South Africa seems to be a bit of a hotspot for rock and metal, certainly we get quite a few bands popping up from there and appearing in this slot. Here’s another for you…
Simple things first, where are you from?
We’ve crawled out from under every rock and tree in the sunny province of Gauteng, South Africa
How long have you been playing?
Riddlebreak has been playing for roughly ten or so years, but we were young and partying so it’s difficult to pin point an exact date. Probably around the time our elven lord on lead, Julian ed, is our official time stamp for taking our career into professional waters.
Where does the band name come from?
So it’s actually a combination of concepts and inspirations: 10% Frank the doomsday bunny from Donny Darko. 5% Alice in wonderland, particularly the notion and commonly used phrase ‘going down the rabbit hole’… it’s the reason you find a lot of rabbit references in our artwork. 10% the meaning of life, space and time, and 75% we have no f&$@ing idea what we were thinking
What are your influences?
We draw inspiration from many local and international bands, and to add, each of us have different tastes in music…
There are hundreds of influences but here’s a few we can mention… : Periphery, Intervals, Monuments, Raptorbaby, Meshuggah, Gojira, Tool, Animals as Leaders, Tesseract, BMTH, Erra and Silent Planet and.. and… the list goes on and on and on…
Having too much good music isn’t such a bad problem to have for us.
Describe your music – what makes you unique?
We are the sound of an injured bear hurtling through outer space, between raging meteor storms and the silences in between. We have roots in Metalcore and Progressive, but we try to redefine and push ourselves with every new song released. Our lyrics go from collapsing stars all the way to hedgehogs. This doesn’t make us unique, but rather we bend what’s familiar to you. We mostly sing about whatever the hell we want. We’re all huge nerds so space is a big topic, but you’d better believe we’d make a song about your grandma too!
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played for?
We have played 100s and that’s no exaggeration. We played every single weekend for years before even thinking of recording. Our live shows have been described as pumping, our fans like to mosh, headbang, stage dive and sometimes a seizure occurs when we drop a weird time signature in the set.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Nothing too wild has happened on stage except for accidentally maiming one another with our instruments, and randomly having fans jumping on stage to jam with us. All the juicy stories usually happen after we get off stage, but for those you need a backstage .
What kit do you use?
Big Tama fanboy over here, I am currently using a Tama Rockstar!
When it comes to cymbals I am using a rather big 18″ Meinl crash, and his mighty partner, an 18″ Wuhan crash that I fear will outlive even me. I really trashy china sound is all I need in life, I got a 19″ Paiste that really scratches that itch, and is the bane of all my neighbours existence.
A gorgeous 13″ Brass Blackpanther snare wraps up my kit with the signature “не будь сукой” always there to remind me to be cool, in Russian ‘cos it kinda emphasises the point.
What are you plugging and promoting at the moment?
We’re currently in the process of finishing off a couple new songs. We had big plans for 2020, but as you know, a lot changed when COVID 19 hit and we were restricted for months. In any case you can expect to hear some new material in the near future!
What are your plans for the next 6 months or so?
Right now it’s mainly to get our band back on track. To finish the songs we intended to release this last June and to also begin working on brand new material for 2021. With so many unknowns it’s difficult to make any big plans right now, so songwriting and recording is perhaps the best logical thing we can do now, until life goes back to some version of normalcy
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be ing, and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
Oh wow, asking some really hard questions. To all our friends in bands, you know we love you and it’s these guys’s fault for asking for just one band. I guess we could say one of our favorite local bands Hokum to kick off the show with a bang! And then perhaps to close with Monuments, opening for them was one of the first groundbreaking moments as a band, having them close the show would be an honour for us and a chance to watch them again!
Header image by Devographic
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