On the Rise
HEADSEND

Just a few years ago, lead singer Maynard James Keenan took to Instagram to explain his selection process when he recruited Acid Helps, Blonde Redhead, and Brass Against for their 2022 Fear Inoculum US tour run. 

"The approach or criteria I usually take when it’s my turn to choose an opener, is Diversity,” Keenan wrote. “No point in choosing something similar to us. Most are only here for the headliner anyway. But for those with open hearts and minds, I choose something I feel is compelling in its own way.”

Fast forward to 2025, and their ethos remained the same when selecting acts for their Australian tour in December. This time around, their search took them to the southeastern coastal town of Byron Bay, where they discovered rock trio HEADSEND. 

At the time, the band only had two songs to their name. “Still today, it’s a shock to even think back at that. We played with Tool?” founder, singer, and guitarist Rasmus King muses. “If you told me that when I was younger, I would have been like, what are you talking about?” 

It was an understandably surreal, whirlwind month for the trio — formed by Rasmus, his brother Kyuss King on bass, and their schoolmate Bon Soric on drums — who also found themselves opening for AC/DC at Suncorp Stadium. “It took two weeks to actually register that we had done that. I didn’t ever think that it would end up being this way, but it was amazing,” Rasmus reflects. 

When I speak to the band, they’re just over a week shy of releasing their debut EP, Angel Glands, but they’re already back in the studio gearing up for the next project, reflective of a restless energy that exists at the heart of the band’s formation. While HEADSEND formed in 2024, Rasmus had been sitting on songs for much longer. “I started making songs about three or four years ago,” he tells me. “I didn’t think they were anything worthwhile, but we just wanted to start jamming. And I’ve always wanted to be in a band.”

“We would always jam together at home,” Kyuss adds. “Rasmus came up with the songs and we realised we needed a drummer. When Bon came along, it was just a perfect fit.” 

Having built a fluid rapport with one another, the trio threw themselves into a heavy sound saturated with 90s-grunge nostalgia, and the pure vigour of punk music, which they attribute to those early moments of listening to bands such as Violent Femmes and Ramones in the car. That early exposure made an impression on their appreciation for gritty and “authentic, man-made” sound. 

However, they are adamant about not wanting to be labelled as just a 90s guitar rock band. Kyuss notes that he’s drawn to stoner rock, and Rasmus expands his interests into folk music, the work of Jackson C. Frank, and Joni Mitchell. “We don’t want to get caught up in an era, we want to make sure we don’t just get stuck as a 90s-influenced band,” the trio agree. “We like newer stuff, too. And we all have different tastes.” 

Their eclecticism is observed across Angel Glands. It’s heavy music, contained within five songs coming in at eighteen minutes, but each track possesses a feeling vibe, as the band note. Opener “Stove” builds on a stoner metal-esque drone of static, stretched notes, with Rasmus’ vocals escalating to a more raspy, raw delivery, as an immediate example of the band’s range. “Do Do” balances the collection of songs out as a moderately lighter midpoint with a swaying, pop groove in its instrumentation, while closer “Chugg” is a dense number with an industrial, dredgy core. 

The variety in the band’s heavy palette comes from sticking with what they know, jamming, rather than committing to a calculated direction. “We jam a lot, and that’s what it comes down to,” Kyuss says. In addition to their consistent jamming, their organic process is also attributed to Rasmus’ unquenchable love for writing songs, which serves as a daily practice for him. Lyrically, inspiration also comes spontaneously for Rasmus, who will often derive inspiration from what he’s reading or thinking about at the time. But he attributes his ability to articulate those moments into songs to none other than Leonard Cohen. 

“He’s someone who I really admire, lyric-wise and musically, but I think his lyrics are amazing,” Rasmus says. The admiration runs so deep that the title Angel Glands comes from a Cohen lyric, specifically from "The Master Song", one of his earlier recordings. There was no particularly serious undertone to this choice, Rasmus tells me; he just loved it, thus making it a perfect, honest fit as the title for the band’s introductory body of work. 

Led by authenticity and an improvisational drive, HEADSEND would go on to ensure that this same energy was replicated on Angel Glands. Having already played stadiums alongside rock legends, toured with steady risers Wunderhorse, and played over forty shows across Australia, they established an undeniable live presence that would inform their opening statement. 

Establishing that presence was something of an independent mission for the band. When I ask about the landscape of the music scene in Byron Bay, they tell me simply: “There's definitely no scene here.”

“There is a scene, but it’s different music than what we play,” Soric elaborates. “You’d struggle to find bands that are similar to us around here. So, you have to go into cities and stuff.” Regardless, while they’ve found themselves playing shows alongside bands that aren’t necessarily within the same genre spaces, they inadvertently developed a singular voice for themselves. 

This voice would be captured on recording by producer and engineer Nick DiDia, who has previously worked with Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and Stone Temple Pilots, making him a clear point of reference for the band. By inviting someone else into their sacred jam space, they were able to record the EP live-in-studio, capturing the sound of a band playing in a room — much like the sound coveted by the bands they look to for inspiration. DiDia's contribution was less about shaping the songs they brought to the table, but more focused on maintaining the environment that they felt most comfortable playing in. 

“I think it’s just the sound that we like,” the band say of their preference for live sound. “A lot of the bands that we love, that’s the way they record it. We just wanted to do it that same way. We didn’t put much thought into it, but figured that if we can do it like that, it would be the best way.” 

“Nick just came over and listened to us jam,” Rasmus explains. “He made the spaces feel really good,” Kyuss adds. “He saw what we had at home, and saw that we liked that live vibe, that we feel comfortable playing together, and just said, ‘Let’s just recreate that’. Make that your sound.” 

For HEADSEND, making their sound in the studio was essentially pretty seamless and straightforward. Few overdubs were used, and only minor tweaks were made. As self-taught musicians, they leaned into what they describe as their “primitive, instinctual” musical nature. Soric was particularly in his element, as the band humorously reveal, painting an image of him playing barefoot, breaking sticks at an impressive rate, and persevering with headphones duct taped to his head to keep them steady, truly emphasising the loose, physical quality preserved on the EP. 

“Playing live to a ton of people is our favourite thing, and you can capture that,” Kyuss notes. “We would just do a bunch of takes and play until we felt right.”

Now that Angel Glands is out in the world, HEADSEND can only look ahead. Their second EP is already done and dusted, and in the one studio session that I’ve caught them in, they’ve already gotten eight songs down. They’re toying with the idea of recording with US producers, and eagerly looking forward to exploring what different music scenes abroad have to offer, specifically after they gear up for their debut UK performance at The Great Escape in Brighton. 

“We would love to tap into a scene,” Rasmus tells me. “I’ve always watched videos of bands back in the day within these really cool scenes, and it would be great to be around bands with similar music and interests.”

But even without the support of a broader scene, over two years, with songs that Rasmus even questioned putting out, HEADSEND have been able to prove to themselves that overall, they can do it. “I’ve learned that we can actually record stuff live,” Rasmus says. “I always thought that maybe we couldn’t do it, but we can.”

“And it’s been really fun, we can smash songs in a couple of days,” Kyuss says. “They don’t sound bad, they’re alright,” Rasmus laughs, “And they’re releasable!” Soric chimes. If the countless songs and rise from small venues to stadium stages were any indication, HEADSEND ultimately humbly agree: “We can just make music together.”