Pearly Gates hail from Finland and they bring us music that picks up influences from plenty of musical styles. They released 6 EP’s so far, with “Unchained” being their most recent one. Pearly Gates songs interact a lot with metal, jazz, and even pop.

“Unchained” is comprised of four songs that show influences from likes such Tool and Graveyard. Fans of both mentioned bands will find something interesting in this release. Besides, a great chunk of Porcupine Tree’s influence is channeled through “Unchained.”

The opening piece “Glass Eyes” is a true masterpiece of the EP. It starts with a calm guitar voicing and is plastered with prog-y clean vocals. “Sİnk Hole” comes along with far more aggression in its structure. The most striking thing about “Unchained” are Jonne Nyberg’s vocals. The stylistic change towards more grungy and alternative rock vibe is emphasised through this piece. The title song is recorded live, and is an acoustic piece that slows things down and gives this recording diversity. Its folkiness makes the overall sound of “Unchained” a little bit warmer. The closing “Free Fall” crosses over pop and rock almost constantly during its 5-odd minutes; it’s another piece that’s nothing like the previous songs, what speaks a lot about how much “Unchained” is diverse.

Pearly Gates’ “Unchained” is a perfect mixture of popular culture of rock music and progressive rock. There is no clear line between modern and vintage on this EP. Definitely worth a listen!

Buy “Unchained” from Bandcamp, and make sure to follow the band on Facebook.

How did you go about forming viseMenn? Tell me about the distance you passed to shape the band as it is today?

We all come from different parts of the country and we all had been involved in different musical projects before we met, ranging from blues, rock, experimental, metal, classical, punk, pop, church-music, session-work, art-projects.. We met through the improv project «a Crack in Time and the Break of Dawn», we started playing together in relation to a couple of gigs and our individualities slowly started to shape into a band.

If I am not wrong, all of you guys worked before viseMenn on other projects. How do your previous experiences reflect on your work with viseMenn?

It is a growing process where you learn about who you are and who you are not, becoming aware of your own individual style helps keeping focus. We like the freedom of expression moving unrestricted between styles and perceive music more in terms of atmospheres and moods rather than musical genres. From «a Crack in Time and the Break of Dawn» jamming and improvising has made us better instrumentalists and improved our ability to be present in the musical performance. The pure spontaneous joy of performing/creating music is an essential part of our musical motivation.

Tell me about the creative process of the “Begging You Please” single. How would you describe the sound of it, or how would you describe your music in general to someone who didn’t listen to you before?

We wanted the song to have it’s own signature. We wanted it to reflect a bit of who we are and where we come from. We don’t come from a big city metropole and we felt that a fashionable urban sound would not be right. Where we come from is a place with few people and lots of nature that can shift from extremely dark, heavy and depressed to indescribable beautiful, bright and blissful. In a way this is our cultural inheritance. In many ways this is also the best way to describe our music.

Did you guys equally share songwriting duties for the single?

When we come together Helge brings a sketch for a song, everybody brings their interpretations and personal style to the table and together that is what makes viseMènn.

Are you satisfied how “Begging You Please” turned out to be? Is there anything from this point that you would change or do differently?

Yes, we are very happy. Cenzo Townshend of Decoy Studios did a tremendous job of mixing it all together and enhancing our intentions. Precious is the experience that we bring onwards to the next project.

I suppose that “Begging You Please” is an introduction to your upcoming full-length release. If so, what can we expect from the album? When do you plan to release it? How much will it differ from the actual single?

Yes, we are working on an album, shape and form constantly evolving and time being a relative measure has to be related to us being artists, but shall we say next summer? Hopefully it will differ, in a brotherly fashion.

How do you see the Norwegian rock scene today?

Norway has lots of very talented musicians. The rock scene is generally shifted towards the heavier more aggressive sides. Original bands often struggle to find an audience as most people prefer cover/party bands.

“Begging You Please” is available from iTunes. Follow the viseMenn on Facebook.

Drummond is a guitarist and composer coming from New York, and last month he released his debut EP titled “Getting Comfortable.” The EP is available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.

In an interview for Progarchy, Drumm talks about his musical beginnings, the EP, and more.

Thank you for having time to answer some questions. First of all, introduce us the project called Drummond.

Thanks for having me! It started back in 2012 when I decided to write an EP. Things just kind of took off from there really. I wrote all the music and asked my good friends Eugene Bisdikian to play bass and Thomas Diognardi on drums.

Would you mind telling us about your musical background, as well as education?

I come from a pretty musical background with my grandmother playing piano for a living and my stepfather playing trumpet for a living, so music was everywhere around me. I’ve been playing guitar for about 8 years now, and started taking lessons when I was 12. I started formally studying jazz my junior year of high school, and have continued to study it in college.

You recently released your debut EP “Getting Comfortable” How was the creative process for it?

I had so much fun writing this EP, it took a while though. The first song was pretty much finished in 2012, and the last song was finished in 2015. I pretty much locked myself in my room during the summers and wrote and listened to music until I had the EP completed. Good times…

“Getting Comfortable” is a very eclectic release. What do you think I should describe your music as to my friends? The real question here is, what do you guys consider the music of Drummond to be?

This is always a hard one, because every artist has influences coming in from every genre you know? A lot of people have called my stuff prog rock/metal and a lot of people have called it jazz fusion. I think the answer is probably somewhere in between there.

This eclectic music must have a wide range of influences and inspiration. Would you guys mind enlightening us as to some of the influences you haven’t mentioned already?

I think I take most heavily from Plini, I just love everything he puts out. Along the same lines, I really love all of David Maxim Micic’s work, and Sithu Aye (who makes a guest appearance on the EP) always kills it. On the jazz end of the spectrum, I’ve been listening to a lot of Wayne Krantz recently, and Tigran Hamasyan too. All those guys are monsters.

Can you think of some moments where musical homages have been included in Drummond’s tracks?

That’s tough… I think all the music I listen to and study makes its way into the EP for sure, but exactly where, I wouldn’t be able to say. The whole thing is just a compilation of me trying to sound like the guys I listen to and love!

What’s the live experience with Drummond like? Any plans for a tour somewhere down the road?

I recently pulled together a group of great musicians and we have been rehearsing for a few months now, and once we tweak our live sound and get it sounding how we think is best, we will be hitting the scene. As for a tour, nothing in the works yet, but down the line I think we can expect some!

What have you been listening to recently? Also, would you tell us what your all-time favorite albums are?

I’ve been jamming on a lot of Wayne Krantz lately like I mentioned earlier. His record ‘two drink minimum’ is nuts. And I’ve also been really digging Owane’s new release ‘greatest hits’. I love his playing and writing, I highly recommend that record. As for all time favorites, the albums I always come back to are Plini’s EP ‘the end of everything’, Laurindo Almeida’s ‘The Spanish Guitars of Laurindo Almeida’ and probably Art Blakey and the Jazz messengers album ‘Ugetsu’.

What kind of advice would you impart to other musicians? Do you have any words of wisdom or inspiration for other artists trying to make their mark?

I think the best words of wisdom ever passed down to me were from one of my professors. He told me that if you have a goal and a passion, you have to do everything in your power to achieve it. Be aggressive until you get what you want, ‘like a bulldog trying to get a bone’ he said. That stuck with me. The best part is you have your whole life to try to achieve your goal, so don’t rush, stay relaxed but keep making progress!

Thank you again for agreeing to do this interview. I think I’m out of questions, so feel free to add anything you like.

Thanks again for having me, and thanks to all the people who have showed their support, its mind boggling!

“Getting Comfortable” is available from Bandcamp. Make sure to check it out.

Thank you for having time to answer some questions. First of all, introduce us the band Bangbakc. What does the band name refer to? 

Aaron:  And thank you for taking the time to ask us some questions! So before the band started, I used to use “bangback” as a term for when you haven’t had sex in a really long time, and then get lucky and just really go to town one night and wake up the next day with a sore back. The switching of the “ck” to “kc” was just kind of an inside joke and an homage to our friend Aliyah Boucher, who used to make these hilarious typos on facebook. Another friend of ours described her typing strategy as just sort of “laying her hands on the keyboard and just mashing out approximations of words and sentences.” This became a long running joke that still makes its way onto our facebook page quite often.

Dylan: Inside jokes get out of hand easily. This is a prime example of that. The only issue with this one is that folks sometimes try to overpronounce it. “Bang-bach” kind of creates an association with classical music that we aren’t going to attempt until we release the greatest hits album.

Brill: we r brangbaks and were he7re to tell you your on a sprace ship traped in a computerizer.

Would you mind telling us about your musical background, as well as education?

Aaron: I’ve been playing guitar since I was 12, when my dad brought me home a classical acoustic guitar from one of his visits to Mexico. Initially, I took some lessons but just kind of taught myself after that. I would say my real musical education came from my time playing bass in The Mercury Tree, because I would have to practice playing impossibly difficult parts just to keep up with Ben and Connor. Ben is also a very knowledgable musician and taught me most of the theory that I know now. (Ben plays some really awesome keys and synths on track 6)

Dylan: I got a baby drum kit when I was two or three, and a proper drum kit when I was eleven. My mom and dad had some crossover in their music taste, raising me on Rush, King Crimson, King’s X, healthy portions of classic rock. In high school I rebelled and started voraciously devouring the Hydrahead Records catalog, drawing a lot of influence from pretty intense music, such as Kayo Dot, Daughters, and Converge.

Brill: been playing the bass of sprace since before any of you were born.

You recently released your second album titled “Lot Lizards.” How was the creative process for it?

Aaron: This album was a very collaborative effort. We would either come up with scratch parts and then bring them to the band or just jam and record the jams, and make songs out of the parts we liked. The album’s story is about a premium cable TV show called “Lot Lizards” that begins to gain sentience, and then things get really weird and David Lynch-y.  And I think we came up with most of that concept after driving home from the SeaProg festival, having smoked a bit of grass beforehand, of course.

Dylan:  It was very different. “Echocomplexities” was a handful of songs that were at least mostly written by Aaron before I heard them, or even before Brill jumped on bass. “Lot Lizards” was absolutely a collaborative effort. Notably, I remember that the first track was such a monster during the writing process that we wrote out a song map, detailing the arrangements. There was also a lot more experimentation with production as well, like on “commercial break”. We initially planned for this band to be a dream pop outfit, to serve as a break from our prog bands. When the writing started for this album, that pretense was abandoned almost entirely.

Brill: im not sure how it happened im pretty sure i was there when we made these songs. Its hard keeping trakc of time on a space ship. I do remember driving home from seaprog and conceptualizing the albums early concept whilst aaron was joking about lot lizards.

“Lot Lizards” is a very eclectic release. What do you think I should describe Bangbakc as to my friends? The real question here is, what do you guys consider the music of Bangbakc to be?

Aaron:  For a while now we’ve been referring to ourselves as “heirloom stoner prog”, because we grow a lot of heirloom tomatoes at our house.  Lately I’ve been using “surrealistic stoner prog” or “kraut prog” but you can describe us however you’d like!

Brill: bangbakc is a music sounding band.

Dylan: It should probably be called impressionistic prog, if you want to call it something specific. If you focus on the individual elements, there are krautrock, surf, and stoner rock portions that are adjacent to one another, but its a lot to take in, and it is presented as kind of a collage. There’s enough variety there for it to be assessed on a song-by-song basis, but part of what makes it effective I think is the fact that it is all presented sequentially without a whole lot of breathing room amidst the twists and turns.

This eclectic music must have a wide range of influences and inspiration. Would you guys mind enlightening us as to some of the influences you haven’t mentioned already?

Brill: I dont know man ask salmon b jammin

Aaron: For me, I would say my biggest influence was David Bowie and Robert Fripp’s work in the late 70s and early 80s. But we also were inspired by this random vinyl record we found in the trash called “big rig hits”, which is just this hilarious trucker country album, which sort of flavored “Lot Lizards” as this sort of surrealistic western. We were also inspired by RIO-flavored bands like Magma, Thinking Plague and Hamster Theatre. Actually, we were lucky enough to have Dave Willey of Hamster Theatre/Thinking Plague guest on this album, which we are eternally thankful for. Every Time I Die had some influence on me personally, and I think it’s probably pretty obvious that we all adore The Mars Volta.

Dylan: The various incarnations of “Omar-jazz” definitely play a huge part in our respective musical backgrounds, and we have drawn a considerable amount of influence from seventies and eighties prog, as Aaron mentioned. I am a huge fan of Swans, Pere Ubu, Jeff Buckley, Codeine, and just about anything that the members of Slint and Cave In have had their hands on.

Can you think of some moments where musical homages have been included in Bangbakc’s tracks? 

Aaron: For me there are definitely a lot of shameless Bowie and Fripp homages.

Dylan: The Theme to Lot Lizards has some Twin Peaks flavor to it, and various vocal harmonies that we have employed over our two albums have been compared to Qui and Soundgarden. I’m not sure how much of that was intentional, but I suppose you are what you eat. Badmotorfinger is a good car album.

What’s the live experience with Bangbakc like? Any plans for a tour somewhere down the road? 

Aaron: Live, we are pretty intense, and play mostly house shows these days…almost a punk band that decided to play a prog band’s music. We recorded almost all of “Lot Lizards” live and then added layers, so some of that live intensity is palatable on the album. I personally am not a huge fan of touring, or really emotionally or mentally equipped for it, but we have certainly talked about doing some baby tours, given we are able to set up the right shows. They’d mostly be house/DIY/all ages shows, because we usually scare bar crowds and don’t like dealing with bar promoters and such.  But there will probably be a west coast tour in the works sooner than later. And we will certainly let everyone know when that happens.

Dylan:  I’d say that, for a prog band with very little metal influence, we are very loud. We’ve never toured as bangbakc, but we have had consecutive shows before, and we’ll likely continue to do that sort of thing until we are able to waltz across the country playing nothing but DIY venues or houses. We were tired of feeding the booking monster before forming this band, and we don’t like turning down.

Brill:  i want to tour all the time lets do it guys

What have you been listening to recently? Also, would you tell us what your all-time favorite albums are? 

Aaron: Lately I’ve been listening to a ton of Secret Machines and the Curtis brothers’ offshoot projects. I’ve also been rediscovering some of Omar Rodriguez’s lost solo records.  Also Tears for Fears and Kate Bush, and other related 80s new wave stuff. And always David Bowie, always. My all time favorites are probably Frances The Mute by The Volta, Red/Lark’s Tongue/Discipline by King Crimson, Station to Station by David Bowie, and probably 10 Silver Drops and the self-titled Secret Machines records.

Brill:  ive been listening to lot lizards alot trying to finish the mix for you good people. Also listening through mixes for my latest project which is a soundtrack for an independent film.

Dylan: We’ve been binging on glossy 80’s pop and Krautrock lately, and I’ve been spinning Death Grips constantly. I’ve also got Palimpest by our friends in The Human Machine on repeat. Some of my all time favorites include: ( ) by Sigur Ros, Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk by Jeff Buckley, Spiderland by Slint, Talk Like Blood by 31Knots, Charmer by Breather Resist, and the Mare EP by Mare.

What kind of advice would you impart to other musicians? Do you have any words of wisdom or inspiration for other artists trying to make their mark? 

Aaron: I don’t know how qualified I am to give out advice, but generally I would say just be fearlessly yourself. Take as many chances as you can, and explore your different musical personalities. Don’t be afraid to try something new because it “doesn’t fit your band.”  Never make the same album twice.

Brill: Advice to other musicians : balance your drug use with a decent amount of exercise and other drugs.

Dylan: Don’t compromise your artistic vision for anything, or anyone. If you want to make a mark, make sure you’re making the mark that you want to make. Just because some people want to listen to McDonald’s music doesn’t mean you need to make it.

Thank you again for agreeing to do this interview. I think I’m out of questions, so feel free to add anything you like.

Aaron: Thank you for listening to our record! We hope you enjoyed listening to it and by all means, feel free to share it with friends in as many ways as you can. If you dig the record but are unable to buy a copy for financial reasons, send us a message and we’ll shoot you a download code. We know the struggle!

Dylan: Writing about spraceships and creating a mythology is far more creatively fulfilling than singing about ex girlfriends or politics.

“Lot Lizards” is available now from Bandcamp. Like Bangbakc on Facebook.