Shoreside, the five-piece band from Melbourne, was kind enough to take time out of their hectic schedules to chat with me this past week. This band is unique in that they have a sound that cannot simply be defined to one specific genre. Rather, Shoreside is a accumulation of a multitude of different sounds and musical styling’s, all combined to create their own blend of metalcore-esque music. They have spent years honing their craft, and now they are ready to preform on stage at The Espy for Emergenza’s battle of the bands competition. Come out and support these incredible musicians on May 9th!

HI GUYS! SO, WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO ENTER EMERGENZA FESTIVAL’S BATTLE OF THE BANDS COMPETITION?
We love playing at the Espy and we love playing shows. We know it’s a competition and we would love to win or even go through to the next round, but that’s not what drives us. What drives us the fact that, competition or not, we’ll be on stage. There’s nothing more fulfilling then playing to an audience that knows your name and loves your music, and audience that has travelled just to see you do what you do. We wouldn’t say no to an opportunity like this.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC TO SOMEONE WHO HAD NEVER LISTENED TO IT BEFORE?
We have traditionally heavy instrumentals, ranging from punk-rooted to metal-based. Over the top of that these instrumentals we have booming screamed vocals and occasionally clean (melodically sung) vocals. Some of our songs are fast, some are slow. Others are catchy and memorable. Each of our members has perfected their craft and has a unique style different to anyone else in the band, and this amalgamation is what produces the sound we have. Overall, we prefer not to define our genre but would rather let our music speak for itself.

YOU GUYS HAVE QUITE A FAN BASE, WITH MORE THAN 4,000 LIKES ON FACEBOOK. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE KEY TO GAINING AND MAINTAINING THIS MANY FANS?
People don’t care about most media unless you have songs and performances to back it up. Often bands will upload photo-shoots or artwork before there is even a demo track on their page. The people who have liked their page however, have liked it for music’s sake, not media’s sake. Since day one we’ve had at least one track available at any given time. Whenever we promote ourselves it’s something like “Head over to our page and listen to our track. If you like it give the page a like. If not, thanks for your time anyway”. Having both clean vocals and screamed vocals appeals to a much larger audience than just having one sort as well, giving us the opportunity to engage with a much larger audience.

Our likes have skyrocketed each time we’ve made a significant release, too. Once we’d established a decent fan-base, the release of the “Alumni” music video or the album “Desolation” both made our likes increase more than we had expected. We treat this as a huge compliment to what we do and see it as people thinking that our music is good enough to warrant becoming a fan.

As for maintaining the likes, we just keep people informed with what’s going on (where we’re playing, what we’re releasing, we occasionally ask questions, etc) but never to the point of excess, and are always extremely courteous and respectful to all our fans. That keeps them interacting with the page and at the same time let’s them know they’re part of the Shoreside family.

EMERGENZA URGES BANDS TO PROMOTE THEMSELVES BEFORE EACH GIG. WHAT DO YOU GUYS PLAN ON DOING TO PROMOTE YOUR DEBUT EMERGENZA PERFORMANCE ON MAY 9TH?
We’ve had an album release this month, so we’ve been able to interact one-on-one with a lot of our fans. We’ll be posting as a band on various websites, telling anyone who purchases a CD, letting people know whom we think may be interested and even promoting this show at any other venue we play at. Given it’s a week night, it’s going to be hard to pull in as many fans as we usually do, but that’s not going to stop us!

WHAT SHOULD AUDIENCES EXPECT FROM ONE OF YOUR LIVE PERFORMANCES?
We absolutely love audience interaction. There’s nothing better than when a member of the audience knows the lyrics to one of our songs and grabs the microphone to sing or scream along with us. Our guitarists jump around and headbang, our drummer does what he does beautifully and our vocalist often jumps down off the stage to get in the faces of the audience members (should the gear allow). We love to see people moving around and moshing and the harder the audience goes, the harder we go.

IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT SETS YOU APART FROM THE REST OF THE COMPETITION?
Our style. When we write music, we don’t write it to fit genres or critics. We write exactly what we would like to hear in a song. That’s left our sound true to what it always has been, kept us incredibly dedicated to what we do and left us with a sound that is very unique. Our album has eleven tracks, and whilst they’re all metalcore, they’re all different. No two tracks share the same vocal patterns or riffing style. No two tracks share the same lyrical themes. We’ve managed to push the boundaries of our genre and play things from both ends.