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Blood Spilt As Water


Band: Blood Spilt As Water

Members: Dustin Scheffer, drums; Bobby Yagodich, guitar; Matt Jackson, bass; Sam Stephens, vocals

Who we talked to: Stephens

How did you guys get together? Well, we all went to the same school (Dover Area High School), and we've all kind of been friends. We all had the same interests in music. (We decided to form a band) probably three or four years ago. Just going to local shows, (we) realized that there (weren't) any bands that played the genre that we liked.

Describe your sound and style: It's kind of really heavy (and) aggressive. It mixes the two main genres of death metal and hardcore. We've been classified in the new genre called deathcore, which is generally, like, death metal blast beats mixed with hardcore breakdowns. But we take a different spin on it. We use slam riffs from death metal and mix it with old-school hardcore two-step riffs. It's the same genre, but we take a different approach with the way we mix it.

What were your musical influences? Bands such as Death, Obituary and Suffocation from the deathmetal side and from the hardcore side, would be bands like Terror and Champion and just overall old-school hardcore. For me, my uncle listened to this stuff, so I kind of grew up with it. Our guitarist, Bobby, he's always had a taste for punk and just stuff that wasn't socially acceptable. He's always kind of been into the heavier stuff that's more out there. Our drummer, Dustin, he's always been into the hardcore scene, because that's what his friends were into. We just kind of mix it all together.

Are you into more than metal? All of us pretty much just love music in general. Me and the guitarist, Bobby, we listen to classic, too. We all have a deep love for the Goo Goo Dolls. I mean, there's some stuff on the radio that gets on our nerves, but we can pretty much listen to everything.

What are your thoughts on the York music scene? Around here, a lot of what we were seeing was pop/punk and metalcore and some of the stuff that's heavy, but it's more socially acceptable now. It wasn't a lot of the stuff that we listen to because we listen to a lot of the really underground heavy stuff. We kind of wanted to bring some of that to the area.

Do you guys play any local venues ? We generally play shows pretty regularly, but a lot of it's out of the area. There's really only one venue we play in the York area and that's Club 19. Other than that, we usually have to travel an hour or two hours to play.We've traveled to Baltimore. We've traveled to Lewisburg and Mifflinburg. We've played shows out in Pittsburgh. We've played all around. We definitely would love to see more (venues) around here. We love playing other places, too, but it's kind of disheartening not seeing the music scene around here being as strong as we'd like it to be. We're talking to people trying to get stuff set up, but so far, it's not going so well.

What is the best part of playing shows? The moshing? Just being up on stage and playing what we love and having people stand there, listen, react and have a good time. I don't even know because usually when I'm on stage, I'm not really paying attention all that much. I have my eyes closed.That's the way I do it. I've seen some video of when some crazy stuff happened.

Have you seen any great shows? There are two shows that will always stick in my mind. When I was little, I saw Behemoth. They're a band from over in Europe. Their music is amazing, but they put on one of the best shows I've ever seen. Then . . . when I was like 10 or so, my uncle took me to a tour called the Gigan Tour, which was Megadeth and Fear Factory and Symphony X. It was a straight old metal show, and there (were) thousands of people there. There was pyro and . . . all kinds of stuff. It was insane. That's something I'll never forget.

Do you want to stay underground or get bigger? For us, it really doesn't matter as long as the integrity of the music stays intact. We've seen lots of bands who started in the underground and then they've come above the surface, but they've compromised their integrity and what they're about. Music should be about passion, fun and that type of stuff. If you're not having fun playing it and you're just playing it to make the money . . . you shouldn't be playing.

- ERIN McCRACKEN, FLIPSIDE STAFF