interview with the Becoming

The Becoming Interview in Support of Vol. 1

By Nattalie Tehrani

PunkTV.ca: Hey how’s it going?
It’s going absolutely great, just sitting outside, taking a break!

PunkTV.ca: Aw sweet! So I wanted to talk to you a little about Vol 1. You guys just released it on September 30th, can you tell me a little about the fan reaction you guys have been getting?
Ah its been going really well. We went out on a tour, and it was real fun, it was about 30 to 40 kids…played about 4 shows and sold over a 100 records. Unfortunately with the time of the year…touring is a bit scarce right now.

PunkTV.ca: I totally agree, you know, fall and winter doesn’t consist of as much touring as summer time does…with Warped Tour and Projekt Revolution.
Yeah, right now we’re playing every show we get. Since we’re from the Midwest, some music stores had 4 or 5 of our copies and they all sold out. So they’ve been getting more shipment which is really cool.

PunkTV.ca: Definitely, I really think that it does actually get a bit more difficult to promote a record in the fall.
I feel like the record has a fall/winter feel. We wanted to release it in the fall because the theme of the record. The problem was the tours we wanted to go on were already booked. And we didn’t have a booking agent or manager at all.
PunkTV.ca: I bet life is a lot easier now!
Oh yeah!

PunkTV.ca: In an interview you guys mentioned that you have been a lot of bands before. What makes this band any different than the previous bands you have been in.
Um, finally it’s the style of music that I’ve always wanted to play. I have always been fascinated by the dark aspect of life. What I mean by that is that I have always been interested in the more horrific part of life. Um, I definitely think something’s you can’t escape and like writing about that. Other bands…you know, I’m not so down to sing about a girl, or you know, I used to be in a pop punk band when I was younger and I love it. I loved music because you can sing about anything you want to but I just like to sing about things that have a meaning behind it.

PunkTV.ca: Yeah, stuff that touches the real aspects of lives that anyone can relate to.
We’re the type of band that doesn’t want to hide anything. We want to be the band that takes chances, and we like to fall in love with what we do and keep our music true to ourselves.

PunkTV.ca: Especially with your genre of music, you can get a lot more emotion out of people and I think that’s the most important part of music and that’s getting a reaction out of people.
We’ve been put in the Goth label, and right below that s Emo, but we let people put us in whatever genre they want to, but we really don’t think we belong to any specific genre. I think music has changed our lives individually. We like to all take our influences…throw it in a pot and mix it together to make our sound.

PunkTV.ca: That’s the best way to do it! What bands inspired you back in the day, as well as any contemporary bands?
Well we’re all young, I mean I’m the oldest, I’m 25 and the youngest is 23 and uh, the style of music we listen to is the dark wave movement of the e 80s which is right when we were born and younger. My first record was The Sniper and the second was The Cure. They still have influence on my song writing.

PunkTV.ca: That’s a great decade to be inspired by, for sure.
Some of my personal favorite bands are you know, Sisters Of Mercy, which I am lucky enough to go see in 2 weeks!

PunkTV.ca: Oh nice! That should be one hell of a show.
Type O Negative was another favorite.

PunkTV.ca: Oh man, they were playing in LA a while back and I was so bummed that I missed it!
See I caught that too. There are a few things that I would drop anything for, and one is the Type O shows.

PunkTV.ca: I’m sure being on tour can be tiring, you know, get in the way of going to shows and puts a stop on regular life. Do you need more motivation to get going?
You know, we have done a quite a bit of runs, but we’ve never done anything for more than 3 or 4 weeks. We’re still a baby band, because we’ve only been around for 3 years. Most of the time we’re just stoked to be out there. We get tired but we don’t need motivation. I don’t think we’ve had enough touring under our belts to need motivation.

PunkTV.ca: I think maybe when you start getting smelly cloths, then it will start to get a bit difficult?
Yeah! Right? We’re pretty clean guys, and we look hard for some place where we can wash our stuff or we stay at some friends houses in the cities we tour in.

PunkTV.ca: Yeah, that’s good because there are some bands that get down and dirty with that kind of stuff.
We’re definitely not one of those grungy bands…we don’t use it as an excuse. Ha!

PunkTV.ca: Is it ever difficult for you guys to maintain your uniqueness and try and invent something new that hasn’t been done before?
It’s almost impossible to do something right now that hasn’t been done before. I mean, there are not many bands that are poppy and dark at the same time. It’s either one or the other. It’s definitely hard to be original. We try to take things that have already been done and make it better. In the end you’re always going to be compared to somebody. Originality is out of the question. It’s hard to reach but I do think that we’ve done a good job.

PunkTV.ca: I was thinking about it the other day, and it’s like artwork if you think about it. There are artists everywhere but in the end it’s your opinion and your take on things that makes it your own, you know?
Right, right! I do feel like we have an original approach our songs and lyrics. When you get to mainstream however, there will always be someone that will try and compare you to someone else. But we’ll see…we’re just strolling along for now.

PunkTV.ca: What’s next for you guys?
Well we got a few shows booked and we’re just jumping on tour with some bands that are touring at the moment. So we’re hoping to do some small runs…we’re not saying anything yet because we don’t want to jinx ourselves. We just landed a booking agent because it’s going to help us out a lot.

PunkTV.ca: PunkTV.ca has two questions that we ask all of our interviewees. The first is, have you ever seen a ghost, the face of god, or had an alien encounter?
Um, I can say that I’ve felt the hand of god, but never seen the face. I have seen many ghosts, but I don’t call them ghosts, I call them demons.

PunkTV.ca: What would surprise most people to learn most about your or your band?
Oh good question. You know, the way we dress, we dress all serious and you know we look hard, but our music isn’t like that. Because of the way we portray ourselves people think were jerks. But you know we go out and talk to people before and after shows, because we want to get everyone involved. So people think we act tough and our music’s tough because of how we look. Which is not true at all.

PunkTV.ca: Great answer…audio and visual experience! It keeps the element of surprise going.
Exactly, that’s what we’re going for.

PunkTV.ca: Well thank you so much, it was great talking to you!
Thank you, thanks a bunch for the interview!

PunkTV.ca: It was great talking to you and hope to see you soon! Take care!