Dead Rhetoric: What type of goals do you set for yourselves as a band – and do you believe personal chemistry and friendship is as important as honing in on similar musical ideals to achieve success?
Medaglia: Our goal is to always be progressing and improving in both our music and business. All we want to do is play shows and do them as big as we possibly can, but you can’t do that if your musicianship isn’t up to par. Both are intrinsic to the others’ success so it’s important to be constantly working on and improving both. To your next point though, this process absolutely cannot occur if you have a poisoned relationship with your band members. Chemistry and friendship are essential to the success of a band, and it very positively influences the musical ideas at the same time. It’s virtually impossible to get anything constructive done if you’re at each other’s throats. Even if there’s one member who’s driving everything or conversely one member who’s cancerous and dragging everything down, resentment will flourish and eventually some sort of sacrifice or compromise will have to be made. Luckily, we don’t have to deal with that in this band and everyone has bought in and working towards a common goal so it makes us incredibly efficient.
Tidman: Our most immediate goals at the moment are to keep pushing ourselves as musicians in order to get the album done at the highest quality, and to keep playing good shows to build our name so we can eventually get out on the road. I believe both are equally as important. A lack of chemistry can destroy a band just as easily as a lack of cohesion in musical direction can. Not being friends with your band mates takes the fun out of everything and it just becomes work at that point. That’s why I believe Graviton works so well, because we are all really close friends that have a very strong, unified vision of what the band should be.
Scott: We set high goals from the start, always pushing to learn new material whether its covers like the 8 songs we had to learn from the Metallica discography for our Metallica vs. Megadeth show, which was awesome. We are always writing and pushing to make headway onto future shows. I absolutely think personal chemistry is important to the bands growth and overall sound. We work very well together and feed off each other’s energy.
Dead Rhetoric: Living in a constant instant communication world between cell phones, tablets, computers, and the internet with social media, how important is the balance between building Graviton through these mediums while also maintaining a personal touch with in person, face to face interaction?
Medaglia: Maintaining that balance is extremely important at our level. You can have the most professional looking Facebook and Instagram with a million followers but if you’re terrible in your personal dealings, word will travel. The last thing you want to do is alienate people at a show or the people who are putting on the show. Having a great online presence is purely academic if nobody wants you around, at that point you’re just shouting into a digital void. At the same time though, how you conduct yourself on social media has a direct effect on how your band is perceived so it’s important to maintain a professional image online. If you have for example a hundred bought likes and sparse posting habits, promoters aren’t going to touch you with a 100-foot pole and you basically look inactive and unappealing to any potential new fan searching you out. Just like basically everything, one informs the other and lacking in one area over the other will certainly cause problems.
Tidman: The social media side of things is a crucial part of building any band. The internet has made it possible to share our music with people all over the world who would have no way of hearing us otherwise. It’s also made booking and promoting gigs much easier. Also being able to sell merch and music through websites like Bandcamp and Big Cartel is great. But I don’t know if anything will ever be as important as going out and meeting people at shows and talking to fans face to face, that type of interaction is huge.
Scott: We try to use social media and our sites purely as advertisement to gain traffic to our music so people are interested in what we’re really about. But face to face holds much more meaning. We gain more fans by being part of the scene physically and attending many local shows. There’s nothing better than having people approach you after a set to chat and hangout and see what their reaction was. We just want our audience to feel what we feel when we play live and truly have fun.
Dead Rhetoric: Has work begun on the follow up to Fundamental Violence? If so, will it be another EP venture or possibly a full-length? Would you want to continue on an independent basis or are you hopeful to seek out stronger label support?
Medaglia: Yes! Very much so in fact, and it will indeed be a full-length. We will definitely be keeping on the independent track for the time being since we’re completely vertically integrated and don’t particularly need the label support to accomplish our goals in the relative near term. As we grow we’ll perhaps begin to reach out to smaller labels for wider distribution and such. Granted, in the unlikely event that someone came beating down our door tomorrow with an offer we’d certainly have a listen to what they had to say but otherwise, we’re fully independent.
Tidman: Work has begun on the Fundamental Violence follow up, we are current in the early stages of song writing for what will be the first full length Graviton album. Label support is not necessarily something we are actively seeking at this point, but it is something that we would consider if the conditions were right.
Scott: We are looking build something great with this next record. We are toiling away writing new material and new sounds. For now, we will stay independent, our drummer Anthony is a master of mix martial arts and really knows how to engineer tracks to perfection.
Dead Rhetoric: The New England metal scene is thriving with diverse styles, bands, promoters, and venues in my opinion. What are your thoughts on the scene and who are some of your favorite bands plus places to play?
Medaglia: I fully agree with you. This is the most vibrant the scene has been in my lifetime. It used to be insanely difficult finding cool bands to play with and promoters that would put the right shows together. Now you have people like Metal New England who gave us our start, Killer Robot Promotions, Promotorhead, the new management at The Palladium, Grayskull, etc; all have been putting together amazing shows all over New England and providing a lighted stage to the scene. And of course, you can’t have a thriving scene without talent and there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to that. I point to the lineup of RPM Fest as an indicator of that, to be able to fill out three days of metal spanning every style using bands almost exclusively from New England is a testament to how strong and diverse our scene is. It very well could just be that I haven’t been around to a lot of other scenes around the country but I really do feel that if our New England scene continues on this current trajectory that some really amazing things will happen and it could become legendary on a national or global level; or so I’d like to think anyway. I love being a part of this scene and will do everything I can to help it flourish and grow.
Tidman: I feel like the scene is strong, there are lots of good bands making exciting music and good promoters putting on great shows. It seems to me that people really care about supporting the scene and the bands within it, which is a great thing. Some of my favorite local bands are Sonic Pulse and Epicenter, we’ve played with those guys a few times now and its always a good time. Pathogenic is another favorite of mine. Sammy’s Patio in Revere, MA and The Wreck Room in Peterborough, NH are a couple of my favorite places to play.
Scott: I think we have an amazing local scene in this area. A lot of awesome people and bands, the promoters are great always throwing together bangers that draw a crowd. We would like to thank Metal New England, Killer Robot Promotions, Promotorhead and Rokkor Live Music for keeping the scene alive to its fullest potential. Favorite places to play I would have to say the Palladium, The Wreck Room (great pizza) and the 13th Floor Music Lounge. We’re such good friends with many local bands but these are some bands we play with often and are just awesome dudes in general, Sonic Pulse, Epicenter, Goblet, Beast of Nod and Pathogenic.