Tuesday 30 April 2013

Bless And Defy Q&A


Your name:
Ethan Simpson

Where are you from?
McMinnville, Oregon, United States.

Name of band:
We are called Bless and Defy

Who is in your band?
I'm the lead vocalist, I play guitar and I'm the main song writer. Our other guitarist is named Jacob Baltzell, our bass player is actually my brother and his name is Lukas Simpson. And last but not least is our drummer, Kelsey Bleck

How would you describe yourselves?
I would describe myself, personally as the main song writer in the band. I started writing songs in middle school for a couple bands that I played guitar for. I joined the the choir program at school by accident and I found out that I could sing. After going through a couple bands, I decided to form my own, and I could never succeed at finding all the people necessary. Finally in my senior year, I found a drummer and bassist, and a friend of mine to play rhythm guitar and I sang and played lead guitar. Several line up changes later, I am the only original member of the band but we are all good friend and we enjoy making music together. this last summer i financed the recording of our first demo/EP which we have released one single from the rest of the songs from it, we are expecting to release sometime last month. 
As a band, we are some style of melodic metal. We have soooooo many influences that is really hard for us to just stick to one style, we are also a young band so I'm expecting our musical identity to continue to evolve as time goes on.

Who are your main influences musically?
We have sooo many, I personally started off into Christian hard rock bands like: Kutless, RED, and Disciple, and eventually I ended up getting into a lot of metal core bands: Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying, All That Remains, Oh Sleeper, Demon Hunter, etc.
I also have gone through phases where I've listened to bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Creed, Alter Bridge, Stone Sour, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Pantera, Disturbed, Amon Amarth, Children of Bodom, Messugah, Animals As Leaders, Shinedown and of course all the legendary bands - Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Ozzy, Motorhead.
Lately my favorites have been: Trivium, Dethklok, Bullet For My Valentine, and all sort of different stuff. And I also have to say the new Killswitch Engage album with their original frontman back, that album kicks ass. 

What do you hope to achieve in music?
I just want to create music that I enjoy listening to and that I enjoy playing. Eventually I'd like to get signed and tour around the world and just have fun playing my music. 

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
We got to play a battle of the bands at a local theater, called the Hawthorne Theater, a couple weeks back, and I've regularly attended concerts there and I've seen some of my all time favorite artists play there. So I was a huge honor to me to play and perform on that same stage.

And what’s the moment you want to forget?
The very first concert that we played with the first line up; we played a cover of Ironman, and our drummer smoked a joint before going on stage and he completely forgot what we had practiced! Which looking back it was pretty funny, but man did it suck! 

If you could choose just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
The first single from our demo is called Shadows, and it is a great song with a nice groove and it's also the first song that I ever finished writing. It really has a great blend between our hard rock and metal core influences, so I think it sums up our band at this point in our career. 

Where can we listen to it? 

Where can we find out more about your music?

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