This Is Hell bassist Pieter Vandenberg insists that last fall’s run supporting Bring Me The Horizon and August Burns Red wasn’t just any kind of tour — it was a rock spectacle.
“[Vocalist Travis Reilly] would get up on the mic… and would go ‘where are all my metalheads?!,’ then [have] all these kids throw up the metal horns. Sometimes you would get a good reaction, but other times the whole place would do it! It’s like ‘I feel like I’m in Metallica right now,'” he laughs.
When Scale The Summit played Prosthetic Records their four song demo in 2006, the label had little interest in signing instrumental bands.
“[Prosthetic] said word for word: ‘[we’ll] never sign an instrumental band,'” guitarist Chris Letchford commented. “At the time, I guess they didn’t see it as a good idea…Now they have us and Animals As Leaders, so it’s kind of funny how that worked out.”
A band that has shared stages with notoriety such as Dream Theater, The Devin Townsend Project, and Between the Buried and Me, Scale The Summit attributes their growing success to their ability to deal with “taking shit,” along with a cleverly crafted course of action.
Le Butcherettes frontwoman Teri Gender Bender has little patience for unenthusiastic crowds, especially ones in Arizona. Hesitant to play the band’s Mesa show on their recent stint with Deftones, Gender Bender, raised in Mexico from age 14, made it a point to mark her territory, expressing her angst towards the state’s controversial immigration law.
“I got offstage in the big grass area, and got next to some bros that were sitting down…and pissed next to them without taking off anything. I just felt better that way,” she commented, adding that “I hate when people sit down [during shows], it’s so rude!”
Five years ago, Animals As Leaders guitarist Javier Reyes auditioned for Periphery. “He didn’t make the cut!” jokes lead guitarist Tosin Abasi. As he laughs and shakes his head, Reyes defends himself, “They were 20 years old, and I was 26. I was just not trying to hang out with 20-year-olds at the time.”
It was Reyes’ reluctance to hang out with 20-year-olds that initiated Abasi’s relationship with Periphery’s Misha Mansoor, resulting in the band’s debut album that has earned them international exposure. Today, older, wiser, and long past adolescence, Animals As Leaders are feeling the pressures that come with a second album – this time with drummer Navene Koperweis handling production duties.
Ever wonder what band headlined the first Warped Tour in ’95? The answer: Quicksand, fronted by Walter Schreifels. “At the time I thought it was a budget Lollapalooza,” he recalls. As he sips on a cup of coffee at Bonnerhaus, the Ryan’s Rock Show headquarters, he further reminisces on the festival’s early days.
“The guy from Sublime threw a bottle at this Italian kid who was a roadie for one of my friends, just a random act of violence. He threw a [glass] bottle at him for no fucking reason! They got kicked off the tour, but then were invited back because on the West Coast they were needed. Then those dudes got arrested.”