Onward To Olympas
A Bunch Of Music Nerds
By: Greg Prato (Posted By: Bear Frazer)
Last updated February 17th , 2010

'Chameleon metal' is perhaps the most fitting description for North Carolina's Onward to Olympas, who have just unleashed their debut album, This World Is Not My Home, via Facedown Records. After all, this group - which is comprised of singer Kramer Love, guitarist/singer Justin Gage, guitarist Andrew H, bassist Justin Allman, and drummer Matt Burnside - are hard to pin down to a single metallic subgenre, as elements of hardcore, emo, and good, old fashioned, crunchy metal are all on display throughout. And lest we forget that the group's lyrics are Christian-based, which according to Allman, was not by mistake.
    
"We claim Christianity as individuals and a lot of bands label us as a 'Christian band' because of that. We definitely don't deny the 'Christian band' label. Most bands will talk about whatever they're passionate about, like girls, sex, drugs - whatever. It just so happens that we are passionate about God. So we write our songs, and the majority of them are about God and our daily struggles - it could be everything from relationships with other people and how that's effecting us at this point. But eventually, it's positive. Most of the songs are about how we're struggling in this world with temptation and separation, which is sin. Sometimes, people can be put off by that - we're not a ministry-based band, so unless we're called to do so, you won't see us preach on stage or anything like that. We try to live by example rather than by cramming something down somebody's throat."
    
From there, Allman offered to fill us in on the band's history, "All of us have been playing music for a long time - at least six years. Onward to Olympas was a band before - it started about '06, but they didn't play the same kind of music or the same songs. Me and the guitarist were in another band, an we came in about April of '08. We had a different vocalist at that point, and we formed a Christian band, because Onward to Olympas at that point was not a Christian band. Honestly, this band started in '08 in our minds. Our vocalist, Kramer Lowe, we picked up in January of '09."
    
While North Carolina may not automatically come to mind when thinking of great "musical hotbeds," Allman gives the scene a big thumbs up. "As far as the music scene around here, it definitely put things to a higher standard. North Carolina is saturated with really good musicianship - you've got bands like Between the Buried and Me and He is Legend. They just put things on a higher standard, that you knew what you were supposed to sound like - before you even started a band. It wasn't that hard to start and know what level you should be at. And there's so many places to play, and so many different scenes. I think it really helped launch us into a professional mindset." 
    
Which brings us to today, which sees the group having recently unleashed This World Is Not My Home. "We went in with Jamie King, who is in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We were really excited to go in and record with him, because he's a huge name in the scene around here. We saved up a whole lot of money, and went in for two weeks with him. It was almost like going to school every day, because Jamie knows so much about music and how things are in the music industry. Every day we'd go in and just learn as much as we could. Our big thing is we're a bunch of 'music nerds' - we're not huge on theory, but when it comes to tone and our gear, we searched for a long time for 'perfect tone,' which was cool. My favorite song on the album would probably be the title track, because I'm the one who actually sings on the album, and that was my favorite thing to write. When I wrote the chorus, I was really happy with how catchy it was and what I was saying. That song - all together - came out exactly as we wanted it to."
    
And soon, you will get an opportunity to experience the Onward to Olympas lads in the flesh. "We leave in the beginning of February to go out with our friends, Hands. And then there will be a 'Facedown tour' - that's going to be a full U.S. tour. It sounds like we're going to be on the road more or less non-stop this year. At least 250 dates. We're going to be touring very heavily this year."


To purchase or check out The World Is Not My Home, click here.

[Tags] Metal

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