Hold Tight! PR

BAND: THE FIRST

LOCATION: WISBECH, CAMBRIDGESHIRE

GENRE: MELODIC ROCK  

LINK: www.facebook.com/thefirstuk || http://www.thefirstmusic.co.uk

Tell us a bit about your band ­ how long have you been going, why you do
what you do, what you want to achieve.

We’ve been around a while, five or six years I think with various line-ups, Benny joined in 2010 and thats when things really started to kick off for us. We all just love playing music, we’re not in it to make the scene or change lives, we’re just five boys playing music we enjoy! Everything we achieve we’re grateful for, but we don’t expect anything, we work hard writing songs and hopefully people enjoy listening to them.

You have a new release coming out soon – without giving too much away tell us what listeners can expect from it.? 

I think people can expect a harder edge and a softer edge from us, we’ve really been working on dynamics and progression with the newest stuff. We’re always going to have those bouncy sing-a-long chorus parts, but we’re definitely bringing in some more challenging parts. We’re using a lot more vocal variation now too, four of us in the band sing which just helps bring a different edge to each song.

Plans for the next 12 months?

Record our second album, hopefully it will be our best material to date! Really looking forward to getting out on the road again with some new tracks, we’ve been playing the same songs for over 2 years now, so as you could imagine, we’re eager to show off some of the new stuff!

Tell us a bit about what it’s like to experience your live show. 

We’re always energetic, but we also like to banter a bit with our audiences. We try to get the crowd involved as much as possible, we also get other bands involved, there’s nothing we love more than bringing on a guest vocalist or guitarist for a song. 

How does the band prepare for a gig?

We’re usually in the van, drinking, listening to bands and just having a laugh, we dont have any particular routines we go through. You’ll sometimes catch us backstage doing vocal warm ups, they mostly sound like we’re either in pain or part of some West End musical.

Name 3 bands you would love to tour with and why.

Life On Repeat – We were all blown away by the bands debut album, they’re just an awesome band with awesome songs.

Lower Than Atlantis – We’ve done a few shows with these guys and they’re consistently brilliant. Over the past few years they’ve really shown the UK scene that you can do your own thing and still be successful.

Reckless Love – They’re so cheesy its unreal, but at least they know how to party. They’ve got great songs too!

Name a band you’d love to give a shout out to and think people should listen to (not your own band)

Mallory Knox, we’re from the same area so we all know each other pretty well. We’ve spent a lot of good nights with those guys, they’re always out watching other bands, they’re really good for the scene I think.

How much has the internet and technology helped your band to get to the point it is today. 

The internet has made it so simple to put music out, but its made it super competitive, which in a genre like ours becomes very hard work. Being able to connect with so many people in “real time” is a good thing for sure, staying on top of the bands social networking is very difficult though, twitter, facebook, youtube, instagram, myspace, they all have to be updated and we’ve always handled all that ourselves.

What’s in your cd player right now?

Glass Cloud, Write This Down, Deaf Havana and the latest Your Demise album too!

Ok you have a few lines to tell us why people should listen to your band. GO. 

Listen to The First, if you have as much fun listening to our music as we do making it, you’re in for a blast!

THE FIRST WILL BE RELEASING THEIR NEW VIDEO ‘TAKE IT BACK’ ON PUNKTASTIC AT 12 NOON (GMT) ON TUE 7TH AUG. Visit the site to see the vid when it’s released. http://punktastic.com 

BAND: DREAMCATCHER

LOCATION: LEEDS, UK

GENRE: MELODIC METAL  

LINK: http://www.dreamcatcherofficial.com || http://www.facebook.com/dreamcatcheruk ||

http://www.twitter.com/dreamcatcheruk || http://dreamcatchermerch.bigcartel.com/

Tell us a bit about your band ­ how long have you been going, why you do
what you do, what you want to achieve.

[Alex/Guitars] Well it’s been a long time! Rossi and I have been playing together since we were 16/17 (We’re 22/23 now! So around 6 years) just jamming and enjoying playing together and I guess that was the first kind of proto-inception of the band. The time we like to say that we first started making everything serious and writing music we felt good about was around 2 to three years ago, so I guess you can say anywhere between 2 and 6 years. 



[Adele/Keyboards] We do what we do because we’re not really out to fit a mold, we obviously have our influences, they’re pretty clear and that’s cool but what we’re trying to do above everything is write honest, genuine and powerful music that’s relevant to the world around us and reach out to people with it, and I guess we do that because we all pretty much believe music is one of the last real way of reaching out to people and we think that’s really important. That kinda ties in with what we want to achieve too, we all want to do something special, make this powerful music we can imagine in our minds and be able to deliver that power and feeling live as well!

You have a new release coming out soon – without giving too much away tell us what listeners can expect from it.? 

[Ross/Drums] Well our debut E.P. SoulDesign is out now and we’ve had such an incredible response from the fans and without any real help or favours from outside the band we are really proud to see that this response is generated solely by the music itself! Upcoming on August 13th is the single ‘Never Look Back’ from the E.P. And this release is a thank you to the fans is going to be backed up by a Music Video too! 

We have also included a one-off, never-before-heard track that won’t be available anywhere else and hopefully will give the fans a little “foresight” into the what will eventually become our full length album! 

Plans for the next 12 months?

[Matt] The future is looking really exciting for us, we have got so many new aspects to Dreamcatcher currently being finalised that we are going to be very, very busy! Some of which we must keep secret for a little while longer and others we shall announce very soon. Our main aim for the next 12 months shall be to split our time between getting out there touring and performing for the fans and writing the material for our new record. We currently have several new songs written, some of which we are now including in our live set so we cant wait to show them to the fans! We can promise that the near future is going to be really special and we invite all music lovers to take the journey with us!  

Tell us a bit about what it’s like to experience your live show. 

[Ben/Guitars] We’ve really strived to make our shows look as impressive and professional as we possibly can with what we have. We always put 110% into our performances, regardless of whether you’re playing to 5 people or a hundred people. That sounds quite cliché but it really is true. We’re there to play our music and entertain the audience and we damn well make sure we bring it each and every gig we play. With 6 people in the band it can be hard to make it work with small stages, but when that happens, we make the entire venue our stage and rock the fuck out as hard as we possibly can.

The sound is the most important aspect for us and we’ve tried to tailor our gear to provide as consistent a sound as possible across multiple venues. You’ll always get the massive kick in the chest from our kick drums, and the punch in the face from our guitars and bass. 

Summing up our live show is pretty simple: Above anything else, its unmissable.

How does the band prepare for a gig?

[Lukas/Vocals] Warming up is essential. I disappear about an hour before show time to do a variety of warm up exercises and generally try to put myself in the right frame of mind. The rest of the band like to be together and do warm ups but mainly to bring each other up so they are ready to rock on stage. Music like this is so demanding on all levels that we can’t afford to drink before the show, but of course we do afterwards!

Name 3 bands you would love to tour with and why.

[Alex] I think the whole band would agree that it would be a dream come true to tour with Sonata Arctica, they’re heroes to us all! We all love Pagans Mind so just to listen to them play music every night would be awesome! I think finally we would have to choose Nightwish as again we love their music and we think we would go down really well with their fans.

Name a band you’d love to give a shout out to and think people should listen to (not your own band)

[Ben] We have made some good friends in the band Midnight Realm from Newcastle! Their music is awesome to go check them out!

How much has the internet and technology helped your band to get to the point it is today. 

[Ross] This subject is really a double edged sword. The positive view is the internet allows anyone to share their music but at the same time it can make it even harder for fans to find the music they are really looking for.

[Matt] I think the biggest shame about about the affect of the internet upon music is the loss of the personal connection between the listener and the band they are discovering. When music can be illegally downloaded from the internet it removes the consumer from the process of saving their money, traveling to the music shop, purchasing the album and then taking the physical reward home and indulging in the artwork and the achievement of all the people involved in the making of the complete package. It reduces the value of the experience by placing music within the same ‘throw-away’ culture box that is currently eating up all aspects of modern art, culture and general processes.

What’s in your cd player right now?

[Matt] We are all so eclectic that no two members of the band is ever listening to the same thing at the same time though I do keep going back to listening to the new Architects album and of course Dimmu Borgir!

[Ross] I listen to a lot of different genres all the time but right now I am really enjoying Skyharbor, Evergrey, Myrath and Textures!

[Alex] Currently I’m listening to a lot of Tesseract’s ‘One’, Regina Spektor’s ‘Far’ and Circus Maximus brilliant new album ‘Nine’. 

Ok you have a few lines to tell us why people should listen to your band. GO. 

[Alex] I think all of us share the same opinion that anyone should listen to music because they love it, because it makes them feel something; sad, happy, strong etc and that’s what we’re trying to do. So if someone listens to the music we’ve made and bonded with it because it’s made them feel something then I think we’d feel incredibly humbled and accomplished what we set out to like we said earlier. 

DON’T MISS DREAMCATCHER AT BLOODSTOCK FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND. To celebrate their dual appearance on the New Blood Stage and the Jagermeister stage, DreamCatcher will be releasing their single, Never Look Back for FREE! The single will be released on August 13th along with the official Music Video for the track. For more info visit their Facebook page.