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#1 The (mostly) Fun Side of Music - Guerrilla - Aug 5th to Aug 11th 2019


It’s currently late summer in Manchester and I’m bored out of my arse which means it’s the perfect time to grind out band rehearsals and song-writing sessions. In these articles I will be talking about how we are progressing as a musical ensemble, the ups and downs, the plans we have and the dumb stuff we get up to.


Indie Breakdowns

First of all, I would like to introduce you to Guerrilla; a project I’ve been a part of for nearly a year. Initially we aimed to be a punk/grunge foursome but after a couple of line-up re-jiggles, and a lot of consideration, we’ve finally settled for a different sound that we’re comfortable with, and I would compare us to bands such as Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes, Alexisonfire and Tool, the latter being everywhere at the minute and also one of my big influences as a bassist. Aaron, our lead noisemaker and style influencer (aka guitarist), takes a lot from Frank Carter but has more grunge references than Mark (drummer) who generally takes his sound-palette heavy. Think Marmozets, Black Peaks or Royal Blood. And finally we have Dave: our most recent addition. As a vocalist he’s a fan of hair/80s metal, which is a strange contrast to our dingy grunge roots, but I managed to convince him to listen to some MJ Keenan (Tool) for reference on what we’re looking for. Clean vocals are his strong-suit and we’re looking forward to integrating ambience into our arsenal. We’re an odd mix but have definitely found a happy medium, and the challenge we face now is diversifying our soundtrack.

The Grind

After having a discussion with Aaron about why playing Pokémon GO is not as important as bringing his pedalboard to our rehearsals we cracked on with writing our fifth potential track. We have four solid songs in our setlist which brings us up to just under twenty minutes: a nice support slot. Our goal now is to get a couple more so we have a bit of variety. Depending on who we are supporting and where we are playing, I think it’s important to be flexible around audiences so we have a wider level of exposure to different genres and crowds. A problem we faced in the past was that our music was too heavy to play at most indie gigs (which are abundant in Manchester) but not heavy enough to warrant joining the local metal scene. Now we are striving to have a mixed catalogue so we can do both. The big challenge with this is needing to write a lot of tracks and keeping them sonically different enough to contrast, but similar enough so they fit in a set and can fit under our logo.


Looking to Term-time

If you don’t know, I’m a student in Manchester, so eventually this period of long, sunny days is going to be over and we’ll have less free time to work outside of uni. However this is good in some regards as we can use the facilities for longer and it gives us a deadline to get the pre-production out of the way to be gig-ready and able. As for the near future, I am currently in contact with a few photographers to get new stuff for Instagram and, eventually, the daunting task of launching Facebook. If you are a photographer, whether you own a camera and dabble for fun, or you’re a seasoned pro, get in touch and we can have some fun. I’ve been juggling the idea of filming and documenting our behind-the-scenes antics as it seems to be what all the successful bands are doing at the moment and I have experience with video production so I’d love an excuse to break out the old media A level. If you want to contact us, or me, message our Instagram (@guerrilla_band) or email us at officialguerrillaband@gmail.com .

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