Photos by Aaron Noyes / Written by Sosefina Fuamoli
Officially making their debut in 2025, BIG NOTER snapped heads to attention in the Australian music space.
A new project from acclaimed Aboriginal Australian artist Briggs, known to many for his powerful career in hip hop, BIG NOTER saw Briggs swap beats for riffs – opting to pursue a long-standing love for heavy music on what he describes as a “main story instead of a side quest”.
Completing the BIG NOTER lineup, Briggs has been able to develop a body of work alongside a band of talented musicians including Steve Smith (drums), Leigh Davies (guitars) and Craig Strain (bass). The music, built upon a foundational love and respect for punk, hardcore and metal, is the vessel for Briggs to express razor sharp social and political commentary.
For those listeners who have followed his career to date, Briggs’ new work as BIG NOTER isn’t too far removed from what they will have heard before. At the core of all his work is a spirit of strength and integrity, as well as an uncompromising approach to speaking on issues that have historically affected, and still do affect, Indigenous Australians.
What has made Briggs stand above the rest, is that he can fuse this ferocity with a charm that feels impossible to ignore. BIG NOTER elevates this, and across a quick period of time, international heroes and peers have also jumped on board.
A wry smile stretching across his face, Briggs offers, “No one has a choice, you know?”
“When you look at it musically, straight away, it is a departure from the regular sound but the ethos is still very much the same. I’ve had a lot of comments from people who are fans of my stuff who are like, “I was never really big hip hop fan, so this is really in the pocket for me,” as well, so that’s cool.”
Within BIG NOTER’s debut year, the group was able to count Tom Morello, Karnivool and Amyl and the Sniffers as tourmates; touring Australia with both Morello and Karnivool, while accepting an invitation to join Amyl and the Sniffers on their European tour last year. Winding out 2025, the band completed another lap of Australia supporting Suicidal Tendencies.
While their profile was growing in real time, BIG NOTER was developing a body of work that best represented the chaos they had thrown themselves into. The project has manifested in a strong debut album – Songs In The Key Of Wrestling. The album title, as well as the artwork, is directly tied to Briggs’ own sense of humour.
In short: the record is an eleven track project primed for any walk out soundtrack.
“I was excited to break out a bit and as an artist, use my voice in another way,” Briggs says. “A preconceived notion that people might have is that I’m just rapping over riffs, which is not the case with the record. I’m definitely part of the music, I’m part of the band. That was part of the writing process and part of the co-production style that I took on with [producer] Nick DiDia.
It was a really refreshing way to write and create. I feel like the parameters that I was presented with rap, we would be used to going away for a week and spending time changing different parts. You can’t do that here.”
Describing the creation of this album as “all gas, no breaks”, Briggs is adamant in pointing out that just because this project thrived on a punk spirit of getting in the zone, getting the work done, and getting out, the music itself is nowhere near undercooked.
Making this album forced him to recalibrate the creative side of his brain, approach storytelling in a new way, without letting go of any of the ferociousness that has been central to all his music to date.
“When I was trying to think about where I saw and what I wanted to do next, I thought that I’d really love to do a Rage Against The Machine type thing,” he remembers. “I felt like it would lend itself to my politics, it lends itself to my voice and it lends itself to everything I believe in, artistically and musically.
On the other side, you had Body Count too. I was a massive Ice T fan and I love Body Count. Watching him still tour as Body Count, as an OG and still killing it…I think there’s a reverence he maybe doesn’t get from the hip hop fans that he should, and he’s getting it around the world from this other subculture. I thought that was interesting. I wondered if that was something I could access and lean into.”
Songs In The Key Of Wrestling tackles everything from preconceived notions of Aboriginal Australia, the harsh realities of navigating life in the face of racism and disadvantage; while also championing one’s strength in self and in the power of resilience.
Featuring choice guest spots by IDLES’ Joe Talbot and Public Enemy icon Chuck D, the record serves as a potent reminder of the power Briggs is able to harness as a storyteller, and his continued dedication to tying his art back to his culture and home.
“There’s always been a Black, Hispanic, Indigenous presence in roots music, you know?” he says. “Dead Pioneers, they’re amazing…but you can take it back to Bad Brains, Sepultura, Soulfly…it’s always been there. I don’t feel out of place. I feel very much at home where I’m at. Everyone that I’ve spoken to has enjoyed it. Everyone from Craig [Setari] from Sick Of It All, to Mike Patton. Dudes who I really admire.
“Getting Chuck D to be the voice of the intermission on the album (‘A Message From Chuck’) was pretty powerful,” Briggs adds. “Hearing him talk about [hometown] Shepparton was big. I always try to bring things back home.
I wanted to let people know that this wasn’t a departure from hip hop or anything, this is just me. I’ve started calling it “Blak Metal” because everyone was like, “What’s the genre?” and I’m like, “I don’t know!” Over here, the purists get upset, so I called it Blak Metal, B-L-A-K. Works for me.”
Growing up in regional Victoria, Briggs remembers early gateways to heavy music coming via pre-Internet music culture: scouring shops for CDs, magazines, keeping a trained eye on music video television programs in Australia like Rage.
For him, heavy and hip hop always went hand in hand.
“I remember being a Deftones fan, I remember being a fan of Motorhead, I remember loving Sick Of It All as much as I loved Ice Cube and Wu-Tang and Three 6 Mafia. For me, it was always just about entertainment and what drew me to it.” he explains.
So when it came to carving out his own place in this area of music, Briggs leant into the duality and the core love for creating music that could make bodies thrash as much as it made their brains think; all while keeping it entertaining and fresh.
“With a lot of things in my career, I take the fun stuff seriously and the serious stuff in a fun way,” he says. “You’ve gotta have that balance. There’s been a largely positive response to everything we’re doing and what we’ve made. I really don’t think it makes sense to a lot of people until they come to a show, it really is a live experience. I hope that translates for everybody in the album, what we’ve put together. We’ve tried to capture that essence in an honest way.”
Casting his mind back to those first shows with Tom Morello, Briggs is open about the fact that rolling out BIG NOTER as a live unit was very much trial by fire in its nature.
“I don’t think we’d even had a band practice yet,” he laughs. “Luckily, everyone is a professional! All these guys, Leigh, Craig and Steve, they’re super-talented musicians and I’ve been on stage for the best part of twenty years. We know how it works.”
“My thinking was: it’s either gonna work, or it’s not. I’ve got 40 minutes to figure it out and it’s either going to work or it won’t. The blessing of it all was that these guys [the audience] didn’t know the songs either! As long as we looked confident, we’d be good!”
The live reputation of the band is what has spurred the recent momentum and anticipation for the release of Songs In The Key Of Wrestling. Rich in rhythm and ferocity, crowds have been responding to the band’s live shows with a mixture of catharsis and hunger for more.
A no-holds-barred spirit is at the heart of BIG NOTER, and it is clearly flourishing between the band and audiences alike.
“You can’t take it lightly,” Briggs says. “I have a healthy disdain for my audience and a healthy respect for them, you have to have both. If you’re out there pleading for an audience, you’re gonna be eaten alive.
One of my favourite ever comedians was Bernie Mac and I remember he did this show at The Apollo and it was going nuts, The Apollo was eating every comedian alive. He walked out there and said, “I ain’t scared of you motherfuckers!” It was just one man with a microphone. That’s the energy. You’re either gonna come along on this ride with me, or it’s gonna be a really awkward 40 minutes. What do you wanna do? I’m here for you if you wanna come with me.”
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Songs in the Key of Wrestling is now avalable via Island Records. Order the album - HERE
