly lose your colour, your vibrancy. Creating the song 'Pressure' was honestly like a release of that pressure, by letting the artist out. Releasing our song out into the world was beautiful. We could also talk politics and the climate of 2026 for minorities, you'll hear echoes of that in the lyrics from time to time. The audience is invited to overlay their individual experiences of their own pressures onto the song, let it mean for you, whatever it means. Just like we all did when we as a generation heard Linkin Park for the first time, the raw emotion spoke to us personally, regardless of what the original meaning was for the band. So often art is individually made but universally felt.

Heavy music has always been misunderstood by people outside the scene. What do you think metal fans understand about each other that the rest of the world often misses?

The beauty of being in the eye of the storm. The calm within the chaos. The pain inside the rage. Rage, despair, grief, fear, these are all emotions that demand to be felt. When we express them, we can move through them. When we repress them, we can become stuck. It's the reason why a memory from 10 years ago can still draw a tear, still generate a surge of emotion, let it out. Feel the surge. Let it heal. I often say to my friends who don't "get" heavy metal, I usually feel safe in a metal crowd (although maybe not in the centre of a circle pit! I nearly got kicked in the head at a Karnivool gig recently, WORTH IT). There's a sense of, like, most metal music fans will usually understand the concept of yin and the yang. They can be more in touch with the darker aspect of self that we all have, they've explored the shadow side that the world tries to curate and keep hidden. And because of that, I do wonder if they can step more freely into their generosity, their loving states, because they've integrated that darkness alongside the light. They often feel more whole and expansive to me, anyway.

Every great heavy band has a moment where chaos suddenly becomes beautiful. Is there a point during a Tonkin Park song where you feel everything finally locks into place, both emotionally and musically?

Yes, it's strange actually! For 'Pressure', we worked with a great producer in the Philippines, Japhet at ALL BARK NO BITE recording studio, who graciously took on board all of our different requests and ideas. After pilling up layers that excited us, we ended up stripping back, reducing, simplifying. There was a point in the song where we had stripped back yet another one of our original requests (I think it was a synth sound), and it was like, the song suddenly made sense. There was a shared feeling of "we've arrived". Not that the song was perfect, but that it was just… done. No further notes, it's how it needs to be. I don't think we've given any further thought to what we "coulda woulda shoulda" since, it's done. Next! It feels good.

Aggression is one of the defining sounds of your music, but aggression can come from pain, hope, frustration or love. Which emotion do you think sits underneath most of Tonkin Park's heavier moments?

There's pain, of course there's pain. They say that anger is a secondary, protective emotion, it arises to conceal and defend fear, hurt, anguish, betrayal, loss, grief… Wherever there is rage, there is also another emotion hiding underneath, taking shelter. Perhaps that's the next stage of Tonkin Park, reaching for the emotions underneath the rage. It feels like that could be where we are moving to next.

Your music feels nostalgic without sounding dated. Was there a conscious decision to bring the spirit of early-2000s nu metal into today's world, rather than simply recreating its sound?

It just happened! We knew we shared a love of nu metal, so I think this was a common meeting place for us as a band. The guitar riffs came in first from our amazing Marcus, and then bass, drums and the melody kind of flowed from there. The synths you hear are later additions, they really brought the song to life, creating an eerie, flowing feeling amidst the punchy sounds. Maybe we will make more early-2000s style songs, or maybe we won't. Right now, we are open to where the current carries us.

If someone had never listened to heavy music before and 'Pressure' was their introduction, what would you hope they discovered about the genre that they weren't expecting?

I hope that a listener can hear the spirit and the heart in the song. The resistance, the fierceness, the kind of energy of "your rigid expectations don't fit me" and that they would feel inspired by that, whatever that means to them. If they enjoy a dose of nostalgia and it takes them back to an early 00s nu metal playlist afterwards and resurfacing memories of screaming in their bedroom as a teen, then that's great too.

When people look back on this version of Tonkin Park years from now, what do you hope they'll say the band stood for beyond just making heavy music?

In many ways, we feel like a band that bridges things. We certainly bridge culture, being members of combined Filipino and English/Aussie cultures. We also bridge gender, so many metal bands of the past were all male, for various reasons. It feels great to be riding this tidal wave as an audience and a fan of enjoying phenomenal women in metal right now, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Poppy, MAPHRA, RORY, RinRin, there's a place for everyone here, is the atmosphere. We are also, as you say, bridging the early 00s nu metal and the contemporary alternative metal spaces. Also, as WA artists there's a sense of, you know, bridging the relatively remote WA to the rest of the states. Maybe in the future, we will be bridges to even more things, who knows!

The word 'resistance' comes up a lot around your music. What do you think is worth resisting in 2026?

Resist it all. Resist the grind. Resist living to work. Resist late-stage capitalism. Resist gender-based violence. Resist racism, sexism and any other 'ism' that means you believe that some human beings are more deserving of dignity, rights and opportunities than others. Resist giving up on your art and the things you love. Resist believing that this is all there is. Resist keeping yourself small to make others feel better, or to placate a sense of safety from your worst fears about life. None of us know for sure what happens in the next realm after we depart this life, why play small? "In the end… nothing even matters…" In a good way!

If Chester Bennington, Chino Moreno and Poppy all walked into your rehearsal room tomorrow, what do you think they'd tell you to stop doing?

Ummmmm…. Stop playing small? Don't hold back? Don't cut yourself down right as you start to grow? …Maybe? I probably think they'd tell us not to sweat the small stuff, not to argue, fight, find reasons to separate or distance ourselves from others. If any of them (living) want to email us directly for a pep talk, we are ALL ears (RIP Chester, we will love you forever).

Do you think heavy music heals people because it reflects their anger, or because it reminds them they're not carrying it alone?

Oh BOTH. Totally both. As fans of music, we know that when you love a band and you connect in with the fan group, you've found common ground, common love and common experiences. Including feeling the rage and the anger, which is empowering for the self, when expressed healthily and for the purposes of healing, not harming. Does anything beat putting on a Linkin Park song on a long car trip (or whatever band), and screaming it out together from the backseat?

You've built a band across different backgrounds and cultures. Has that diversity changed the way conflict and collaboration happen inside the band?

My immediate sense of the guys from Tonkin Park is that there is a pre-established cultivation of respect that has been earned. I have felt respected, encouraged and heard from day one with the guys. And I have seen their deliberate and considered communication styles that indicate "we want this to work". Everyone in the band loves music. Everyone in the band loves what we've made so far and none of us want it to go away. To maintain a long-term relationship (which is essentially what a band is), there's gotta be understanding and respect, as a minimum. It's got to stay formal to a certain level, we aren't family by blood, but we are chosen musical collaborators and friends. If we're going to keep choosing each other and creating the safety to grow and take risks, we've got to both express ourselves but remain collaborative, generous and understanding. From my experience, the Filipino culture really models that, being invited into a home warmly, remaining respectful and understanding that access to someone's inner world is a privilege.

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