The Bride

The Bride are a 5-piece hardcore band from Sydney, one of the most recent additions to the UNFD roster and definitely a band to look out for. With the buzz they have created surrounding their debut full length President Rd, they are definitely a band to keep your eye on. A few days before the album's "official" release, vocalist Kevin Schultz had a chat with Kill Your Stereo about the album, their upcoming tour with House Vs Hurricane, tour rituals and a whole bunch more.

Good morning mate.

Hey, how are you?

Good thanks, how are you?

Good, though I am standing in the rain at the moment, which sucks.

Well thanks for chatting with Kill Your Stereo! Could you start off by introducing yourself, what you do in The Bride and your current favourite album?

I am Kevin, I do vocals in The Bride, I wouldn’t really call it vocals though, it’s more just yelling, and my favourite album at the moment would probably be Gospel by Fireworks.

For anyone that doesn’t know too much about The Bride, could you tell us a little bit about your band?

We are a hardcore band from Western Sydney, we pretty much live to just play gigs and tour, we get pretty passionate when we play. We have all grown up together so we have sort of watched each other grow as a band and I think that shows when we play live. When we play we don’t really give a fuck, we try to go as hard as possible while having as much fun as possible. The best way to describe us is a bunch of drunk dickheads having fun (laughs).

Earlier in the year you guys got picked up by UNFD, congratulations on the signing. How different is it working with a pretty big label behind you?

Thanks. Its surreal to be completely honest. I still really cant believe that we got picked up by such a good label. Like I said before, we sort of consider ourselves a bit of idiots, most of the time we don’t take anything really that seriously, so when we got interest from UNFD we were really happy with it, just surprising and its all just really surreal. You look at the roster that UNFD have and its incredible, and to think that a little band from Western Sydney is considered to be in the same sort of level is just really cool.

You guys are about to officially release your debut full length President Rd, how was the writing and recording process different when preparing for a full length?

Um, it was longer, it was really, really long. We had only ever done EPs before this album so in relation to EPs we did a little split EP with some friends from Byron Bay towards the end of last year. So we spent pretty much all of last year writing for it and then we ended up not liking the songs and going back and rewriting them so that took pretty much the whole year, it was just incredibly long. We wrote for almost a year and then demoed for a couple of months and then when we thought that we were actually ready to record the album we went in and recorded it, we had a finished product but then we decided that it still needed more so we went back and wrote again then we went and recorded some more stuff. So yeah it was incredibly long, it took us close to a year to get the final finished product but we ended up with something that we are really happy with and we hope people like it as well. I know a lot of people have already got it for free, which is sort of cool. We aren’t in the business to make money, we are here to play music so if people like it that’s all that really matters for us.

What sort of bands and music influence The Bride’s sound?

It’s hard to actually answer, we have five dudes in our band and we all sort of listen to completely different music from each other. I wouldn’t say there was one sort of genre that really influences us, we sort of take a little bit from everywhere and try and mash it up together and I think President Rd sort of shows that. We have some songs on there that have singing, which is something we have never done before, we have a few guest spots on vocas to get some help with that sort of thing, we have some poppy parts in it, we have some hardcore parts in it, some heavy parts. We try to listen to as much different music and take influence from anywhere possible.

As you spoke about before with the album, releasing an album nowadays there is always a chance that it is going to leak. President Rd leaked pretty early, how did that affect you and the band? And how did you find out that it had leaked in the first place?

As a band I am not really sure that it affected us too much. I think more so the fact that we had just been signed and people were talking about the signing and then pretty much as soon as we had announced that we were signed to UNFD the album leaked, which isn’t really good for the label. For us it doesn’t really affect us, I mean we wrote the album for people to listen to it, whether we made $50 off it or $150 or $100,000 or whatever amount of money we make off the album it doesn’t really affect us. We really only make music for people to listen to and enjoy, the money side of things is more to do with the label so I think they were a bit more upset than us to be honest. We found out about it because our guitarist was actually on it-leaked and happened to see it at about 5 o’clock in the morning, five weeks before the release date, and sort of called everyone freaking out thinking that we were going to get in trouble for this. We searched around for a bit trying to figure out how it happened, but we still don’t know. But like I said, it doesn’t really affect us, it’s good that people like it, we got a good response from it. Because it leaked we decided to give it away for free, because if people do enjoy it they will buy it and that’s all we can really ask for to be honest. Like I said before, we aren’t in the business to make money, we are here to have fun and enjoy doing what we do, so if people like it go and buy a copy. When I was growing up I always downloaded music and if I did like it I would go out and buy it just so I could read the lyrics and have the physical copy in my hand. I think there is something special about having an album that you like and sitting down and reading the lyrics.

As you said before, a lot of people have taken on the free download deal and the response to the material has been super positive. Did you boys expect it?

Um, I’m not sure, probably not. I mean we always hoped that people would enjoy the record, it was a really daunting experience going in to write our first actual album, so yeah we hoped people would enjoy it and like it but I think we were all pretty surprised with the amount of kids messaging us and getting on facebook and telling us how great it is. I have had countless messages on my personal facebook like that. For me, its sort of the same thing as the signing, it is really surreal to think that people take the time out to contact me and say “Hey I really like your record” or “I really like this song”. We are all growing up and learning together and this is all sort of still new to us with people getting involved in liking something that much so its really humbling and we are really proud of it, and if people like it hopefully they will come out to shows and enjoy the shows

How important is social media to young bands? Is that the biggest promotional/contact tool for bands nowadays?

Yeah, I’d say so. It’s a different world we live in now. Every band has their own twitter account, and facebook and tumblr and stuff like that. And it is important, a lot of people now will go out and download music and have it on their computer at home instead of going to the shops and buying it. Social networking sites help bands, I think, more with touring and stuff like that, being able to advertise yourself by saying “look we are playing at this town on this day” and having four or five different sources to advertise that is really good and I think it does help bands grow and for bands to be able to reach out to more people. So yeah, it is a very important tool, we have our own facebook, our own twitter, our own website, and with the amount of stuff that we get directed towards those accounts I don’t think our band would be as well known as we are, and we are still a small band, I don’t think we would have anywhere near the amount of people that have heard of our band without those sites.

You are gearing up to officially release the album. What has the build up and preparation been like?

The preparation has been massive. We have had this record finished now since midway through this year and then after UNFD getting involved and so we sort of took a step back and then had to figure out days to release it and what was available and all that sort of thing. I mean, for us as a band again its something we sort of try to steer away from as much as possible. We have a really great team that look after us, Luke at UNFD, we have our manager Chris and we have our own booking agent and stuff like that, so they sort of take care of all that stuff for us which we are extremely grateful for because I think if we had to do it all ourselves all the time I am not sure much would get done, we are too busy having fun (laughs). But yeah the preparation has been massive, it is so exciting to see it all sort of come out now, for the album to finally be out for everyone to hear it and we are lucky enough to have a tour to back the release so hopefully the kids will come out to that and see it live.

The tour you just mentioned is the House Vs Hurricane national tour. How are you feeling about it and what are you expecting?

I don’t know if we really have too many expectations for the tour, we have been friends with the House guys for a little while now and they are great dudes, and when we got asked to join the tour we sort of jumped at it. It is more just a chance for us to get to hang out with some mates and play some shows. I think it is pretty important for House more than us with their singer leaving so I am just hoping that kids come out and support them and get down early so they can check us out as well, and just have some fun. That’s all we really as for when we play shows, that people aren’t shy to have a mosh or jump around or sing-along, we are all nice dudes, we aren’t going to bite. I think our only expectation for the tour is that it goes well more so for House than us and that the kids really enjoy themselves.

For anyone hitting up the shows who may not have seen The Bride live, what can be expected, I have heard your live shows are pretty crazy?

I’m not really too sure, I think if kids come out to have fun then they are going to enjoy it, we sort of have a no holds bared attitude when we play shows, whatever is going to happen will happen, like I said we just have fun with it. so if we are just jumping around like idiots I think people see that sort of attitude that we don’t really care too much about how we are perceived and that we are just there to have fun, I think that’s sort of what they can expect, just a really fun show with as many sing-alongs and stage dives and stuff like that as possible and it will be awesome for us

Does The Bride have any tour rituals we should know about?

We used to, when we were a lot younger we used to stand around in a little huddle and listen to Frank Sinatra before we played every show, I don’t know what happened to that, but I think now there is no real ritual, just drink as much as possible before you go on is probably the only rule we have now, give each other a slap on the ass before we walk on and that’s really about it really.

You have previously played with some pretty big bands. What has been your highlight so far?

Um, we have been touring now for almost three years and a lot of the time we tour with friends of ours, we have been lucky enough to play some big shows. We were over the moon when we got announced to play the A Day To Remember support slot in Sydney, and that was huge, that was to three and a half thousand people and it was incredible, and experience that I don’t think any of us were really ready for. But I don’t know if there would be a stand out. I think that when we tour we sort of hope that we are there with friends rather than big bands and I think if we got to tour for the rest of our lives with friends then I think that is something we would be pretty stoked on. We just did the tour with Dream On, Dreamer who have been friends of ours for a little bit. You know, tour is a pretty cool thing, you get to meet a lot of people that you probably normally wouldn’t. so I’d say the standout would probably be when we played with A Day To Remember just because there was so many kids, but I mean the tour we just did with Dream On, Dreamer we played a venue in Brisbane called Sun Distortion and that was sold out and it was a tiny little shoe box of a room but we just had people jumping up and down, standing on stairs, it was just really cool. I think we prefer smaller venues where we can really connect with people and have a chat with them after.

After the tour what else is planned for The Bride?

I’m not sure really. The plan for the rest of the year is to tour again, we have another tour that we will be announcing shortly again with some friends of ours which we are hoping will go down well and then with an overseas band which we will be jumping on that tour. So we have those tours coming up, there are a few little things in the works but I think Luke will get angry with me if I let too much out of the bag.

Before we go is there anything else you wanted to add?

I guess, just come out to the House shows in your local city and just have fun, don’t ever be afraid to come up and talk to us, we are all pretty nice guys and we will have a drink and a chat with anyone. So yeah just come out to the shows, have some fun, buy us a beer because we are going to be pretty poor

Awesome. Well thanks for having a chat Kevin and good luck with the album release and the tour.

Cool, thanks a lot.

You can check out Kill Your Stereo's review of President Rd here. You can also find out more about the upcoming tour with House Vs Hurricane here.