Getting to Know… Avalanche | Interview

For interview #32 in the ‘Getting to Know’ series, The Musical Hype gets the scoop about self-described “gut busting, high energy” rock band, Avalanche.

It’s been a while since The Musical Hype has published a new interview, but no worries – the wait is over! After finding out the goods about Italian DJ/producer Zoibaf, we move on to our 32^nd interview with a rising Australian rock band, Avalanche.  Avalanche is comprised of Steve Campbell (lead vocals, bass), Veronica Teleski (lead guitar), Ryan Roma (drums), and newly added member, Arthur (rhythm guitar).  In one of our more colorful interviews, the members of Avalanche make it clear they are filled with the spirit… of rock-n-roll that is.  Without further ado, here is Getting to Know with the “Heart-racing, gut busting, roof crashing, fast-paced” rock band, Avalanche.

Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype: Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with Avalanche, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

Steven Campbell (lead vocals/bass):  Our sound is like a punch in the face. We’re all quite young but we play a brand of rock you haven’t heard in a while, and you’ve definitely never heard it the way we do it. We try to create the most massive sound possible through sheer volume and force rather than distortion and effects. We’re a guitar band, nothing fancy, but we play some gut busting, high energy Rock ‘N Roll, similar to late 70’s early 80’s when rock bands were starting to get faster and harder but remain a rock n roll band, so there’s lots of blues elements and turnarounds but it’s fast and loud, and it’s really bare bones rock which you don’t find a lot of these days.

Faulkner: Rock on! Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your Avalanche form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

Steven: We formed in early 2018, we used to jam in Ryan’s (drummer) dad’s steel factory late at night after work, writing and working on original material. He and Veronica (lead guitarist) have been jamming together for a few years, she went to school with his sister and that’s how they met.  They had another rhythm guitarist and bass player at the time and eventually reached out to me as they needed a singer. Soon enough, the rhythm guitarist gave up, the bass player stopped showing up, so, I thought I’d take up bass too, and after a whole string of rhythm guitarists we eventually found Arthur. But yeah, I think what brought us all together was a love of heavy rock music, particularly stuff from the 60s, 70s and 80s. We’re all young but we’re all into that kind of music and we were lucky enough to find others to share that interest with.

Veronica (lead guitar): Me and Ryan came into this wanting to be a bare-bones hard rock band. We didn’t wanna write ballads or slow songs or political songs or songs with a whole wall of effects and distortion, we wanted to be a guitar band and we wanted to write music that you could have a good time too. If it’s heavy, loud or fast then it’s good enough for us. I think it was Slash or somebody who said that a good rock song has either gotta make you want to fight of fuck. So that’s what we try to do.

Faulkner: Right on. Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Steven: Well, when we first started it was just about getting people together that could actually play and we were just practicing together with an aspiration to play gigs but I don’t know what else at that point. It was only once we actually started playing and getting a good reaction that we started putting some more thought into what we wanted and we sort of just came to the conclusion we’d love to play a festival and that’s sort of what we’ve moved toward with just getting people interested in our music and putting something out there and trying to get the biggest reaction possible to our music. After that who knows really.

Faulkner: Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

Veronica: As a band, it’s definitely 70s/80s Aussie rock bands, namely AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, the Angels, Stevie Wright, the Easybeats, and my dad’s band, Avalanche. We’re also inspired by all the big rock and metal bands like Guns n Roses, Led Zep, Metallica, Sabbath, Motörhead, as well as the Rolling Stones, The Who, Chuck Berry, and we also have a lot of blues influences as well.

Faulkner: Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

Steven: Not during this band but in my last one we played this show in this tiny little pub called the Nook and Cranny in QLD where I used to live. It’s a restaurant as well as a bar and we had gotten food beforehand and I ate a whole pizza to myself. I remember feeling a bit off before we started playing and then about three songs in, I knew something was definitely not right. I hit this high pitched scream and all of a sudden I knew what was wrong, the band went into a big solo section and me just being a singer in that band ran backstage to the bathroom and threw up 3 times, quickly cleaned up and then ran back on stage just before the next verse started. I almost passed out twice during that gig it was one of the hardest shows I’ve ever played but everyone that witnessed it said they had a lot of respect for me afterwards so at least there was that.

Veronica: I went through three guitars in one half hour long gig this one time. They weren’t even mine, I just kept breaking strings and the other bands just kept handing me their guitars. I got to play on some nice Les Paul’s which was different for me because I’m so used to the SG.

Ryan (drums): Wackiest so far is during a gig my index finger hit the snare when I was playing and I didnt feel anything at the time until shortly after the set when I came back to reality and realized, ‘Holy shit, I’m bleeding all down my hand’ and the kit was a bit blood covered too. Hope nobody caught anything! Haha

Arthur (rhythm guitar): I’ve only just joined this band, haha! Nothing too crazy yet!

Faulkner: Awesome, wacky stories to say the least! Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

Steven: I think “Sold My Soul” for sure. It was just the one song I managed to get quick and clean in a few takes and I honestly think we sound the best in that recording. We were just all on-point that day.

Veronica: I think, “Head First In Hell,” which is the first single we released of our debut EP, Sent From Hell, it’s still my favourite recording that we’ve done so far, and it was one of the first songs that I wrote for the band. I had the lead riff and built this whole song around it, I wanted to write something as epic and dynamic as AC/DC’s “Riff Raff” or “Number or the Beast” [Iron Maiden] or “Whole Lotta Love” [Led Zeppelin] so you might be able to hear some of those influences in there and I’m pretty proud of the end product.

Ryan: Favourite song to perform is “Get Back (to Fuckwit City)” because it’s a song that has so much power to it and it’s basically a way of telling someone to fuck off.

Arthur: Have to go with “Get Back…” as well. It’s simple yet such a fun song to play live and I think it’s probably one of our tightest songs really.

Faulkner: Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

Steven: I’ve actually written three full-length novels and I did that all before I was 15. I used to spend a lot of time alone as a kid and my mum taught me to read and write before I went to school ‘cause my oldest brother got home-schooled so I used to sit in with them. All that time spent alone I ended up just writing and eventually I wrote some really big stories, I didn’t do anything with them though I think it was always just more of a hobby I did in my spare time.

Veronica: I have a growing vinyl collection.

Ryan: I’m fucking obsessed with McNuggets.

Arthur: Ahh not really to be honest. I’m a VB enthusiast hahaha

Faulkner:  Closing this thing out, what is Avalanche currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.

Steven: We just released our debut Double EP, Sent from Hell, it’s a wild and raw rock n’ rock record about sin, sex and good times. It’s a mix of 4 studio recordings, including our two single releases, and four live recordings taken from one of our gigs in December. It’s fast and it’s heavy and it’s LOUD!  It’s available on all streaming platforms and music websites so be sure to check it out, and we will be gigging non-stop over the next few months to promote it, so if you’re in Sydney make sure you come down and join us!  And on the down low, we actually already have our next release ninety percent of the way done and plan on getting it out there by the end of the year, wink wink.

Faulkner:  Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

Steven: Our pleasure. Cheers for listening!

[Photo Credits: Avalanche]