Matter Q&A

Your name:  
Elijah Kellogg - vocals/guitar.

Where are you from? 
Santa Clarita, California, USA.

Name of band: 
Matter.

Who else is in your band? 
Daniel King - guitar, Daniel Griffin - guitar, Josh Marmol - bass/vocals, Matt Perry - drums.

How would you describe yourselves?

Something people have to understand about Matter right off the bat is that our musical style is entirely dependent upon the song you’re listening to. While each track could be generalized under the banner of “post-hardcore rock,” such a title is not always accurate to the listener’s experience or the band’s broad list of influences. That’s because Matter uses music to tell stories. Dark and brilliant, heavy and light, fast and slow: as the music follows the storyline, each track is appropriately different from the last. So we naturally hear of a lot of different comparisons from fans: from Radiohead to The Chariot, Thrice to Defeater and everything in between.

Who are your main influences musically?

We all love so many different bands, its genuinely hard to say. One major common ground for our band is Thrice, which is usually pretty apparent to most listeners who are familiar with them. In truth though, many of our most important influences aren’t music at all. We get ideas from movies, visual art pieces, books, even video games. Many of our fans have been glad to find the occasional Bioshock reference throughout our latest release.

What do you hope to achieve in music?

It’s may sound a bit cheezy, but our name really says it all: we want to be a band that actually makes a difference in the both the music world and the real world. We want to matter. We are always purposely conscious of the brevity of existence as a band and human beings, so, while we’re here, we decided right from the get go that we would dedicate our music to loving God and loving others. We want to make relationships with our fans that last and we want to do our best to make the world a better place with the talents we’ve been given. That’s why we have partnered in the past with groups like Exit Tour in Europe and Life Impact International in South East Asia.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?

Just this past spring (March through April) we had the incredible opportunity to tour through Eastern Europe with Exit Tour, a non-profit ministry that puts on free events and concerts for students in countries like The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. This opportunity was a ridiculous dream-come-true for a band that has only been in the public eye for less than a year, and it feels like a major understatement when we say that the experience was life-changing. If we never toured again, we’d all be pretty satisfied.

And what’s the moment you want to forget?

We really don’t regret anything thus far, but we’re also a pretty new band. While we’d never say that we’d want to forget it, the recording process straight-up sucks sometimes. This is especially true when our entire first album was self-produced/recorded/mixed/mastered/duplicated and distributed. We’re happy now to say that we accomplished making The Man and the Terror all on our very own with our own means, but there were definitely times when it became a frustrating experience.

If you could choose just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?

I think we would all probably choose a different song from the rest of the band, but our track “Kowtow” really represents our first album well. It highlights all the different thematic elements we enjoyed using throughout The Man and the Terror and is musically/lyrically one of our favorites to perform live. But again, being that each track is so different and dependent upon the story, it’s tough to say.

Where can we listen to it?

matter-band.bandcamp.com

Where can we find out more about your music? www.matterband.com  // facebook.com/matterband  // twitter.com/matterband  // reverbnation.com/matterband

Anything else you’d like to say about your band that I forgot to ask?

We’re currently looking for solid booking management. We would love to tour stateside, but we want to do it right. If anybody has any leads, hit us up! Thank you so much for the interview!