Band Interview: Point Taken

Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are pleased to bring you an interview with alternative punk and grunge rock band, Point Taken.

1. How did you get started as a band?

(Jacob) We were all really passionate about music and had all been playing in different projects over the last few years. When those projects came to their natural end we finally had an opportunity to play together . We wrote a first song, “DRiFT”, a couple of years before we officially came together as a band. Once we got a couple of jam sessions down we immediately began recording our EP – “The Static Windup”. We played a few hometown shows to test the idea and make sure people enjoyed what we were doing and it’s been non-stop for about 2 years since then.

2. How would you describe your sound?

(Jacob) Our sound is referential of classic punk/grunge outfits with hot, overdriven guitars and heavy bass tones. Our vocal arrangements and drum sounds, however, are much more modern. We take those ideals of looking back to the bands we all rocked out to in our rooms, and looking to the future of music technology. We throw it into a melting pot and we end up with tech driven, alternative wall-of-sound with just a dash of musical theatre.

3. What bands/artists would you say have influenced your style of music?

We draw a lot of our influence from Alt and Hard-core bands like ‘Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes’ and ‘Bring Me The Horizon’. Their raw, emotive styles really resonate with the kind of songs we like to write. We also take a lot of inspiration from Math-Rock groups like ‘Covet’, and ‘Dance Gavin Dance’ in our compositions. Ultimately we try and combine technical, riff-driven arrangements with the aggression of modern Hard-core to create a sound that’s an authentic representation of our lives in a small Irish city.

4. Has the rise of YouTube & music streaming helped or hindered you as a band?

(Jared) A little bit of both I think. It’s easier than ever to publish music and get it ‘out into the world’, and sites like Distrokid provide really affordable distribution services to bands and artists. The caveat, of course, being that it’s so hard to stand out from the crowd and generate new fans in such a saturated market. Audiences today are somewhat spoiled with audio and visual content with really high production values and small Independent acts like ours – from little old, working-class Limerick – sometimes struggle to get our music out to as many people as we’d like.

5. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making music?

We’re all very competitive when we’re not making music, and this comes through in our hobbies. Jacob places pretty high in the Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater global leader boards, Evan is an avid player of competitive multilayer FPS games, and Jared is our resident Fortnite grinder. We have all previously competed in national level trading-card tournaments, though recent times have put a stop to any of those happening any time soon.

6. What are your future plans musically? Tours?

As for the recent future, we’re determined to keep producing and creating music as much as possible, given the quarantine guidelines we still have to adhere to. We have an album in the works and our most immediate goal is to get that finished and released. Our longer term goals include setting up a tour of Ireland at the very least, and networking and collaborating with as many great local artists as possible when things finally start to open back up again.

Links

Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Tiktok