Empire Reborn

It's been five years since Southern Empire's critically acclaimed Civilisation was released and now the Australian five-piece are back with Another World. Keyboard player Sean Timms and new singer Shaun Holton reveal what was going on behind the scenes, and why the current line-up are looking forward to a vibrant future.

- Rich Wilson

Five years ago, Adelaide-based Southern Empire created unbridled momentum with the release of their well-received Civilisation album. The band completed a tour of the UK and Europe that garnered themselves more attention, before a radio silence fell over recent years. That leads to the understandable question of what exactly happened?

“Well, it certainly wasn’t our intention,” recalls keyboard player and project leader Sean Timms. “Things were going really well for the band and we wanted to capitalise on that. We got back to Australia and then Covid hit, which took everybody out for a while. I have a recording studio and because musicians couldn’t play live, the studio got really busy. Anyway, we finally got the album completed. It was all recorded, everything was ready to go. All I needed to do were a few finishing touches on the mixes and master the album.”

At that point, the plans were somewhat placed on hold when it became apparent that not all the band were as enthused with the project as Timms. Specifically frontman Danny Lopresto, who was noticeably incommunicado from group discussions.

“I wasn’t getting much of a response from Danny, so I chased him up and asked what was going on,” he remembers. “He said that he wanted to see me in person to talk it through. Basically, he had decided to move on for a variety of reasons and even though it was amicable, his reasoning was a little bit nebulous. I think that because it had been so long between doing the tour and finishing the album, he had lost a little bit of interest. He also had some other avenues that he was wanting to pursue with his covers band.”