Residing in Greenville, South Carolina, up-and-coming four-piece band Islander is already making waves in the hard rock scene.
The band consists of: guitarist Andrew Murphy, drummer Eric Frazier, vocalist Mikey Carvajal and bassist Chris Doot.
Islander released their debut album “Violence & Destruction” through Victory Records this past July. The album was recorded in Santa Ana, California in January of this year.
“When we went out to record we had one or two full songs,” said Doot. “We recorded with [producer] Cameron Webb…When we were trying to write the songs he just wanted us to be us. He didn’t influence any other way. It turned out how we would make it sound and I think it’s awesome. We all have so many different influences that I think you could tell with the album. It’s very diverse.”
For those that have yet to hear the band, they do have a unique sound, and are difficult to categorize into one genre of music.
“I would just say we sound like Islander,” said Doot. “I don’t really like saying we sound like other bands…We just want to sound like ourselves. There’s a lot of same sounding stuff out there right now in every genre, pretty much. We didn’t want to be put in a certain genre or label or anything like that. We just wanted to write stuff that we like to listen to and I think that’s what we did.”
Filling in on guest vocals on the song “Criminals” is the lead singer of P.O.D., Sonny Sandoval.
“Mikey grew up being a P.O.D. fan and he used to go to all P.O.D. shows that came around his area, or our area growing up,” said Doot. “He became a familiar face and then [Sandoval] became a friend of the band. Sonny’s been there from the beginning with us. He’s heard everything we’ve done. He was happy to help us out.”
Islander played this year’s summer metal tour, Mayhem Festival, with bands such as: Korn, Suicide Silence, Avenged Sevenfold, Cannibal Corpse, Trivium and more.
“Being the least metal band on the tour, we were kind of nervous about the reception from crowd and bands alike,” said Doot. “But the crowds seemed to take us in really well. The crowds grew as the tour went on for us. We released the record a week into the tour, so I think that helps out a lot.”
Even though the band was relatively new to some of their tourmates, they were received very positively.
“Other bands started coming up and watching us while we played which was so nice to see,” said Doot. “We had Korn up there, guys from Suicide Silence would come watch us. Just cool people on the tour that would come and watch us. It was awesome.”
Islander already achieved one of their goals that they put out for themselves as a band.
“When we started the band we wanted to tour with Korn and that was our ultimate goal and that happened,” said Doot.
The band is already slated to do two tours to round out the year. The first tour starts on Thursday, supporting Nonpoint, running until November 23. Five days later, the band will start their next tour, supporting Pop Evil.
“I’m really excited for both those tours,” said Doot. “There’s a lot of music on the Pop Evil tour. I’m really excited to meet new bands and see new bands I’ve never heard before. Nonpoint, we played a show with them and we played Louder Than Life [Festival] with them and they’re super nice guys. They’re extremely welcoming. They really enjoy us so I’m really excited to see them and hang out with them every night.”
Doot shed some light in on what one can expect from an Islander performance.
“We are a very energetic band,” said Doot. “We are much heavier than we are on the album. We don’t use tracks or stuff like that. We’re just straight up rock and roll…The thing that I’ve heard from people that see us live is, ‘Man, you guys are much heavier than we thought.’ I don’t like standing around. Mikey gets on top of the crowd a lot of times.”
Islander had a busy 2014, and even though it’s almost over, 2015 should be busy for the band.
“We’re just going to be touring like crazy,” said Doot. “There’s talks of a tour for January and February that I can’t mention, but if it happens it’s going to be huge. We’re just going to be busy hopefully hit up Europe and overseas.”
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