But Dave Tinelt from Sobriety Prank doesn't seem to mind - his band will be on stage for both those festive evenings.

"We've got a job to do and that's exactly how we take it," Tinelt says.

"We're there to help party with all the people who come to see us. We've had a really good reception so far. Though the band's only been together a few months, we've had a massive response.

"We've had fans from our previous bands come together and now we've got a good mixture of fans and they love the shows we do. Everyone has a great night."

And Tinelt says New Year's Eve - with the big crowds out for a good time - presents the band with a chance to win over more fans.

Tinelt, who plays bass in Sobriety Prank, will be recognised by metalheads as the singer from Nekrofeist and Mortal Sin.

His latest band formed not long after he played a fill-in gig on bass with Wollongong band Lakoda Burn.

"Their band was dissolving anyway and we got together over the next few months," Tinelt says.

"I asked them if they wanted to team up and start a band together and they loved the idea."

That was in January and since then they've been playing covers while working on a set of original tunes.

"The whole concept of the band at the end of the day was to write original material," Tinelt says.

"Myself coming fresh out of the metal scene, I wanted to play stuff that was more accessible to the mainstream.

"The plan was to put together a band, do some covers and have some fun. But now the plan is to write some originals and put together an album.

"The covers basically fund the original stuff. We use the money we get from the covers shows to fund our original material."

Tinelt says the original tunes are more of a pop-rock style than metal. But while he's moving away from metal, Tinelt says he's not forgetting about it altogether.

"We do heavier stuff like Metallica and stuff like that, so we do have our heavy elements," he says.

"I don't want to give up metal entirely so there are traces of the heavier genre within the stuff that we do."