Australian rock trio SHADOWQUEEN, comprising Robbi Zana (Lead Vocals, Bass, Keys), Si Hopman (Guitar, Backing Vocals) and Alex Deegan (Drums, Backing Vocals) – have been garnering the support of punters and industry alike opening for much loved artists such as The Butterfly Effect, Shihad, Superheist, Bellusira, King Parrot, Electric Mary to mention a few.​

While a thousand trends have come and gone, straight-up rock has endured them all… galvanizing fans worldwide with its strict no-bullshit approach. With everything dialed in at maximum, pure rock is larger than life, and few places on Earth let it loose as consistently as Melbourne. Proudly carrying this torch, powerhouse trio SHADOWQUEEN have stepped up as the city’s next serious contenders with their knockout second album, Living Madness.

In this interview spotlight, I chat with Shadowqueen about the new album, challenges, technology and more.

Full Q&A along with links and music below.

Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)

We’re from Melbourne, Australia.

Our style of music is rock / hard rock / blues-rock / pop. Our songs tend to be heavy on melody, groove and dynamics and lyrically they’re about life experiences and fantasy.

What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?

We’re all addicted to music, it’s the air we breath, everything else is secondary to us. We’re motivated by lots of different things, all kinds of music, film, art, photography and literature, everything we experience gets poured into our music eventually.

How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?

This is our second album and in a way it’s our first real collective album as a whole, each of us had equal input in the writing of this album, the goal for us is to evolve and we think this album shows that.

Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age?

There are many challenges in being involved in the arts industry in general, for one being a musician you need to be constantly working at your craft, be it playing your instrument to the best of your abilities or working at getting better as song writers, add to that the necessity for marketing skills to get your music heard and budgeting and daily managing of the business, it’s easy to get bogged down in all that but everyone has to hustle these days, if there is integrity behind what you do then you have a chance.

How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?

Technology helps by giving you the potential to reach a broader audience, especially from a some what isolated country like Australia but you have to know how to use it correctly to do that, and that isn’t as easy as people may think, it’s true there is a lot of saturation out there and it can be very hard to break through all that noise to get people to pause and pay attention to you, but that’s part of the grind.

What was the last song you listened to?

Haha It was one of our own actually, because I was just editing a promotional video for one of the songs from our new album ‘Living Madness’, before that I think it was the new track ‘Low High’ from The Black Keys, love those guys.

Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?

Honestly I don’t have a record player unfortunately and I rarely play CD’s anymore, I’ve succumbed to the convenience of digital, but I try to stay away from MP3’s because of the lack of depth in the sound, I listen to Wave files mostly and it’s generally while I’m in the car.

How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?

I actually don’t stream at all, I have all my music on an old iPhone 3 that I use as my music source haha, but for our band I do like Bandcamp, you get a better choice of file quality which is important, and I like their overall approach with helping independent artists, it feels genuine.

Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?

We’re on the big 3; Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and of course all the other streaming services, Spotify, iTunes, Google etc, just punch in SHADOWQUEEN as one word and you’ll find us ;)…I do prefer Instagram.

Anything else before we sign off?

Thanks for the opportunity to spread the word about our band SHADOWQUEEN, much appreciated!