Myself (Fraser), John and James had been playing together for a while, when our vocalist left John asked Liam to come and practice with us and he never left. We recorded the 2010 demo’s pretty early on and decided we’d benefit from a second guitarist. Not long after Graham joined the band. The name is just something Fraser came up with, we all liked it because it wasn’t too long winded and didn’t have the word Wolves or Ships in it.
Who influences Grader? And how did you come to the sound you have now?
We all listen to pretty different music when we’re not together, our common influences came from the music we grew up listening to, AFI, Misfits, Alkaline Trio and all the usual Hardcore stuff, MLIW, American Nightmare etc… I don’t know what you’d say our sound is, we’ve kept away from the whole tough guy thing and always try to do something different, we just don’t want to sound like anyone else, we’re probably less easily influenced by other bands as there’s no other bands near us doing similair stuff.
Your first release came out in 2010. Tell us about that record. Do you feel you have progressed since then?
Most of the tracks on there were re-written versions of songs we’d played in our previous band, we were in a rush to let people hear what we were doing and as a result our sound has really changed since then. Playing those songs is still fun though, I don’t think they’re bad songs at all, we just get to take a bit more time with our writing now.
Your second release came out this year. How do you feel about this record? And why did you decide to cover Mother by Danzig?
it was the first time the five of us had sat down and wrote something together from scratch. Each song on there is a bit different as we were still finding our feet, but it was great being in the studio with Tom Mitchell, he really pushed us to make those songs the best we could. Getting to tour it and see people getting into it was a great experience. Covering Mother wasn’t really planned, we all loved the song and Fraser figured out the chords at practice one night and we all just went with it, it was fun to record because it was all about just playing fast.
You recently signed to TDON records. How did this come about? And when will your first release with the label be?
We had a mutual friend with Jamie at TDON who was cool enough to point him in our direction. He asked us about doing the 7” and we were so excited to put something out with him, he’s put out Dead Swans, Integrity and so many other bands we love, it just made sense for us. It comes out on February 1st with pre-orders going up on January 13th. Our release show will be the Dead Swans/Horror Show alldayer in Leeds on Feb 4th, we just can’t wait for people to hear the tracks.
You also recently had a lineup change with guitar players. Do you feel this has affected your sound at all?
Over the summer a lot happened for the band, people seemed to be interested in what our band was doing and we were getting more offers for shows than we’d ever had before. Graham was still at University and was struggling to balance the two so decided to call it quits on the band. We were all gutted to see our friend go and found it really hard to replace him. When we found out Louis was interested we all picked up as he was already a friend and we all knew he was a great musician. He picked our set up really quickly and has been heavily involved in demo-ing for the next release, so it’ll be cool to let people hear that.
Do you have any current shows/tours planned?
We’ve just come off doing a few Christmas shows, we played Strugglefest and TDON Xmas which was a great weekend. We’re focused on writing the new record over Christmas and having some new songs for Hell in The Well in January before we head to Europe in March, so lots of cool stuff going on.
What future plans are there for Grader?
Next year will be a busy one for us, what with the 7” release, europe tours, and more shows throughout the uk we’ll be kept really busy. We’re currently writing for another release to come out next year also. this last year has been amazing for us, we never expected to get this far and meet so many amazing people and play with so many great bands. We just want to push this as far as we can.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks to everyone who’s supported us, Especially Jamie Farrell and Rich Hiorns. Our friends in Last Witness, Landscapes, The Cold Harbour,This Is Colour, Departures and Notebooks. And to anyone who’s ever put us on a show, bought a shirt, given us a floor to crash on, it means to world to us, Thanks for everything.
Listen to Grader here: http://www.facebook.com/GraderMusic
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