RedHook

About RedHook

RedHook is a Sydney band built around the creative partnership of Emmy Mack and Craig Wilkinson, though it operates largely as Mack's vehicle. They make music that refuses to pick a lane, blending pop-punk hooks with electronic elements, metalcore aggression, and whatever else seems to fit the mood. The result is messy in the intentional way, the kind of thing that makes genre purists uncomfortable.

Mack fronts the band with a vocal approach that swings from sugary melodic runs to full-throated screaming, sometimes within the same verse. Before RedHook, she'd been kicking around the Australian music scene without much traction. Wilkinson handles most of the instrumental heavy lifting, creating dense productions that layer programmed beats under actual guitars, building something that works in both festival tents and dive bars.

They started getting attention around 2017 with early tracks that sounded like someone fed Paramore and Bring Me The Horizon into a blender with some Justice. "Locomotion" and "Say" established their template early: big choruses, heavy drops, and Mack's voice doing acrobatics over the top. The songs felt designed for streaming playlists in the best and worst ways, immediate and catchy but also genuinely abrasive when they wanted to be.

Their 2021 EP "Bad Decisions" landed them on more radars, particularly the title track, which became something of a calling card. It's got that specific mid-2020s energy where pop-punk was having its streaming renaissance and everyone was trying to figure out how to make heavy music that algorithms would actually recommend. RedHook managed to thread that needle without sanding off all their edges.

"Jabberwocky" showed up in 2023 as their proper full-length debut, and it confirmed they weren't interested in settling into anything predictable. Tracks like "Cannibal" and "Morbid" lean harder into metal territory while "Killer" goes almost full pop. The album plays like a mood board more than a cohesive statement, which seems to be the point. Mack has been open about using the band as a processing mechanism for mental health struggles and general chaos, and the music reflects that lack of interest in staying calm.

They've built a following in Australia and have been making inroads internationally, particularly in the UK where this kind of genre-fluid heavy music has found more receptive audiences. The live show is predictably intense, with Mack as a hyperactive presence and the backing tracks filling in what a two-piece can't manage alone.

Right now they're in that zone where they're too big to be a secret but not quite big enough to headline major venues outside Australia. They keep releasing singles, keep touring, keep doing the work. Whether they break through to something bigger probably depends on whether enough people want pop music that occasionally sounds like a panic attack.

RedHook plays tight, minimal sets with zero banter. The crowd tends toward the attentive and quiet kind—lots of people actually listening rather than talking. When the chorus hits on Concrete Dreams, the place moves in unison. No frills, no between-song stories. Just good musicians being exact.

Known for Neon Nights, Concrete Dreams, Chemical Haze, Static Signal, Empty Rooms

See RedHook Live