1. EXPECTATIONS
GREAT They’re the start of 2010’s biggest success story, with the UK
at their feet, Vice By Nevada reveal their opinions on fame,
touring and influences.
VICE BY NEVADA
WORDS:
PHOTOS:
LISA WEST
LISA WEST
S
TANDING IN a compact questions that she gets asked nightly on a notebook full of lyrics to record about
underground venue in the tour. However, she got few replies. But how good her life was and how much
centre of Bristol, surrounded one response stood out: Versaeremerge’s she enjoyed touring, she had a worrying
by tattooed sceners, dirty vocalist Sierra Kusterbeck took the time to realisation: they were now all nonsense.
bass beats and hardcore write a detailed reply, filling the young singer It’s all of this, then, that Sophie is talking
guitar riffs blare from in on the mechinations of the industry and about when he wonders if he should be
every direction, destroying the ears offering advice on the pitfalls young bands honest.
of surrounding teens. Vice By Nevada can face. Sophie has never forgotten the
perform their debut single ‘Just Like gesture. “AMERICAN BANDS are quite open
Glass’. The single is set to be released ‘Versaeremerge are a real inspiration to about using songwriters; it seems to be quite
amoungst the current mire of underground us. It’s amazing how a bunch of teenagers normal, says Max. “I sit up all night with my
dirge currently overflowing our musical from the middle of nowhere have become guitar, jamming. Then you can tell when
baths. an international success. This just proves something’s good because it sticks. You just
By their own admission, 2009 was a that if you have the talent and really work have to keep working at it.”
‘whirlwind’ year; a year which started for for it then you can achieve anything. We’ve And work at it they did. They would
the band with drawnout nights jamming in already achieved so much more than we record in Outhouse Studios with John
drummer Adam Wood’s garage, located in ever dreamed, but we hope this is only the Miitchell and Matt O’Grady each day for
a town in the outskirts of Northamptonshire, beginning’. seven weeks and as Sophie puts it, “we
then hitting the road supporting Pendulum spent so much time there that we lived and
and Chase And Status, and ending with the ALTHOUGH THE band has seen breathed this album”.
sexlet, completed by vocalist Sophie Draper, nothing but success throughout the past For the singer, that may have been
guitarists Jake Taylor and Max Ingelido, year, it is soon discovered that it hasn’t been because she wanted to keep her mind off
bassist Blake Ambrose and Fraser Rene so easy for Sophie. “How honest do you something else.
on synth, beating out the likes of Young want us to be?” she asks, unprompted, as Sophie says her relationship with her
Guns and YouMeAtSix to be heralded as she and the rest of Vice By Nevada gather boyfriend had been slipping away for a
undergrounds Best New Band in the 2009 around in the back of their tour coach after while. Increasingly, as she was away on
DROWNED INSOUND Reader’s Poll. In the gig. tour he remained in the pair’s hometown,
the past twelve months they’ve toured with She’s told us that it would be nice if she they had been losing sight of why they were
Enter Shikari, The Blackout, Fightstar and could be very honest. That is, after all, the together at all. “We got to the point where
Dead Swans and sold out five pressings point of interviewing her. “Okay,” she replies, we were two different people. It was just
(5,000 copies) of ‘Just Like Glass’. “I’ll be very honest. I can’t vouch for the rest done”.
So far so good? ‘2009 was a great year of the guys but I’ll be honest”. So she set about re-writing all of the lyrics
for us. We achieved so much. Everything There is something about her concern she had penned for the album. Gone were
that we hoped would happen has pretty that makes you wonder both why she’s the songs about touring and the thrills of life
much come true’. And the start of the new worried and just what she’s got to be so on the road, replaced by tales of jealousy,
year has seen even more success for honest about. anger and hurt.
the band. Halfway through their sellout Over the course of the next hour, it
headlining tour, Vice By Nevada receive emerges that the answer to the last quesion THE IRONY is that, with the album
news that their album What Happens Behind at least, is much. For the past year has been recorded and the lyrics set in vinyl, Sophie
Closed Doors, released in December, one of stress, worry and heartache for the and her boyfriend sorted things out. “We
reached number 1 in the UK charts, and young singer in particular, much of it caused realised things are about compromise and
even number 7 in the USA. by the danger of having high expectations. trust”, she says. She doesn’t, however,
‘The album does not only contain a fistful Because it’s about pressure that Sophie regret the breakup. In fact, you sense, she’s
of explosive hits for our fans to listen to: it is feels she ought to be honest. It was secretely a little bit pleased about it, given
far more adventurous in it’s scope and vision pressure that forced her into panicky inertia how much inspiration it lent her.
than expected. It includes intelligent, liquid when trying to write the lyrics, melodies and And when they stand as the interview
forms of genre, a smash techno hit and hooks for the band’s new album. And it was ends, to nip out for a smoke and to rib
even some well seasoned dubstep treats. pressure that forced the rest of the band to Jake - who, it seems, is the band’s whipping
Of course, as well as the hardcore tracks for consider that, if they blow it now, then “the boy - there’s a spirit about them born from
our brutal fans!’ claims Blake. dream is out the window”, as Adam puts it. a positivity Sophie must have once thought
Alongside this backdrop of stress, lost.
DESPITE THIS huge amount of there was something else too for Sophie. “It’s because we’ve written the exact
success, it wasn’t all that long ago that Her relationship with her long-term boyfriend album we needed to persue our crazy
Sophie was firing off polite emails to wobbled then crashed around her. She dreams”, she says. “Right now, it’s an
bands herself, asking them the very same had prepared to go into the studio with exciting time”.
54 DROWNED INSOUND
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