“5 Albums That Changed My Life” with Pete & Jake (Red Seas Fire)

Fresh off the release of their new EP Confrontation, Pete and Jake of progressive metal band Red Seas Fire stopped by to talk about 5 albums that have impacted their lives. The EP is available here, and if you like it, I recommend throwing them a few bucks for it. It’s stellar. Check out their responses after the jump.

Jake:

Fall Out Boy – Folie à Deux

This album was my mid teens album and something that I had on repeat through a school music tour I did to Vienna back in 2007. It’s a tad cheesy, but each track is different but yet still so catchy. Without a doubt one of my favourite albums from these guys.

The 1975 – The 1975
I always have this on in the car for sing alongs. It’s an all round good album, which has that real 80’s vibe about it. Each track is a banger but the track “Girls” will put a smile on anyone’s face, even when you’re having a bad day

Underoath – They’re Only Chasing Safety

A real good album which has influenced my drumming a lot, so well produced in my eyes as well. Another banger of an album to stick on in the car and air drum along to, the feels!

Pharrell – G I R L
The newest album of the lot, but in my eyes this has the potential to be one of my most played on my itunes in the years to come. You can play the album from start to finish and find yourself tapping your feet all the way. So much groove and feel put into this album, it’s like Pharrell wrote the album back when he was born in the early 70’s. This is shown with his track “Happy” which for me has such a Marvin Gaye vibe.

The Police – Synchronicity

This was played to me as kid so much; I grew up on this band and this why it’s one of my choices. It’s got that longevity factor to it, that even 30 years on. I still now and again hear it being played in a bar, club or on the radio.

Pete:

Blink 182 – Enema of the State

This is the album that made me really start caring about music. It was 1999, I was 12 years old and home sick from school listening to Radio 1 when I heard ‘All The Small Things’ come on the radio. Up until this point the only music I had actively listened to was vapid pop songs like Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls. When I heard the drum roll building up back into the huge final chorus of the song I got goosebumps, and I’m pretty sure this is the first time that ever happened to me from music. My parents were kind enough to look part the Parental Guidance sticker and buy me the album, within a year I was learning to play guitar and well on my way to where I am now.

SikTh – The Trees Are Dead & Dried Out Wait for Something Wild

After discovering rock music from Blink 182 I had embarked on a pretty speedy progression through heavier and heavier tastes. by the time I left school at age 16 and enrolled at college I was firmly into traditional metal like Metallica. When I first heard SikTh it was when the music video for ‘Scent of the Obscene’ was played on Kerrang! Television and my mind was just blown, how were these guitarists playing this music, how was that drummer playing those rhythms and how the hell was that vocalist making those noises? A whole new world of musical possibilities was opened up for me with this album, even now listening back to it seems to open up a part of my mind bent on discovering a new interesting way of doing something musically.

Saetia – A Retrospective

In college I took any opportunity I could to play in a band, so said yes to all offers regardless of genre. Years of listening to metal had made me believe that the only true way for rock music to be played was with precision and refinement, and joining an emotional hardcore band faced me with a community of people with ideals that flew in the face of this. I was handed this album by Saetia along with a handful of others, and it took me a few weeks of repeated listens, but before long I had reconnected with that kid listening to Blink 182 and found myself remembering that it’s the emotion that the music is played with that should be the utmost of importance in recorded music, and that imperfections and scrappiness in the playing can actually work to enhance the emotional impact.

Devil Sold His Soul – Darkness Prevails

Every musician who writes their own music starts out with all these worries and insecure moments of uncertainty about your songs. “Is this section too long? Will it ruin the energy of the song if I do a long section of quiet clean guitars here? Will the crowd lose interest if I am playing this same riff for a minute or two but building in intensity?”. The first time I head Devil Sold His Soul I found myself filled with a sense of respect at a band who had the balls to have the last half of a seven minute song essentially be the same four chords over and over without vocals on top, and what’s more, I was amazed that I wasn’t bored, but much to the contrary I was enthralled in an emotional torrent along with the track the entire time. This album, to put it simply, taught me not to be afraid and to just do what’s right, to let a song write itself.

Misery Signals – Mirrors

When I first heard Mirrors I felt that I had found the perfect embodiment of everything the previous four albums I have mentioned had taught me. It had the emotional depth of Saetia and managed to be both precise and enthrallingly imperfect at the same time, it had the progressive leanings of SikTh, exploring unconventional time signatures and rhythms, and also had the guts to go to places of fragility and openess that a lot of metal refuses to go to. They consistently put out music I wish I had written and inspire my major aims for Red Seas Fire as a band.