There aren’t many metal bands around Moscow and Pullman, but groups like The Persevering Promise and Strychnine stick it out for the love of the music.
Matt Hoos, lead vocalist for the Moscow-based metal outfit The Persevering Promise, said the metal scene in the region is practically nonexistent and most of their shows are performed in Spokane because there’s no venue here.
“It’s very ‘pacific Northwest,’ very ‘six hours away from Seattle,'” Hoos said. “Everybody’s a prolific songwriter who is going to change the course of the world like Bob Dylan.”
Erik Snider, drummer for Pullman-based death metal act Strychnine, said it’s tough to get gigs in Moscow, in part because his band’s music genre was never meant to be popular.
Strychnine vocalist and guitarist Christopher Snider said they’ve played sets at the Moscow Moose Lodge and a few other places in Moscow and Pullman, but the stereotypes and pop-culture do damage to the common mindset about metal.
“It is kind of humiliating at times, and it’s definitely difficult to actually get anyone interested, and when people show up it’s definitely cool,” he said.
Jesse Barton, TPP screamer and guitarist, said the only metal scene is what they made by attracting people to their shows in Spokane and occasional performances in Pullman. Barton said he brought 170 viewers to a Pullman show last year, and he frequently tries to gather University of Idaho audiences to their Spokane performances.
Barton said there is a handful of people throughout the region who work hard to book shows and gather audiences for various local and national bands, including their agent with Spokane’s Monumental Booking.
“The scene is weird but it keeps growing,” Barton said. “Most scenes just die, so the fact that Spokane has what it does is kind of impressive.”
Despite the relative strength of the Spokane atmosphere, Barton said the city doesn’t have all the answers and won’t sustain a band with national ambitions. Reaching for outside resources and networking throughout the country are crucial steps to success, he said. Particularly in an age when record labels no longer invest funding, ever-decreased by digital downloads, into new acts.
Hoos said industry agents no longer have the money to attend local venues and search for talent, and a band’s industry success boils down to a proactive attitude. He said he and Barton have been working for three years to develop themselves and they haven’t yet seen financial profit.
“Dressing for the job you want, not for the job you have — that’s really what it comes down to,” he said. “There’s no easier way to have somebody (offer) to put their name on your product than if you’re already doing the work, and the only thing they have to do is sit back and make money.”
Barton said they followed the Vans Warped Tour 18,000 miles across the country last summer to sell merchandise to the massive crowds at each city’s concert. The group raised $20,000 in sales and left the tour with only $2,000. They’ve purchased all of their own gear and transportation through the years, he said, as well as production services such as $500 promotional photo cards.
Erik Snider said most of the metal music he listens to is made by bands that get no radio play but fund themselves on the road with gigs and merchandise sales.
Christopher Snider said right now Strychnine plays metal for its own sake, and the band is getting known through its Myspace and Facebook pages, as well as conversations and experiences with friends. Strychnine’s gigs are usually set up when someone else contacts the band. The gigs and the people they meet “(break) up the monotony” of his day job.
“You play your gig and you go to work,” he said.
Despite the struggles of the location, he said the Palouse offers its own sort of inspiration for their work. Being in this isolated location helps them hone their particular sound outside the influences of other bands. In a city like Seattle, he said, they’d just be another act.
“(Just) being down on the river, the quietness and the solitude definitely makes one clear and able to think about certain things, (unlike) being in a town where it’s constantly noisy. It definitely gives you time to breathe,” he said.
Erik Snider said the fact that metal isn’t too popular here makes the good comments from concert-goers more meaningful for him. Those who don’t usually listen to metal, he said, are more honest with their praise than some other bands.
He said the struggle to land gigs in an area not conducive to their art is a positive challenge.
“No gigs have really ever been just handed to us,” he said. “We have to fight for all the gigs we’ve had. That somewhat keeps us motivated and drives us to … just play better and be better than what we’ve been in the past.”
TPP has played sets with big-time metalers A Skylit Drive, Breathe Carolina, Sleeping With Sirens, I See Stars and others, Barton said, but none of their opportunities would’ve been possible if they hadn’t made them happen.
“We’re spending every dime we have, we’re eating beans every day,” Barton said. “Our diet this summer was just trash because we had three dollars max to spend every meal and there were three of us. It’s not always the best but we love it, man. (We) won’t ever quit.”
Christopher Snider said metal music “transcends the time” in which it began. The most important thing for Strychnine “is not to play the game by anyone else’s rules” but their own, and they’re going to keep working their sound.
Barton said music will never fail them.
“Music is the one love that will never, ever turn its back on you or ever let you down,” he said. “If you can find that … in Moscow, you’ve got something going on right.”
Matt Maw can be reached at [email protected]