The Bottom Line

The experimental Aussies have turned heads with their dual bass player set-up, but chief songwriter Matt Fack says The Omnific are no mere gimmick. Having honed their craft to its sharpest point with' second album The Law Of Augmenting Returns, he sits down with Prog to discuss their desire to redefine what bass guitars can do.

- Phil Weller

The Omnific are proving that bass players needn’t be confined to the role of supporting cast. The unique power trio comprises two bass players – neighbours-turned bandmates Matt Fack and Toby PetersonStewart – and drummer Jerome Lematua. It’s something Fack calls “a happy coincidence”.

“It was never a plan to have two bass players per se,” he says of their origins. “It was so rare to find someone that has that ability on the same instrument as you, up the road from you, so we started jamming and that quickly snowballed into our first EP [2016’s Sonorous]. By that point it felt like we’d struck a little magic, so we just kept going.”

The band continued working on their sound, releasing a total of three EPs in as many years. “We weren’t 100 per cent sure on the identity of the band,” Fack recalls. “There was constant questioning of what we wanted to be, what gear to use and our approach to songwriting. We’d never written for a band with two bass players before, we were just throwing all our ideas together. It felt like it took those three EPs to figure it out.”

Buoyed by those experiments, their 2021 debut LP Escapades saw the trio settling into a more refined sound. Indulgent passages were traded for slick earworms without compromising their prog pastiche, and the band’s stock went through the roof. On the recently released follow-up, The Law Of Augmenting Returns, however, Fack oversaw the majority of the writing.