Getting to Know… Sentinel Complex

Reading Time: 6 min read

Jamie Everett & Joshua Grayson provide insight about their intriguing brainchild, Sentinel Complex, on our 135^th interview.

“Our music ranges from heavy metal riffs, industrial electronic beats and a dash of film score thrown in too, but that mix ranges from song to song.” Honestly, just how cool is that? That’s merely an excerpt from the answer to the first question that 🎙 Sentinel Complex supplied us with on the 135^th interview in our Getting to Know… series. Sentinel Complex is a band from Bournemouth, UK comprised of 🎙 Jamie Everett and 🎙 Joshua Grayson. When it comes to genre, they incorporate electronic rock, alternative, industrial, metal, film/game score, and ambience. Again, the question should be posed, how cool is that? Rather continuing to preface the interview, let’s just skip right to the main attraction that is Getting to Know… Sentinel Complex: Interview #135!

Starting things off right, for those who may not be familiar with Sentinel Complex what would you say makes you distinct or unique as a duo/band? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

🎤 We love to constantly push ourselves and try new things which we personally haven’t heard very widely done before. Our music ranges from heavy metal riffs, industrial electronic beats and a dash of film score thrown in too, but that mix ranges from song to song. Whether it comes from trying new song structures or merging things like a techno beat and metal riffs in our own unique way, we always have plenty of ideas to keep things fresh.

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your Sentinel Complex form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had collectively early on?

🎤 We started making music together some time in 2014 and we started off making trailer themes and game score for a number of indie game/and film projects. Our original end goal was actually to do score professionally, but then a year or so later we really fell in love with the idea of creating a concept album which ended up becoming 💿 Systematic Decadence. We just loved telling stories with sound and we still keep a lot of those elements in our music today! After that we really just started honing in our different skills and seeing what worked and what didn’t, learning everything on our own as we went and now we are here!

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

🎤 Like we said before, we originally started as a composing duo rather than a band, but we still love just doing random score pieces and things like that whenever we can! Now we just love making songs which are our perfect blend of the music we love to listen to, and hopefully other people enjoy our stuff too! We used to be pretty set on the album format back in the day, however as of recently we have found it more to our taste of releasing singles more often so there is a better regular stream of content for our listeners to enjoy.

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

🎤 Our influences range from a bunch of different artists, since we combine elements from metal, electronic music and also a lot of film score works. For metal, our main influences are bands like Fear Factory, Mechina and The Defiled. When it comes to electronic elements, we try to pull a lot of techniques from darker artists like 1788-L, Swarm and some of Trent Reznor’s more electronic pieces. Film score makes up a large chunk of where our ideas come from and we both have a huge mutual admiration for Hans Zimmer! He is definitely our most loved composer, but we also love people like John Carpenter and Vangelis too for the horror and cyberpunk twists!

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.

🎤 We currently aren’t a touring act, however we have definitely seen some crazy stuff at shows and tours! We’ve seen people have clumps of hair ripped out, we helped someone find their two front teeth which were just freshly knocked out, and once when we say Machine Head in Southampton there were many broken bones and some guy literally was almost killed by some idiot crowd killer. He ended up being ok in the end though and he got to meet the band since they stayed on to make sure he was alright!

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?

🎤 Jamie: For me it would have to be 🎵 “Ignite” from 💿 The Azoth Chronicles album. I was going through a lot of things emotionally at the time and I pretty much funneled it into one track. I am determined to redo it one day though later down the line because looking back I feel that I could do it more justice. The other song would be 🎵 “Demise of The Faithful” because to me, it is the first track we have really nailed as a band.

🎤 Josh: I would have to say 🎵 “Grievous Angel”, purely because at the time it felt like such a step in the right direction for us. It was a massive improvement for us vocally compared to what we had done on the previous record, and 🎵 “Demise of The Faithful” wouldn’t have turned out the way it did if we didn’t have the confidence that I think “Grievous…” gave us.

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

🎤 We are both huge fans of horror and cyberpunk media, so that is a lot of what we spend a lot of our time on outside of music! Jamie is also a fond reptile keeper and has bred his first clutch of snakes this year and Josh is a huge Warhammer 40k guy! Plenty to keep us busy, haha.

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

🎤 We have a couple of projects in the works right now, one of which is with one of our favorite artists and one of our biggest inspirations which we can’t wait to reveal! We haven’t released anything in a few months and this is because we have been really trying to make our next few releases really special (of which there will be three at least!). All we can say is keep an eye on our socials for updates!

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

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