Steve Hughes

Steve Hughes is an Australian-born drummer, comedian and actor. Hughes has embraced the title "heavy metal humourist", as it aligns with his approach to comedy, music and life; the press have referred to this title and similar variations.

Hughes was an active member of Australia's early thrash metal scene. He founded and played drums for Slaughter Lord, one of the first thrash metal bands in Australia—a band that had a brief yet notable impact on the country's extreme metal music history. He subsequently played drums for thrash metal band Mortal Sin and the black metal band Nazxul.

Hughes started performing stand-up in the 1990s and relocated to England in 2002 to further pursue his career in comedy. He is based in Manchester, and performs stand-up internationally, primarily across Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Hughes also starred in the 2015 indie short film Brainless Killers, which won the awards for Best Film, Best Thriller and Best Special Effects in the short film category at the Sydney Indie Film Festival.

Music career Born in Sydney, After his work with Mortal Sin, Hughes formed a rock band called Presto, releasing 2 CDs. In 1993 he joined the black metal band Nazxul. He also played live with the band Primordial while living in Ireland in 1999.

While Hughes has focused on his comedy career since the early 2000s, he said in a 2010 interview with Post Modern Ink magazine that music remained his first love.

Hughes quit Nazxul and left Australia for Ireland in 1999, then moved on to London, then on to Manchester where he stayed in a house with fellow Aussie comic Jim Jefferies before finally settling in Manchester in 2002. Hughes has also cited having been influenced by the comedy of Richard Pryor, Dave Allen, George Carlin and Eddie Murphy. He often wears all-black, including a leather jacket, concert t-shirt and jeans.

Hughes comedy sets often contain social commentary including criticisms of political correctness, religion, war, drug laws, He is also known for discussing ideas in the conspiracy theory realm, and adopted this title for one of his comedy tours in 2011.

Hughes's stand-up has been featured at such festivals as the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Live at the Apollo in 2011. and appeared on an episode of UKTV's Dave's One Night Stand featuring Hunter that originally aired on 1 December 2011. Hughes also supported Belgian comedian Alex Agnew on his 2011 "Larger than Life" best-of tour.

After touring non-stop for four years and averaging more than 150 shows a year, Hughes took a break for health reasons. By Hughes' own account, he got the job at MTV through the help of a friend who was a cameraman, but the job lasted only about 6 weeks after it was determined that there was not enough of a demand in Australia at the time for heavy metal-based programming.

In 2009 he appeared as a guest panellist on the Australian game show Good News Week. He also appeared on the Australian music-themed quiz show Spicks and Specks in 2010.

In 2015 he starred in the Australian short film Brainless Killers as the mayor of Zombridge, a fictional town inhabited by zombies.

Discography

Slaughter Lord discography

Presto discography

Nazxul discography

Eternum discography