How did the band form and what does the band name mean?
Thank you for having us! While we all grew up around Hudson county; Moe, John, Mena, and Lunchbox have floated around various bands before the inception of parallels, while our vocalist Ghxst spent most of of his time trying to find his home within the New Jersey music scene. The name Parallels stems from the fact that although each member of the band has their own unique differences, we all follow the same path to create something bigger than just ourselves.
Previous musical projects? How'd you first get into music?
Growing up listening to the bands on Warped Tour, Ozzefest, Taste of Chaos, etc. shaped not only our taste in music, but the very fabric of our lives. When you speak to a lot of kids in the scene, you will quickly notice that the bands they listen to can often have the ability to change their world view. For the members of Parallels, it was no different. Our journey began with the bands we listened to as kids.
First concert that you ever went to?
Ghxst: First show I’ve ever been to, was Black Veil Brides during their Set The World on Fire era at the Best Buy Theater in Times Square (now The Palladium Times Square) and that night was special for me because it breathed life into my dreams of being in a band. I can only hope I inspire fans of ours and people who come out to see us for the first time to follow their dreams and to never give up on them.
What's your writing process like?
The truth is that the writing process for each song has been unique in its own way. Inspiration for a song can strike a member of the band at any moment. The special part about Parallels is that all 5 members are writers. Being in a band full of creatives helps so much because there is never a shortage of ideas. The creative process during a Parallels sessions is a bit of organized chaos! While in the studio or on Discord, all five members of the band are contributing ideas and having a blast in the process. We feel that the sound captured in our songs is very much a representation of the bond between members, and the chemistry during our creative sessions.
What other artists or songs inspire your music?
As we touched on previously, a lot of bands from the warped tour scene, ozzfest etc.
Bands like Motionless in White, Bring Me The Horizon, Chiodos, and Ice Nine Kills just to name a few. But that list is always growing and we love pulling influences from other genres outside of Post-Hardcore and Metalcore.
What's the live experience like and your philosophy on playing live? Do you think the music live should be identical to the recorded version or should it be its own thing?
As a band, every time we step on stage we show up with one goal in mind and that’s to steal the show (respectfully of course). But we really strive to put forth our best performance every single time. We love going over our live show because we have the chance to make it more than live music, we aim to create an experience that leaves the audience in awe and wanting more.
Has the band toured? What has the touring experience been, best shows?
We got a small taste of what touring could be like, when we did a four day run with PRDX (NYC) ,For Fear Itself (MD,) and Renovare (PA). We all immediately became very close and created a lot of memories on that run, most notably at The Shamrock Inn
Aside from that weekend run we did have one show in particular that went a bit off the rails for us in terms of technical difficulties and was definitely a hard pill to swallow for all of us, but without that we wouldn’t be where we are today! We feel the most confident we ever have and we like to say we’re only as good as our last show.
What's up next for the band?
We have a lot of exciting things coming very soon, we’ll be shooting a music video for a song that we will be releasing within the next 2-3 months as well as going back to recording more tracks with Justin “JD” DeBlieck!