Punk Rock Factory: The Absolute Wurst

By BRIAN GIFFIN

WHAT exactly is a punk rock factory, and what is it doing here? Well, obviously, the answer to the first part of that question is that Punk Rock Factory is a Welsh band who do punk covers of pop songs. Secondly, they are on a quick east coast tour of Australia right now.

If any band owes a career to COVID, it’s Punk Rock Factory. Before then, they were just four guys doing silly covers as a lark.

“It was a long time ago we started doing this,” explains singer and guitarist Peej. “It was about 2014 or something and we just started doing punk covers of pop songs for a laugh. It was a bit of a relief for us as we’d all been in bands previously and we weren’t doing anything. A mate of ours had a little recording studio and we’d go there one night a week and hang out and we threw a track together.”

Nothing much came of it, until the pandemic put them in front of a global audience online.

“It was during lockdown then, 2020 where everything picked up pace with everyone stuck at home, watching TikTok. All of a sudden everyone knew who we were and everything just started to snowball.”

To tie in with the new version of The Lion King in 2019, the band decided to cover “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King”. When they put it up on TikTok during lockdown, “it went mental,” Peej says. “We just got asked to do more, so we came to the conclusion that we should do more Disney and that snowballed into the idea of doing a full album.”

A Whole New Wurst featured Punk Rock Factory and a bunch of special guests reworking songs from Frozen, Moana, Cars, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Mulan and even Mary Poppins. Since then, they’ve done a second album of Disney songs, plus other albums featuring pop punk covers of songs from musicals, cartoons and arena rock songs from the 00s.

“We went for the obvious Disney stuff, the traditional stuff that everyone knows, for the first album,” Peej admits. “For the second Disney [A Whole New Wurst 2, natch] album, it was a little bit more analytical. We went down the road of checking which films were trending and which were getting the most views and which songs from those films were getting the most streams, and we played it that way with the second album.”

Their most popular track is not, as most, including the band, would suspect.

“The one that’s always on top [on all streaming platforms] is ‘How Far I’ll Go’ (from) Moana. Sometimes it’ll switch – ‘Let it Go’ will be up there as well, but ‘How Far I’ll Go’ is an absolute behemoth. The numbers never stop coming in for that song!”

“I mean,” he continues, “Moana is absolutely huge, isn’t it? You could say that for Frozen too. ‘Let it Go’ was the one we thought was going to be the biggest. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a lot of the songs for Moana, and everything that man touches turns to gold so I think we owe a lot to that guy!”

Disney songs, and film and theatre musical numbers in general, come across as deceptively simple tunes with their easily singable melodies and hooks. The songwriting process behind them, however, is far from simple and turning them into punk songs hasn’t exactly been easy.

“The Disney stuff in general has been difficult,” Peej breezily admits. “It’s all very much classically-scored for classic instruments and some of the parts are crazy. There’s key changes throughout these songs, so vocally it’s going from low to high and there’s big jumps through the songs. Moreso the more traditional Disney songs, the older films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, the music for those is pretty wild. The newer stuff, a lot of those are written by pop artists, pop writers, so it’s a little bit more mainstream but the older stuff can be a challenge.”

Punk Rock Factory has generally tackled any song that gets thrown their way by their growing fanbase. Every once in a while, however, they’ll come up against one that they haven’t been able to nail to their own satisfaction.

“‘Friend in Me’, from Toy Story, is one we’ve been asked loads for. We’ve tried it a couple of times and we can’t get to a point where we’re happy. I’m sure if we put it out, people would love it, but we can’t get it to a point where, as musicians, we’re happy with it.”

Whether they’ll ever need to add that to their repertoire or not, Punk Rock Factory has exploded since their Lion King cover first went viral. Since making their first ever live appearance at 2021’s Bloodstock Open Air festival, the band has been pulling in greater and greater numbers with every jaunt. Last year’s UK tour saw them filling 800 capacity rooms, and they’ll be playing sold out shows in front of 1500 or more on their next scheduled British tour in October, following their three Australian shows this week.

“We never expected it to happen,” Peej declares with a huge grin. “It was a bit of a laugh. That’s literally all it was and it’s turned out that it’s something that loads of people wanted.”

CHECK OUT PUNK ROCK FACTORY HERE.

PUNK ROCK FACTORY GO DOWN UNDER TOUR

21/9: Brightside, Brisbane

23/9: Stay Gold, Melbouren

24//9: Crowbar, Sydney