Scott Vogel is a punk rock singer who made his name on the New York hardcore scene fronting bands like Buried Alive and Sludgefest. Early 2002 saw him relocate from the east coast to the Los Angeles, California on the west coast, with the intention of fronting a hardcore band with a difference. He wanted to sing in a band that could bring back the fun and purity that he valued in the hardcore scene which he felt was sorely lacking in most major scenes. By April 2002 he had found that band, named them Terror, and issued their first demo tape. The tape was rapturously received and got them a record deal with Takeover Records, with whom they released a number of 7” singles during what little downtime they had from touring.
The name the band had made for themselves got them a record deal with Bridge 9 and soon afterwards, the band recorded their first E.P “Lowest Of The Low”. It was released in January 2003 and was an instant critical smash, leading to a European tour with the legendary Biohazard for their troubles. Ever since then, they’ve become one of the most beloved hardcore bands around, with a live show that’s equal parts fearsome and life affirming. They’ve even managed to turn their status as cult heroes into some commercial success, with their second album, 2006’s “Always The Hard Way”, selling 40’000 copies in total. They’re a band to believe in, without being all that serious to begin with. For that, they come highly recommended.
Frontman Jesse Barnett formed the band and has worked with a whole series of musicians over the years but the classic line up of Stick To Your Guns is made up of Schmitz, Rawson, Rose and James. They released their debut album 'For What It's Worth' in 2005 with the Century Media record label. Two more albums followed this as the band began to tour the States and their fan base grew larger and larger.
Their most successful album release to date came in 2012 and was titled 'Diamond'. It achieved the chart positions of #1 on the Heetseekers chart, #11 for Hard Rock Albums and #30 on the US Rock charts. For a while it also sat atop the iTunes top 10 rock chart. It featured some of the band's most well known singles such as 'Bringing You Down (A New World Overthrow)' 'Against Them All' and 'Beyond the Sun'. Due to the successes of this release the band were invited to be part of the 2013 Warped tour.
Their anticipated follow up album titled 'Disobedient' is pencilled in for February 10 2015 release. They announced that it will feature a number of guest vocalists such Scott Vogel of Terror, Toby Morse of H2O and Walter of Rotting Out and one single has been released from this so far titled 'Nobody' which won rave reviews.
Metal music is sometimes too intense for me, but after seeing the crossover band, Terror, perform live, I thoroughly enjoyed their performance, and have started listening to more music of the genre. Their performance is what really grabbed me, I love shows that involved the audience, and they were encouraging us in the audience to jump up on stage, and then run across and jump back off. We were relatively near to the front of the stage, so I jumped up on and it was so much fun! There was crowd surfing, and they even handed some people their microphones when they were up on stage to sing along.
As well as it being super interactive, all of the band members were super talented, and they played through One With The Underdogs in its entirety, and everyone was singing along from start to finish. The way that they write their music is reminiscent of traditional metal music from back in the day, and isn’t as heavy as modern Swedish metal music. The last track they played, Strike You Down, had their lead dinger, Scott Vogel laying on his back crowd surfing, singing whilst being carried around. It was the best gig I’ve ever been to – the atmosphere was insane!
Orange County metal band, Stick to Your Guns are one of the heaviest bands around spinning a breed of death metal with the heaviest guitars turned up to 11, playing music to some of the rowdiest hordes I’ve ever seen. They are one of those bands similar to the contemporaries, A Day to Remember, but where ADTR have more commercial sounding choruses, that without the heavy guitars, maybe Backstreet Boys could have performed, Stick to Your Guns go extremely heavy in their verses playing some extremely heavy riffs lacing in a certain dissonance, down tuning their guitars, also paired with the double kick drum machine gun beats played in perfect sync with the guitars and bass, to a slow down tempo beat. There has to be a correlation between this genre of music and the most movement in moshpits. I’m going to be honest, this mosh pit is absolutely terrifying, there are also audience members running up on stage and then stage diving! How fun!