Aussie band Airbourne have a new album out called Breakin' Outta Hell and will tour Australia in January 2017. Picture: Supplied.

O’Keeffe is propping up the bar at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on the Sunset Strip in LA, legendary ‘80s hangout of Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue, and, er, Poison.

Fittingly enough he’s sitting on Lemmy from Motorhead’s favourite stool, where the frontman whiled away much of his life playing video poker. (The dearly departed rocker had a long association with the band, appearing in their first video clip, Runnin’ Wild and fondly referred to them as “cocky mother---ers”).

Joel O'Keeffe performs at the 2013 Splendour In The Grass Festival. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

It’s not hard to imagine that if Airbourne had been around in the 80s, they could have been the biggest band in the world. They wear their hard rock influences on their sleeves: they really, really, really like AC/DC (one US record company exec excitedly told their manager they sounded like an “Australian AC/DC”) and are one of the best live bands you’ll see, thanks to beer-spurting, fist-pumping, scaffold-climbing frontman Joel O’Keeffe.

He’s a guy who regularly climbs 20 metres up the main stage truss at festivals to perform death defying solos — the organisers of Britain’s Download festival once had to cut the PA to force him back down. No, they don’t have insurance cover for that. “When you take a look at Airbourne the last thing you’d do if you were an insurance company is actually insure us,” laughs O’Keeffe, adding he’s gently suggested to his brother he could hurt himself. “I have and I’ve told him maybe he should go and do something else and of course the first thing he does is go and climb the truss, so I’m the worst person to try and do something about it!”

Airbourne have a loyal following in Australia and will be playing a series of club dates in January as part of a world tour that takes in the US, UK and Europe. But the band from Warrnambool are massive in Europe, where their albums chart in the top 10. They tour constantly and have regularly played in front of festival crowds of up to 80,000 people. They’ve supported the Rolling Stones, Metallica, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. “Some of the people we’ve met, you still pinch yourself,” O’Keeffe says.

This week they drop album number four: Breakin’ Outta Hell. It’s produced by Bob Marlette and engineered and mixed by Mike Fraser — who worked on the last five AC/DC albums.

Aussie band Airbourne are in no way trendy. But they definitely rock. Picture: Supplied.Source:Supplied

O’Keeffe says it’s like the “older brother” of their debut album from 2006. “If Runnin’ Wild is a Jack and Coke, then Breaking Outta Hell is a double Jack and Coke. It’s got a bit more kick to it, it’s going to hit a bit harder.”

It’s also “more personal” he says, offering When I Drink I Go Crazy and Thin The Blood as examples. “Saturday mornin’, feel like sh--- / Hungover in hell, I need to get lit / Hair of the dog sets me right / Washes away the sins of last night. So it’s like, we’ve got pretty personal on this record …”

Heartfelt lyrics aside, they’re not chasing a new sound with the album: it’s just 11 tracks of blistering rock and roll. This is a group that will never follow what’s trendy.

“I think that’s the worst mistake you could ever make in a band … because people can see through s---,” he says. “There’s a reason I’m talking to you from the Sunset Strip after ten years of touring and that’s because we didn’t follow trends.”

“We’ve matured, we’ve gotten better at what we love to do but we’ve kept it the same and I think that’s an even harder thing to do — to stay true to your sound.”

Breakin’ Outta Hell [Caroline] is out Friday September 23.

NSW See Airbourne, January 13, Metro Theatre, $45+Bf, Ticketek

QLD See Airbourne, January 14, Triffid, $45.30+bf, OzTix

VIC See Airbourne, January 20, Trak, $45.81 +bf, Ticketmaster