Metal Anarchy

Time for the next edition of Metal Anarchy’s “new music showcase,” the feature where I introduce you to up and coming bands that readers of this site may find interesting. This time I have an exclusive Q&A with Joe Freeman, who drums for the alternative rock band Audio Impulse.

METAL ANARCHY: Tell me a little about your band:

FREEMAN: Audio Impulse is a group of hard working, hard rocking degenerates from Philadelphia, PA. We like to write straight from the heart and relate our music to our listeners. Everything we write typically comes from personal experience with family, friends, relationships, and the general day-to-day struggles of everyday life. We formed back in 2012 when Barry [Phillips] and Nate [Blithe], our singer’s/guitarist’s bands both broke up. A few weeks later they hung out, jammed, and ended up writing 6-8 songs shortly thereafter. They had known each other in college and enlisted their mutual friend, Pat [Duffy], to be our bassist. To round out the line-up they put an ad for a drummer on Craigslist since they didn’t know any reliable drummers. And they still don’t because they found me, [Joe] Freeman, on the internet.

We’re all pretty big nerds and grew up playing a lot of video games, particularly RPG’s. One of our favorites was the classic SNES game, Chrono Trigger. There’s a move in the game called Arc Impulse, which was originally going to be our band name, but when Pat and Nate looked it up someone else had beaten us to the punch. So Pat subbed “arc” for “audio”, because I guess Stereo Impulse just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

METAL ANARCHY: Who are your main influences?

FREEMAN: We all listen to a real varied group of music, so I’ll just try and limit this to our personal favorites. Mutually we’re all huge fans of The Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl. He’s just one of the coolest, most down to earth musicians despite being a modern-day rock god in a time where there aren’t really too many of those anymore. My favorite bands are The Wonder Years, Taking Back Sunday, and Rise Against; I think Tim McIlrath of RA is probably the best lyricist on the planet. Pat’s favorite band is Thrice, and his non-guilty pleasure is Tegan and Sara. Nate is a huge fan of 311 and Jimmy Eat World, and Barry is in love with Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins, and got into music air-guitaring to Black Sabbath.

METAL ANARCHY: What is your latest release and why should readers of this site check it out?

FREEMAN: We recently put out a 4-song EP titled ‘Straight Shot’. It’s our 2nd studio release, and the first one where all the songs on it were written by all of us collectively. Each song is unique and sounds different from the other 3 on the EP, but remain cohesive and represent what we do musically. The first song is the title track and is an aggressive, in your face punk song. The second song ‘For the Road’ is an alt-rock tune with a big chorus and a bigger ending that’s really riff-driven. ‘Airy’, the third track, has melodic, toned down verses with a huge power-pop esque chorus, and the last track ‘The Simpson’s Did It’ is an ode to all the pop-punk stuff from the 90’s we grew up listening to. It’s such an ironic rip-off we even reference a few of our own lines.

METAL ANARCHY: What can people expect when they go to your live shows?

FREEMAN: We like to bring a lot of energy onstage and want the crowd to have as much fun attending the show/watching us play as we have performing to them. We basically want it to just be one big party for everyone involved.

METAL ANARCHY: Where do you see your band heading in 5 years?

FREEMAN: I’d like to think that we write music that’s varied enough that we have at least one song for everyone to enjoy or that would interest them genre wise, and even if that’s not the case, we like to jump around and grab your attention while performing. We’re hoping to become a nationally touring band within the next 1-3 years, so hopefully by 5 we’re heading straight to the top of the world haha.