What inspired the name of the band? What are your influences and are they the same as when you started out?
(Joe) The band name came from some Alter Bridge lyrics back in 2012 ish. We were looking for a band name and I was listening to a song called Find The Real and heard the lyrics “I look in the mirror only to find the face of a stranger”. I thought it was a really cool lyric and idea so I took it back to everyone else at the time and they all really liked it too. It’ll be no surprise that especially early on that Alter Bridge were one of our main influences and still are today. They have that balance of heavy riffs and melody in the vocals which for me is a really great combination. Id say that we’re a slightly heavier band than we were when we started out and our tunings have got gradually lower and lower to get a bit more of a grittier sound which i think for me anyway was influenced by listening to alot of Staind. We have so many influences as a band which i think comes across quite clearly in this new EP coming out next year. There are pure hard rock tracks like Artificial Life, theres a song called Forget Me Not which is a very slow depressing and emotional track with a piano running throughout which builds up into a really epic ending with black metal screams and loads of layers which is pretty cool, so yeah theres something for everyone on there.
How and why do you write what you write?
(Dan) So we’ve got a pretty extensive bank of riffs now, courtesy of Joe and Ben, which is where it all starts, really. We’ll jam some riffs and get a feel for where the song might be going. It’s then just a case of creating a musical foundation, piecing together together some more riffs before adding musical layers. Mitch usually has a pretty good idea which direction the song is going early on and digs into his own bank of lyrics to see what fits and feels right. I don’t think we ever have a ‘mission’ or goal as such when writing a new track. It’s just all about feel and what one or two riffs may evolve into.
(Mitch) Rock & Metal, that ballpark is fun to play in, and it’s probably the hardest hitting of any style of music, of course there are a lot of genres and subgenres, but I think we love this genre because there’s so much to mess around with. Rock music goes with anything: classical, hip hop, pop, funk, jazz, blues. It’s just a real versatile genre, and I think when you grow up with it too it gets you in a way that grows with you, as you grow with it.
How and why do you write what you write?
(Dan) So we’ve got a pretty extensive bank of riffs now, courtesy of Joe and Ben, which is where it all starts, really. We’ll jam some riffs and get a feel for where the song might be going. It’s then just a case of creating a musical foundation, piecing together together some more riffs before adding musical layers. Mitch usually has a pretty good idea which direction the song is going early on and digs into his own bank of lyrics to see what fits and feels right. I don’t think we ever have a ‘mission’ or goal as such when writing a new track. It’s just all about feel and what one or two riffs may evolve into.
(Mitch) Rock & Metal, that ballpark is fun to play in, and it’s probably the hardest hitting of any style of music, of course there are a lot of genres and subgenres, but I think we love this genre because there’s so much to mess around with. Rock music goes with anything: classical, hip hop, pop, funk, jazz, blues. It’s just a real versatile genre, and I think when you grow up with it too it gets you in a way that grows with you, as you grow with it.
Live?
(Mitch) we play mostly new stuff, and we’ll throw a couple of our old songs from the 2013 self-titled EP’s. We just play whatever we feel like from our library to be fair. There are a couple of old songs we will revamp for future gigs, I still wanna crack out “Violet”, “Shutting Me Down”, “Swallowing Grenades”, etc. And we have the new EP ‘Monsters Among Us’ releasing in March 2024, with a new line-up of merch, including new shirts for the next single “House of Bone & Flesh”, and a music video accompanying it, and a debut line of Hoodies too for the title design of the EP.
Live?
(Mitch) we play mostly new stuff, and we’ll throw a couple of our old songs from the 2013 self-titled EP’s. We just play whatever we feel like from our library to be fair. There are a couple of old songs we will revamp for future gigs, I still wanna crack out “Violet”, “Shutting Me Down”, “Swallowing Grenades”, etc. And we have the new EP ‘Monsters Among Us’ releasing in March 2024, with a new line-up of merch, including new shirts for the next single “House of Bone & Flesh”, and a music video accompanying it, and a debut line of Hoodies too for the title design of the EP.
What plans do you have for the future?
(Mitch) Future plans are very simple: gig loads, get an album cut, music videos, get on some festivals, get more merch for the website, really push push push. We have no plans on stopping or slowing down. So watch out for us.