FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT FOR THE PERILOUS

Since its inception in 2007 as Broken Silence, this Pennsylvanian, five-piece metal core band now known as For the Perilous has been fighting the good fight. Not with actual violence so to speak, but with music.

It's the fight to stay original — which may not sound impressive, but considering there are countless of unsigned bands in the world waiting to be discovered, it takes something more than just a catchy beat and some lyrics to catch the eye of a record label. There has to be a certain spark and originality in everything — even in a band name.

"Originally we were Broken Silence, and that's not too hard to come up with… that's kinda the problem we were having, it sounded like everything else. On top of that there was a documentary made called 'Broken Silence', there were like two hundred garage bands, there was a 1980's metal band, there's an album called 'Broken Silence' by Foxy Brown… we were so done on Broken Silence that we were just like 'Screw this'… So, one day I was actually sitting in my car and I was trying to think of song names and I came up with 'For the Perilous' and Seth thought it would be a good band name…" says Mike, one of the guitarists in the band and self appointed band manager.

He met Seth (bass) and Ryan (drums), through the old guitarist that Seth and Ryan used to play with. This old lineup also included Kyle Cantwell (vocals) and Scott Koenig (guitar).

After the departure of Kyle and Scott in the summer of 2010, the band added Will (who has a crazy beard and does vocals) and Tyler (guitar) through social networking — see, Facebook is good for something other than just playing and sending out Farmville invites and poking. The name change from Broken Silence to For the Perilous reflected the lineup change.

"I used to go to high school with him (Mike) too, so I kinda knew him," says Tyler.

Their first challenge was at the Battle of the Bands in May of 2009—before Will and Tyler were added—which proved to be an interesting experience for a first gig. Despite the technical difficulties, they still managed to beat the competition, which included one other metal band Easy Company, to win third place with a whopping prize of $150, which was immediately spent on band equipment like drumsticks.

"In the middle of the show, my amp shut off on me because it unplugged from the vibrations; I was halfway through the set then I go, 'Wait, I'm not even playing,' so I had to run back there, and I'm kicking my amp and I look behind and it's unplugged. But it was still pretty cool though, we still had huge — well, not huge — but a mosh pit going on…" says Mike. And even after almost two years after that, For the Perilous still produces crowds just like that in different pay to play venues in Pennsylvania.

"Last show we had… these two older guys who are like twenty-four and twenty-two… they grabbed kids out who are standing there and pulled them back and started punching them. And in that one show, we had them break somebody's nose. The craziest thing that probably ever happened was I saw a guy getting kicked in the face by one of the band members that played after us…"

However, some venues are better than others—the Silo built being the best and Crocodile Rock being the worst. The first time they played at Crocodile Rock, they were put in the basement which was a barebones room; the second time, the band was not allowed to use its own drum set until compromising by playing first; and the third, final time, people helping the band move their equipment went through the wrong doors and employees working at the venue yelled at them.

"Apparently, the one guy was like, 'I didn't see no goddamn tour bus out here, this show's gonna suck, and then they don't care," Seth adds. "Yeah, obviously, like if you're not a national act band, don't bother."

This fact seemed to be reaffirmed via judging by Crocodile Rock's home page which brags heavyweight post-hardcore bands playing at their venue including Circa Survive, Pierce the Veil, Dance Gavin Dance, and Alesana.

Since then and one EP later, For the Perilous is looking ahead into the future and still making music. They're officially going back into the study February 25th and after a straight month of recording the album will drop sometime soon. There hasn't been any set title for the album yet, but expect it to be much different from their older work since their music has changed over the years.

"The new stuff that we're coming up with now, is definitely more technical, when we were younger, we based (our music) off our heroes Metallica and Iron Maiden… we switched it up a little bit and decided to get more creative with our writing style, we didn't want to be like anyone else anymore," says Mike.

"Well, in the beginning… it was more like simple, and now it's more melodic… a lot more harmonics and harmonies," adds Seth. This feature is too similar to Parkway Drive and other bands in the area in Mike's opinion. (Fun fact: Seth has Parkway Drive as his ringtone.)

"I get tired of copying every Lancaster-core metal band around here."

And there you have it. No better words for describing the good fight. Despite being the only metal core band from Lebannon, For the Perilous chooses to use their creative energies into making music that sounds different rather than riding the wave of popular trend despite the music scene in Pennsylvania being unique in that it promotes convergent, non-out of the box thinking. Props to them, and perhaps the results will be better than ever before once their new album is released later this year.