Preview
VERITAS
Friday, January 28
It’s not easy being a small band in a big town, but prog-rockers Veritas are young and ambitious enough to believe they have a good chance of rising above the crowd and making themselves heard.
Loud and proud is the order of the day, according to founding member Pat Flagel, and he doesn’t hesitate when it comes to punctuating his point with plenty of wit and a healthy sprinkling of profanity. Describing their sound as "music for people with short attention spans," Flagel illuminates the unlikely psychedelic source of their true-to-form moniker.
"Our guitarist Chris Reimer’s dad had a freak-out, acid, eat-the-drug, ’70s band called Truth," he says. "And we thought it was a fucking great concept, so we kind of spun it off and came up with Veritas."
The meaning may be lost on those who don’t speak Latin, but the clean lines and upstanding rhythms of Veritas’s debut release on Down Records, Black Dark/Black Cold, supports their choice of a short but direct band name. Boasting song titles such as "Narcissus," "And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire" and "Spiral Staircase Knifechase," Veritas may seem to be treading a dark path, but their mini-LP (as they like to call it) abounds with a dynamic variety of musical impulses, each as unique and skilfully orchestrated as the last.
"The main reaction we get to our album is – what the hell is going on here?" says Flagel.
"We like to be all over the place at once and it’s not by accident. Our sense of diversity becomes more apparent the further in you go. Our influences are very wide ranging – everything from Django Reinhart to The End. As a band, we’ve known each other forever. Our bass player Matt is my brother and we’ve been jamming with Chris and our drummer Mike (Wallace) since our shitty punk-metal teenage years.
"Yes, we sucked back then, but it was too fun to quit. Instead of going to fucking music school we decided to go old school, so to speak."
Setting their sights on the distant horizon, Veritas is looking to push the envelope and spread their diverse sound around the nation and beyond. Flexing their sonic brawn wherever and whenever permitted, the intrepid foursome refuses to be boxed in by genre or shackled by labels. Rather, they prefer to explore their talents and their audience by venturing into the unknown, tackling new situations and venues and exposing themselves to the greater sphere of music as art, or anti-art, as the case may be.
"We wanna rock," says Flagel. "We’re not focused on the visual. We’re focused on not sucking. We’ll be touring with punk-style bands like The Doers or Rant Music and then we’ll turn around and do something totally different and more analog with a band like Red Not Evil. We love playing weird shows that display totally contrasting types of music…. That’s my idea of an entertaining gig, instead of just seeing five rock bands in a row."
Shirking any attempt to pigeonhole their ever expanding audio-montage, Veritas lets their product speak for itself and already has great plans for their next commercial recording.
"We may be a wicked prog-rock band, but we’re not too artsy," says Flagel. "Zak (Pashak), the proprietor of Broken City, called us an ‘art-fag band.’ Yes, he dropped the F-bomb on us! I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or a put down, but we do believe in delivering the whole package to our audience. We play the music we want to hear. We play whatever the fuck we want.
"We want to break down all of that punk-versus-metal-crowd shit and get people to just listen and shut up." |
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