Onward To Olympas | Welcome To The Scene
Written By: Jeremy Seick

t has been a long time since I have said that I am stoked about a new Metal-core band. When a new band pops up with a sound that is a toned-down version of the influences listed on their Myspace you know that they will soon burn out, if they even create any sort of fire to begin with for that matter. That isn’t the case however in the world of Onward To Olympus. With a style that is way too eclectic to be traced back to one band, these hardworking guys from the mid-west take this thing way too seriously to create a bad version of their favorite band. Though melodic at times, Onward never goes without that brutal ingredient making their music fresh and not stale by the end of track two. Not to make their load too heavy but I feel that if they continue down this road Onward To Olympus has the potential to revive metal-core for a lot of us that are about to give it up. Onward To Olympas, welcome to the scene.

First things first, explain the name so people can stop asking if you can’t spell (laughs).

Andrew Higginbotham: (Laughs) Yeah, we do get a lot of questions about this one. Here is where it comes from: Olympas, which means “Heavenly,” was the name of a Roman Christian that Paul salutes in Romans 16:15. Taking from the word’s meaning, “Heavenly” or “Heaven,” we chose this name to tell of our life’s purpose as Christians to be moving “Onward To Heaven.”

How long had you guys been playing music before you were signed in October by Facedown? Tell us how that came about…

AH: Separately, each member has played in bands between approximately five to seven years. Onward to Olympas as band has been around for about four years, but the music you hear, along with the lineup you see formed in April of 2008.  Justin Allman and Matt Burnside are original members of the band, and after the other members that were in the group all left, they started seeking new members to basically start over. Justin Gage and I both joined the band around April, along with our former lead vocalist Chris Davis. He recorded a demo with us, and then chose to leave the band in December of 2008. That is when Kramer Lowe joined the band, and we have been rocking and rolling ever since. It has been a sort of roller coaster ride of ups and downs, but in the end, the five members that now make up the band Onward To Olympas are like a family, and we are ready to get our music out to everyone who will listen.

You guys started the recording process back in May right? How has being signed changed that process?

AH: We recorded in May with Jamie King (Between the Buried and Me, For Today), laying down all 10 tracks as a full-length album. The plan was to make this CD as professional as possible, both musically, and production-wise, so that we could send it to record labels in hopes of getting noticed. It has been our common goal since the start of this band to gain record label support and tour full time. Once we signed to Facedown Records, nothing really changed with the album recording process itself, because we had recorded the full length CD at a quality worthy of being on the shelves with any other band. We are very excited for the opportunity to represent Facedown Records, and now the focus has shifted to getting our name and our music out there.

So your debut album comes out on the 19th of January, tell us a bit about your direction while writing and recording.

AH: While we were writing this album, we started with the basic guitar/bass/drum formula for coming up with our rhythms. Each one of us brings a whole different style of musical background to the table. In the end, it is sometimes amazing even to us how we are able to cohesively meld each part together. We write things that are fun to play, fun to listen to, and fun to get hyped for. We enjoy it when we see people singing along, or dancing/moshing to our songs in the crowd, because that’s what we wrote it for. We want the songs to get stuck in your head, but in a good way, so that you find yourself humming our tune as you drive, walk down the street or wait in line to get coffee. Kramer worked relentlessly on the lyrics, writing about all kinds of topics. The one thing that is commonality represented through it all is our faith. We do not want to shove religion down anyone’s throat, but at that same time, we are NOT ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, and we want people to know up front, even before we take the stage, that we are Christians living for a greater purpose. Fame and fortune all fade away, but God’s Love is never-ending. That is the message we want people to hear in our music.  As for the recording process, we mainly used our own gear to produce the best tone that we could, and we are very proud of what Jamie King was able to do for us in the studio. He has an uncanny mastery of pro-tools and knows just how to get the sound that you want out of the amps, bass, drums and vocals. Our goal, as stated before, was to record and produce an album that was ready for stores, and we believe that we accomplished that goal.

From what I have heard so far, it is fierce, and the production is incredible! What are some bands that you guys pull influence from?

AH: There are so many bands that we draw influence from, both locally and nationally, it would be hard to list them all. A sort of condensed version would be something like this:

Between the Buried and Me, Living Sacrifice, Metallica, Parkway Drive, Bury Your Dead, August Burns Red, For Today, Misery Signals, As I Lay Dying, Stick To Your Guns, and many many more.

What do you hope will separate you from the large metal-core flock on our iPods?

AH: We hope that our message and our mix of all kinds of different genres would help us to stand out from all of those other bands on the click-wheel. We bring several different musical styles to the table that a lot of other bands do not incorporate in an all-in-one package. To go from a Death Metal blast beat, to an 80’s style lead solo, to a metal-core breakdown, to a harmonic-singing chorus is a wild musical journey. To make it all cohesive takes a good amount of work, but it is all worth it to us. We also enjoy the fact that when asked to name a band that we sound exactly like, we can’t ever really come up with just ONE name. We think that this unique style will help us to establish ourselves in the music industry and that it will give listeners something a little different than the norm.

As of right now there are no dates for 2010, what sort of touring can we be looking forward to in the new year?

AH: We have some big announcements that should be coming up in the near future about tours planned for early 2010. We plan on hitting the road hard next year, following in the footsteps of the other Facedown bands who relentlessly tour to get their music heard. We would encourage everyone to check our MySpace, along with facedownrecords.com for up-to-date info about tour announcements, and when we’ll be in YOUR area!