Sitting somewhere between Jurassic 5 and Rob Zombie would seem a disingenuous way to describe your band, but for the sonic ambitions of Quorum Consensus it fits just about perfectly.

“Yeah,” laughs MC and producer, Aeon. “That’s just what we were told by some guy at a party. I was as surprised by that analogy as anyone, really. I thought it was pretty good, though.”

The tag has stuck for the Brisbane-based six-piece, and why not: Quorum Consensus bend genres like few others dare, swerving wildly between funk, electro, hip hop, metal, blues and even jazz influences.

At the group’s heart are Aeon and his fellow producer and MC, Non Official Cover – or NOC, as Aeon calls him during our quarter-hour interview. QC may only be two years’ young, but these two go way back, coming together almost a decade ago over a mutual love of music in the New South Wales north coast town of Coffs Harbour.

“I was raised in Coffs and ended up back there for about a year in 2000, and that’s when I met NOC. We’d just keep running into each other over the course of a year in a number of different places, meeting through different people. We’ve been writing together almost ten years now.”

Once based permanently in Brisbane, Aeon and NOC slowly worked their way into the local music scene, and over a period of time began to accumulate the remaining members of the band.

“There wasn’t any particular concept that brought us together. It was more just NOC and I doing the music that we wanted to do,” Aeon says. “And to achieve the sounds that we wanted to get we had to look for these people. Luckily we knew them already and it was like, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta get [vocalist] Teach to do this. And it would sound awesome if [vocalist and frontman] Seabass came and sung this.’ It started out working with them on single tracks, and then it just became a conglomerate.”

Quorum Consensus are now gearing up to release their debut EP, 'Scourge Of The Third Rock From The UV’, taking over the Beetle Bar later this month specifically for the task. It’s been a long process getting the record to this point, but finally the band are happy with it.

“It’s just been a total progression in that regard. When we first started writing I was a bit of a shoot first, ask questions later kinda guy, but NOC’s always been the level-headed one and he used to say, ‘Nup. Nup. It’s not good enough. We’re not putting it out.’ So I’ve learnt quite a lot to restrain my excitement levels, I guess. The EP’s just a direction we wanted to go in, and to hell with the consequences. It was more about creating something new and creating something worthwhile, really.

“We’ve always been pushed lyrically by Sage Francis and Aesop Rock and El-P. They’re probably the three influences that really came in whilst we were making the record. A lot of Nine Inch Nails, and obviously some Rob Zombie! It is truly a myriad of influences being poured into this sieve: we work with so many different options until we get something that feels right and we all agree on. Which is the definition of a quorum, I guess.”
Now Quorum Consensus are busy getting their ducks in a row for the EP launch, something that Aeon talks about with excitement. But there’s also a larger purpose being served by the night, with the band’s focus in 2012 shifting slightly from the studio to the live show.

“In the past I think it was more of a recorded group,” Aeon explains, “but with the live preparations and the rehearsals for the launch and everything else, it’s turned into being much more about the live show. Just trying to get across the energy of the music and not being just a bunch of shoegazers, really,” he laughs.

“I guess a Quorum Consensus show could be described as being dark, twisted but then a little comical at the same time. It’s just this collision of a million different things. We’ve got a lot of people performing with us that night too who have helped out on the EP. We’ve got your classic hip hop for the night with Co-Accused and Megalomaniac Crew, then we’ll change it up a bit with Morgomega and give it some electro dance hop with a different twist. It’s going to be a great night. Really, what these guys do is so hard to describe, and that in a sense is inspirational for us.”

QUORUM CONSENSUS LAUNCH THEIR DEBUT EP AT THE BEETLE BAR MARCH 24.