For most bands, releasing a new album is cause for celebration. For Brisbane band Bugs, the moment is much more bittersweet. Last month, before the release of their fourth album, Head Noise, bass guitarist Jordan Brunoli took to Instagram with a devastating update.

Diagnosed with stage-four colorectal cancer at just 29, Brunoli revealed that his treatments had been unable to stop the disease from spreading. “I am now entering the final chapter of my life, after being told in June I had a prognosis of 3-4 months,” he wrote, inspiring a flood of heartfelt comments from fans. The band announced they would play two album launch shows at a formative home town venue, Crowbar Brisbane; both swiftly sold out.

I join Brunoli and his two bandmates – guitarist and lead vocalist Connor Brooker, and drummer Brock Weston – for a video call. While each member is in a different location, the easy warmth between them carries through the pixels, alongside a palpable fatigue and just-under-the-surface emotion.

The making of Head Noise was an unhurried, three-year process until it was suddenly fast-tracked by Brunoli’s diagnosis. “Honestly, all of the bad news has kind of given us a bit of a boot up the backside to get moving and get it out,” Brooker says. “So, got to take the positives in a pretty shit situation like this.” He pauses. “Sorry for the swearing.”

The last 12 months Brunoli has endured have left little room for levity. He knew something was wrong after discovering blood in his stool and experiencing debilitating stomach pain. As he detailed on Triple J’s Hack, his first doctor dismissed his concerns over multiple appointments – which Brunoli feels may have cost him precious time. “Advocating for yourself in a doctor’s office is difficult as a young person,” he told Hack. After a second doctor confirmed the diagnosis, his treatment included major surgery, resulting in a permanent stoma, followed by an intensive course of chemotherapy.

But a “mutation that causes rapid growth of tumours” has meant none of the treatments have been able to stop the cancer from spreading. He has now shifted to palliative treatment for pain in the final months of his life.

Brunoli, now 30, is sitting in a red-carpeted rehearsal room, with a drum kit and a bass guitar propped against a speaker. For the first stretch of the call, he sits quietly, listening as his bandmates discuss the early days of Bugs and the Facebook posts that brought them together over a decade ago. Finally, I ask Brunoli what his day-to-day life is like right now. When he talks, he is strikingly clear and matter-of-fact.

“Funny you should ask that today,” he says, before revealing he has just received a call about a potential medical trial involving an extreme dose of chemotherapy aimed at the mutation. “I’m not sure if I’m gonna do it because I’ve had weeks and weeks now off chemotherapy. Obviously I’m technically getting sicker and sicker, but I’m feeling better and better. The side effects of the chemotherapy were shocking, and it lingers in your body for a while. So that’s all started to dissipate, and what’s left in the last couple of weeks has been just physical pain from cancer pushing on certain nerves.”

His days are now largely about “dealing with the pain in a responsible way, trying not to get hooked on painkillers”.

Before their shows, the band are meeting twice a week for rehearsals and making the most of their time together. “It’s generally talking shit for like an hour or two, and then we get around to rehearsing,” Brunoli says with a laugh. “Actually, it’s got to the point where my partner’s a bit like, ‘Hey, I love that you’re seeing your Bugs boys, but after the gig, can we please have some time?’ Obviously, with time being limited, things get like that.”

Brunoli has played through the pain – “even when I had neuropathy so bad I couldn’t feel the guitar I was playing,” he revealed last month – and is determined to make it on stage, whatever it takes. I ask how it feels physically to rehearse. “Very tiring,” he says. “And my ileostomy bag sits basically where the guitar wants to rest. So I just have to be mindful of not shaking the guitar around too much and not jumping around.”

While Brooker says he wrote most of the songs on Head Noise before Brunoli’s diagnosis, the album’s earnest indie-pop sensibility now feels especially poignant. The band’s sound has evolved from what Weston describes as “loud guitars and drums”, with Brooker pointing to their Like A Version performance of Mallrat’s Charlie as a turning point – both in their growing popularity and allowing them to be “a bit more tender”. Most of all, it feels like an album made by three guys who love jamming together in a room.

In an Instagram post, Weston reminisced about Brunoli helping him rebuild his house after it flooded, and “never asking for anything in return”. “Looking back on all the things we’ve gone through together, it’s pretty remarkable,” Weston says now. “Spending that much time with your two best friends, and we’re still here, we’re still doing it. It’s pretty incredible, honestly.”

The band were wowed by the turnout at their fundraiser show for Brunoli at the Tivoli last October (title: Saving A Bug’s Life), which followed a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $100,000 to cover his ongoing medical costs. “Good people show themselves in those kinds of scenarios,” Brunoli says. “It’s fucking cool.” For Brooker, the outpouring of support comes down to Brunoli himself. “He’s like letting a puppy dog loose in a room full of strangers,” he says. “[Jordan will] just go up to everyone and make friends with them, and not just on a superficial level either.”

Brunoli says it helps to have the upcoming live shows as a “big event to look forward to”, but admits he’s worried about how he will feel once they are done. Two weeks ago, he and his partner celebrated their wedding at “this beautiful little Italian restaurant” with their closest family and friends, having already eloped. “It was exactly what we wanted it to be,” he says. “We got to dance. We got to drink. We got to have fun.”

Since sharing his diagnosis last year, Brunoli says multiple people have reached out to thank him for encouraging them to be firmer with their doctors. I ask what advice he would give to anyone who wants to support someone with a terminal diagnosis. He mentions how much he appreciated Weston cooking a “bunch of meat” for him, so he could get more protein.

“If someone you know has cancer and they’re tired all the time, going to their house to talk might just make them more tired,” he says. Instead, he suggests “acts of service”, like offering to do their dishes or washing.

With Head Noise now out in the world, Brunoli is “taking each day as it comes”.

“I’m looking forward to a day where I forget or don’t think about cancer for one day,” he says. “That would be fantastic. Navigating it is tough, because there’s a lot of people around me who, especially with this album release, are going, ‘Oh my God, congratulations!’ But then in the back of their mind, they’re like, ‘This is the last time you’re gonna do something like that.’”

In facing that reality, Brunoli has shown the selflessness his bandmates admire in him. “I try not to go, ‘no, fuck you, you need to act a certain way because I’m the one dying’,” he says. “If I pass, the memory of me is still there, and people have to deal with that in their own way. So if I can make that any easier on them, I think I have a responsibility to do that too.”

• Head Noise is out now. Bugs’ live shows, on 10 and 12 September in Brisbane, are sold out