{"id":546,"date":"2010-04-07T19:07:26","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T00:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/?page_id=546"},"modified":"2011-04-07T14:25:27","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T18:25:27","slug":"balaclava","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/bands\/balaclava\/","title":{"rendered":"Balaclava"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"balaclavalogo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joseph Dillon – Drums \/\/ Daniel Finn – Guitar \/\/ Peter Rozsa – Bass \/\/ Daniel Sanchez – Guitar<\/p>\n

RELEASES<\/h2>\n

\"BALACLAVA<\/a><\/p>\n

REVIEWS<\/h2>\n

“Remember His Hero Is Gone? BALACLAVA do, and while their Shame<\/em> 7\u201d (Forcefield Records) doesn\u2019t approach HHIG levels of glory, it\u2019s musically similar, and it\u2019s pretty damn good. The production is suitably lo-fi and the shit hits hard, regardless of whether it\u2019s whipping along double-time or sludging itself down to a slow crawl. Opening cut \u201cTo Those Who Glorify War\u201d (we\u2019re guessing the next line isn\u2019t \u201cwe salute you\u201d) is an excellent slab of post-HHIG worship for people who like hardcore\/crust\/grind 7\u201ds in theory, but don\u2019t have a record player. Which is everyone I know. Recommended.”\u00a0 – Greg Pratt \/\/ metal maniacs<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe name is in reference to the ski mask worn by guerilla warriors – specifically the Zapatistas, who were\/are a huge influence on me ideologically,\u201d reveals Balaclava guitarist Daniel Sanchez regarding the origins of his group\u2019s left-of-centre choice of names. \u201cThe band\u00a0 started when I demoed some down-tuned, down-tempo songs I had been tinkering with in late 2005. Actually, the first recorded song was a heavy, doom-influenced cover of Conflict\u2019s\u00a0 \u2018From Protest to Resistance,\u2019 which I think sums up our sound in a nutshell. I showed the songs to Pete, Joe and Danny, who were in a band called Fred Gable at the time, and they agreed to start up the band with me in 2006. We\u2019ve been messing around since then, finally getting some recorded material out. Now we are all active in the writing process. People think our band is called Baklava. The jokes never get old.\u201d
\nBalaclava\u2019s sound is NO joke, however: a fiery \u2018n furious amalgamation of the crustiest of \u2018cores and most malevolent metals, all coming together in one big Fight Club-styled fracas. In other words: it kinda rules. \u201cSwedish and Japanese hardcore and metal are huge influences on our sound,\u201d agrees Dan, \u201cas well as elements of crust, doom, and all sorts of other genres that people would never guess. I think it\u2019s kind of fruitless to try to describe what we sound like – the music should speak for itself – but I have always considered us a punk band that didn\u2019t need to adhere to rigid standards of song writing. It\u2019s sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, always heavy and always genuine.\u201d
\n\u201cRichmond is great,\u201d adds Dan on the hometown love the Virginian quartet receives at gigs. \u201cThere\u2019s a ton of really cool punk and metal bands, great record labels and record stores. If anything it\u2019s a small town that suffers from too many shows, which really isn\u2019t a bad thing. We don\u2019t really fit in with any of the particular niches, and people who are looking for Verbal Abuse, Weedeater, Darkthrone, or Totalitar clones will get bored of us pretty quickly, but I love all of those bands and we end up with a pretty diverse crowd.\u201d
\nThough Balaclava only has the ripping Shame EP to their credit thus far, this piece of vinyl is a severe barnburner, indeed, offering more aggro per inch than most other bands include in their whole discographies. \u201cWe\u2019re really happy with how it turned out,\u201d says Dan. \u201cTim at Forcefield Records did a great job with it, and Noel Danger\u2014from a Baltimore, MD band called Triac, also on Forcefield\u2014did most of the art for it, and it came out fantastic. When we write songs, one or two of us have made a basic draft for the jam, and that party brings it to the other guitarist(s) to flesh it out, and finally we get with Joe who makes it disgusting. This was our first 7″ and we wanted it to sound really crusty and punk as shit; Dan had three pieces in that vein, and I went with that and came up with the shortest song I’ve ever written. We definitely take into account a great variety of influences, and we like being able to go from a fast, d-beat riff to a slow drone in the same song and make it sound coherent.\u201d
\nHe continues, \u201cOur newer stuff is slower and longer. There are a lot less d-beat parts and much more fleshing out of our metal influences, but I still feel like they’re a punk band’s songs. We\u2019ve got a bunch of new ones, and we\u2019re actually going into the studio in a week to record a good 30 minutes worth of stuff. We should have a new release by the summer, and are doing a 16-day southern\/mid-west tour in July. We\u2019re in the process of booking those dates, and things are coming along nicely. We will also be doing several long weekend dates along the east coast and surrounding areas leading up to that. If anyone wants to see us play in their home town we can be reached at balaclavaband@gmail.com\u201d – George Pacheco \/ Cape Cod Rock Music Examiner<\/a><\/p>\n

TOUR<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Dillon – Drums \/\/ Daniel Finn – Guitar \/\/ Peter Rozsa – Bass \/\/ Daniel Sanchez – Guitar RELEASES REVIEWS “Remember His Hero Is Gone? BALACLAVA do, and while their Shame 7\u201d (Forcefield Records) doesn\u2019t approach HHIG levels of glory, it\u2019s musically similar, and it\u2019s pretty damn good. The production is suitably lo-fi and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":2,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/546"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":627,"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/546\/revisions\/627"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.forcefieldrecords.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}