Twenty years in, Airbourne set out to make the record that finally sums up everything the band has been building toward, and by their own account, they went about it the hard way. Gutsy was born in a jungle studio on the surf coast of Australia, built through hurricane season, and finished off in the same St Kilda room where the band cut their first EP. It’s not a subtle story, and it’s not a subtle album.
The band trucked gear from Manchester all the way up the east coast of Australia to Music Farm Studios, a spot surrounded by snakes, funnel web spiders, and enough wildlife to make the sessions sound like a survival story more than a recording diary. Drummer Ryan O’Keeffe backed that up in a recent interview, describing a night where a hurricane tore a tree loose and it missed bassist Justin “Streety” Street’s tour bus by the width of a couch. The tape machine kept blowing up. The power kept cutting out mid-session. None of it stopped them from working twelve to sixteen hour days and calling it, in Ryan’s words, the most fun they’ve had making a record.
That’s the kind of chaos that could sink an album or define one, and the band leaned into using it as fuel rather than treating it as a problem to survive. Producers Brian Howes, Mike Fraser, and Karl Dicaire tracked the record through the original Neve desk from Albert Studios 1, the same console lineage that ran through AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, and The Angels, before the band packed up and finished the record on the Neve from Albert’s Studio 2 back home in Melbourne. There’s a direct line from that gear to the sound of the record itself, and Airbourne clearly wanted that connection audible.
Ryan didn’t undersell the ambition either. He named Back in Black and Metallica’s self-titled album as the targets, records built to be definitive from the first track to the last, with no dead spots and no filler. That’s a heavy bar to set for yourself twenty years into a career, and going by the five songs the band has released so far, they’re not shying away from it.
“Gutsy” is the title track and the mission statement, a defiant, chest-out anthem about refusing to quit no matter what’s thrown at you. “Alive After Death (Last Plane Out)” leans into something more emotional, built around the idea that music keeps people alive after they’re gone, a theme that clearly connected with fans, some of whom have written in about playing it on the way to hospital appointments or dedicating it to musicians they’ve lost. “Here She Comes” is pure classic rock swagger, all storm and lightning metaphors wrapped around a night that gets out of hand. “Kid in a Candy Store” tells a wry, self-aware story about temptation and getting taken for a ride, and “Christmas Bonus” is exactly what it sounds like: a filthy, funny holiday song that leans hard into the Die Hard-is-a-Christmas-movie argument.
The other seven tracks, including “Sky High,” “Who Put the Rhythm in You,” “Last Man Standing,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Ya,” “Bogota,” “Hells Got No Vacancy,” and closer “Send Me to Rock ‘N’ Roll Heaven,” are still under wraps ahead of the September 4 release.
What stands out in Ryan’s interview is how deliberately the band talks about balancing seriousness with fun. He points to a Clint Eastwood line the band leans on: take the work seriously, don’t take yourself too seriously. That tension runs through everything about this album cycle, from surviving a genuinely dangerous recording environment to writing a song about Santa’s sleigh, and it’s part of what’s kept Airbourne’s identity distinct even as comparisons to AC/DC have followed them for two decades. Ryan makes the case in the same interview that Australia deserves its own recognized rock genre altogether, separate from being measured against AC/DC every time a new band comes out of the country.
Whether Gutsy lands as the definitive record the band was chasing is something the full tracklist will answer on September 4. But based on the songs out now, the story behind the sessions, and a band that’s still willing to record through a hurricane to get it right, Airbourne sound like they mean it when they say this one is meant to be all of Airbourne in one package.
I’m Drew, the founder and editor of Front of the Stage. I have a strong love for music and photography, which started at a very young age. There’s just something I love about experiencing live music and capturing memories that will last a lifetime, and that’s how Front of the Stage came to be.
