by Bonnie Collings
After taking the stage at the Always Live Garage Band event in December, Drouin-based band "Balmoral" are looking forward to releasing original music and performing locally in 2025.

Formed through the Drouin Secondary College band program, "Balmoral" are a passionate four-piece group creating "post-hardcore" music inspired by their favourite 1990s and 2000s bands.
Featuring vocalist and guitarist Harry Clarke, bassist and scream vocalist Kyle Dooley, guitarist Chris Zammit and drummer Lewis Aubrey, "Balmoral" formed in September 2023.
"We all met through the school band program," Harry said. "Because we're all good musicians and we all like similar music, we came together outside of school and started jamming."
The group has performed at a number of locations across Melbourne's inner suburbs, including gigs at The Workers Club in Fitzroy, The Gasometer Hotel in Collingwood and local events, including the recent Sounds of Summer event in Drouin's Civic Park.
Harry and Kyle explained the unique origin of their band name.
"It's the name of a street near where we live," Harry said.
"We were walking past and Chris said it as a fake band name and I (thought) 'wait, that would work'."
"We thought it sounded cool, so we claimed it," Kyle said.
While they're yet to officially release a track, "Balmoral" have a number of original songs in the demo stage.
"My dad has a studio where we record," Harry said. "Nothing is released yet but we perform our originals."
The group described their music as "post-hardcore", featuring both clean and scream vocals.
"Our influence ranges from all sorts of places, but we have an emo, post-hardcore sound," Harry said.
"Glassjaw and Coheed and Cambria are two of our biggest influences," Kyle added.
Harry and Kyle described their songwriting process as collaborative, starting with the instrumental base.
"Most of the time I'll come in with a song idea or a riff," Harry said. "Then (the others) add their own ideas onto it. We usually have an instrumental song for a couple of weeks and then I lay the lyrics on top of it."
In addition to playing bass guitar, Kyle sings the scream vocals in their original songs; a skill he said had taken time to master.
"When first started trying to scream, I couldn't speak for like a day or two," Kyle said. "I hate saying practice makes perfect, but it really does narrow down to practice. A big tip for anyone who wants to get into screaming is that if your throat hurts, just stop, because otherwise you'll wreck it."
Performing their music live is a love shared between the members of "Balmoral", with the boys agreeing the energy of a live performance was fulfilling.
"It's really great connecting on stage, especially when we're playing our own songs and everyone gets excited," Lewis said.
"It's pretty fun on stage, especially because we're all friends," Chris added.
"I do a lot of songwriting and showing people the songs I've written feels really great," Harry said. "It's high energy, (performing) is like a sport really, lots of movement and adrenaline. It's great, especially when the crowd gives it back to you."
"There's been a couple of times where we've played songs that we've never played in front of people before and they're trying to sing along with it," Kyle added. "We feed off the crowd."
Just last month, "Balmoral" performed two original tracks, "The Butcher" and "They're All Monsters", at the Always Live Garage event at Bunjil Place.
The group applied to perform at the gig in Narre Warren after learning about it from their music teacher.
"My mum helped us apply for it, we had to send through a performance and a bit about us," Lewis said. "They ended up picking us to play. It was a very well set up event, really, really fun."
The group said a highlight from their Garage Band performance was watching the audience get into their music.
"There was this really little kid at the front, and he was going off, he just loved it," Harry said. "There was a good crowd, everyone loved it."
Looking into 2025, the group said releasing their demos and continuing to perform live were their main goals.
"(We want) to get the demos out and keep demoing things so we can show people the music," Harry said.
"We play a lot of gigs in the city," Kyle added. "We want to do more gigs locally, expand the scene and get more fans."
"Balmoral" can be found on Instagram at @balmoral_band