Band: Every Promise Kept
From: Knoxville, Tennessee
Their formation story:
(Vocalist Jay Barker) "We started in January of 2022 and it was originally just me and one of our guitarists (Bee). We struggled finding a full lineup for six months or so. Knoxville is a small city and it seemed like no one we tried ever worked out or was serious about being in a hardcore band, so I focused on booking shows and put the band on the backburner for a bit, other than a mewithoutYou cover we did for a cover comp.
"A Christian/spirit-filled band was a hard sell for alot of the musicians we came across in our area. I think there's this assumption that if you're in a Christian band you have to be a hate-monger and that's not the case, three of the five people in this band are trans women, and we're pissed off at the state of the church in America and it comes through in our lyrics.
"Eventually, we found a full lineup around two months ago, adding Mike, our second guitarist, Emily, our drummer, and Logan, our bass player. We had already had two songs written with guitar and bass so it was really easy once they joined to add drums, second guitar parts, and vocals. Mike wrote an intro, and we put the cover from the cover comp on there as well. Our first show was in a tiny used bookstore opening for The Callous Daoboys and it was a crazy time.
Their sound in their own words:
"I think we take alot of influence from late '90s/early '00s hardcore and metalcore bands like Zao, Focal Point, Few Left Standing, Martyr A.D., Arkangel, and stuff like that.
"A lot of Christian/spirit-filled hardcore and metalcore stuff, some edge metal/H8000 stuff too even though we aren't an edge band. Lyrically I like to take influence from all over the place. Movies, books, video games, The Bible, experiences I've had, you name it."
Latest release info:
"Our newest release is just a little 4-track self-produced and recorded demo we did to have something to put on tapes to sell at our first show. Initially we weren't gonna put the songs on streaming but the tapes all sold and we had people ask if it was gonna be on streaming. Intro is a sick instrumental track that our guitarist Mike wrote at a practice the day before our first show.
"'The Winter of Our Discontent' was the first song we wrote as a band, I wrote the main riff and Bee fleshed the rest out, I had just watched The Prophecy so I decided to rip a sample from it. 'Savage Weapons' is by far the best song on the EP and pretty representative of what we think 'our sound' is. Bee wrote that one pretty much entirely, with only some simple feedback from the rest of us. And then the last track is our cover of 'Flamethrower' from mewithoutYou's demo. We had recorded it for a mewithoutYou comp that a tape label put out back in august, so we decided to just throw it on the demo tapes too."
Future plans:
"Our plan right now for the immediate future is to keep getting better gear, buy a van, and to write seven or eight songs and go to a studio in the spring to record with a friend of ours who wants to record us. We're shooting to put five or six songs on an EP and release it in the summer and save the other two for a four-way split we're trying to put together with some cool bands. We'll keep playing local shows, do some out of town weekend shows, and hopefully do a long run in the summer. Definitely a ton of regional homies I'd love to do a tour or weekender with in the near future."
What other bands from their region should we check out?
"The Knoxville scene is exploding right now and it's been really sick to see. Sanity is a really sick beatdown band that just put out a couple of really cool singles. Disarmer is a super heavy slam band and they're the nicest dudes ever. Septum Bone isn't from Knoxville but their vocalist lives around here and is a huge supporter of everything our hardcore scene does.
"There's also a ton of really sick regional bands that deserve love too, Iron Sights (Asheville, North Carolina), Your Spirit Dies (South Carolina), Wielded Steel (Birmingham, Alabama), No Cure (Birmingham, Alabama) and Vital Part (Nashville, Tennessee) all come to mind. It's really sick to see so many bands flying the flag of Southeast hardcore/metallic hardcore right now."
Every Promise Kept on social media: Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp
***
Help Support What No Echo Does via Patreon:
***
Tagged: every promise kept
