Damn The Maps
about us
Damn The Maps are Martin Green & Nick Riley. They have been producing music and videos since 2007.
Based in Melbourne Australia, Damn The Maps started in around 2003 as a touring band, playing shows throughout Australia and New Zealand.
They released their first album, Input Output in 2008. Input Output was written mainly for radio with several pop rock numbers like All Aboard and Real Girls intertwined with their more favoured alternative rock sound in songs like Grind.
At this time they started releasing videos for their singles. They released 6 music videos from the Input Output album.
Shortly after coming off the input output tour in 2008, Damn The Maps' drummer left the band. So Martin & Nick split from management and their label and went their own way on their second album, Something is Askew with darker, more epic songs with less radio friendly sounds and even more conscious vocals. (eg Conditions Apply, Had A Great Fall)
The album was recorded on the old Neve console at Hothouse Studio in St Kilda. Their drummer for this album moved interstate days after Something Is Askew was completed, leaving Damn The Maps unable to tour. It was then that Martin & Nick decided... No more drummers! It made sense as more and more band venues throughout Australia were shutting down whilst the internet was exploding.
They switched their focus to what they do best: Writing and recording songs and making videos. They released 5 videos for the second album.
By the time they started their third album, Ongoing Madness, recording software and particularly drum software had reached a point where it had become very difficult to tell the difference between software drums and real drums. Martin & Nick finally found a drummer that would always show up and never leave the band. Everything was moving to streaming services like iTunes and Spotify and so they released Ongoing Madness song by song in the order that the songs were completed. You can hear Damn The Maps' progression from start to finish. To add to the challenge of releasing each song one by one, they released a video for all 13 songs on the album.
Damn The Maps still take inspiration from the big alternative rock and indie bands of the 90's and 2000s like Radiohead, Deftones, Tool and Nine inch nails, blending loud and quiet, fuzzy guitars, synths and melodic, thought provoking vocals on their ever growing catalogue of albums.
They believe that the album format is still one of the greatest ways to showcase a body of musical work, with music videos allowing a secondary and complimentary artistic output for the group.
Martin produces the videos while Nick produces the music making Damn The maps a powerful artistic production house.
Their 4th album, The Sleepwalker Menu was also recorded song by song and is out now on all major streaming services. They have released 4 videos for this album.