Vengeance Falls has been around for 11 years now, but three of you started in Standing Penance almost 20 years ago. What has kept the band together all this time and how have you grown together over the years?
Good question. What has kept us together all this time? Familiarity; knowing the other people you’ve been playing with. Comfortability. I mean some of the guys will piss you off at times as most family members may end up doing, but it’s pretty much a family. We’ve been going overseas touring together so we know each other pretty well at this point.
As a band that makes rock music, a genre that is not very popular in Barbados, what has been your experience as artists here?
Straight up, it sucks. Everybody believes that the first bit of distortion from the guitar makes it devil music. I mean, alternative is rock, classic rock is still rock. So at the end of the day, we can play all of that and we actually end up doing that.
That’s why there’s actually only, realistically, two or three rock bands left on the island. I don’t consider somebody that comes in once a year and guys that play here… Sundown Superhero are actually good in their own right, but at the end of the day they come and play once a year and run along.
You’ve said that you need to travel outside of Barbados to find appreciation for your music. That being said, what is local support for your music like? Do you have any loyal, passionate Bajan supporters?
It’s a lot better now. It started getting pretty good from about late 2023 coming up. I mean, it was always good when we went on tour. No problems there. But in Barbados we’ve had a steady spot that we’ve been able to call our own for the past couple of years [or] so—[that] everybody knows—where there’s rock music to be found. So they come there. So it’s been pretty good there at DreadHop Brewery. We have at least a staunch [of loyal, passionate Bajan supporters]. I would probably say, 50 or so.
Your music has reached as far as Britain and Germany. What does it mean to you, as a rock band from a small island in the Caribbean, to have attracted attention from outside of the region?
It’s always good. I guess I’ve never put any limitations on myself where music [is] concerned, because music gets all over.
It’s actually been playing in Switzerland as well [as] Denmark, so it’s one of those things that, without label push, we were able to get music [to] these places. And now with CRS Records, we’ve been able to get it [to] a little over 81 places on the worldwide web. Very easily accessible.
We’re dealing with mental health issues, we’re dealing with relationship issues, we’re dealing with, as I said, people harming other people, we’re dealing with world issues as well.
From your perspective, how has the rock scene in Barbados changed in the time that you’ve been doing this? And has it already peaked?
That is a very, very good question. I would say at the moment it’s probably at its latter stages in Barbados. Unless you’re doing very, very soft rock, you will not really get a gig. I remember the days of Sandy Bank and what not, when you would have, easily, 12 rock bands playing all the time.
It was all over the place. It was not a problem. And then for some apparent reason it just petered off.
Just by the way, that would have been like the early 2000s that we’re talking about there; like 2005, 2004, 2003.
You’ve already released the first single from your upcoming third album; a track called ‘Wake Up’. How has it been performing so far?
It’s actually been received really well from overseas to here. It’s one of our better tracks, where it speaks to other people following other people to do crap. And then while that crap’s happening, the innocent bystanders, especially children, are being harmed because they just happened to be in the way at that point in time.
What themes and ideas are you exploring with this album?
It’s pretty rounded. We’re dealing with mental health issues, we’re dealing with relationship issues, we’re dealing with, as I said, people harming other people, we’re dealing with world issues as well. So it’s pretty rounded. We step out of the box on this one.
How has your artistry and music evolved from your first album to now?
The band members have gotten much better. We’ve been listening to even more genres of music, although we don’t play a lot. And we’ve actually had some added in as well in the new album. So listen out and see what can happen or what you will like and what you don’t like.
What did you learn from the process of making your two previous albums that you’ve taken with you now that you’re making your third? Are there any ways in which making this album was different from making your first two?
What did I learn? Don’t be close minded. Literally, the second album was a very touchy-feeling album [for] me personally. It was getting a lot of dodgy stuff out of the head, but always [being] open-minded to [what] a different genre of rock could be.
What are you trying, or hoping, to accomplish with this third album?
Well, we’re trying to still reach [an] even larger audience and tour differently. [Y]ou [always need] good material to tour. So that’s what we [are] really trying to hit at.
