Interview with Cascade Effect
One of the most exciting and surprisingly new bands from the United States will cross the Atlantic to deliver a great performance at Triple Threat Metal Fest in 2027.
It will be their first time playing in the Netherlands and so we wanted to know more about the band, their history and what we can expect from them leading up to the festival.
We sat down with Dustin, Seth, Bobby, Shaun and Alec and had a good chat about all things Cascade Effect!
When did the band form?
(Dustin): It was in 2023.
That's not that long ago actually, very impressive how you've played Wacken (Open Air) already!
(Dustin): Yeah, that was our first year as a band! We had our debut show in October and then we played Wacken about 9 months later, I think that's when we won the battle. The whole first year of our existence was about the metal battles and getting to play Wacken.
Your website mentions that the reason for your bands name was a ''cascading effect'' of events. What brought you guys together exactly?
(Dustin): So Seth, our drummer, and I were in a band together for the last 17 years and around the time things started to fall apart in that band, every other member of what is now Cascade Effect was sorta going through the same thing at the same time. What we had going on individually led us to form a band together and we immediately got some momentum and everything made sense. It was a very natural way of coming together and everything falling into place.
You said you were in a band together with Seth for 17 years. Have you always been serious about making music or did is start as more of a hobby?
(Dustin): I mean we started when we were like 5 or 6 years old. His parents were in a band, my mom was a guitar player and singer and so we started writing songs together when we were little kids. So definitely ever since our youth we wanted to be in a band and do this thing. I don't know about the other guys?
(Bobby): Oh yeah!
(Alec): Yeah I think all of us, over the course of many many years, have played in cover bands and tribute bands and have done original projects and we all know how difficult it is to find the right people with the right work ethic and mindset and goals to take a band from being a local band to make the attempt to start levelling the band up. We are realistic and know it takes time and dedication. We have only been together for 3 years but like Dustin mentioned, in that time we have had our debut show, won the metal battle and played Wacken Open Air and that took most of our first year. Playing that show was a bucket list, dream-come-true type of thing, it was unbelievable! Since then we have focused on what comes next and so we make plans and move forward.
So what would be that next step for you guys to move forward?
(Alec): Do it again!
(Dustin): Yeah, one of the first things we thought was that we should get back out here and do more of this. Not just Wacken but in general get back to Europe and play more festivals because it was amazing for us!
Very unoriginal question but which artists/types of music inspire you most?
(Dustin): Sure, anytime this gets asked the first bands that come to mind would be In Flames, Korn, Meshuggah, Gojira, DevilDriver, Whitechapel, Fit For An Autopsy like all those styles mixed together.
Are you guys quite aligned musically or does everyone have vastly different influences and preferences? And how does this effect your writing?
(Alec): I don't think we've had any issues, honestly. I mean we all come from a bit of a different background, for instance Bobby and I are like the elders of the band and growing up in the 80's we have a lot of those influences. But there has been so much new music since then and it's only gotten better and better in my opinion and so Bobby and I don't limit ourselves to just 80's music. So a few of us typically write the songs but ultimately individually we'll come in and go ''here's a song'' and then we just massage that and maybe change the arrangement but I don't recall any time we've had any major issues due to our musical backgrounds. I think generally it helps the process and moves us along quicker. It's been a bit of an easy ride, honestly.
(Dustin): Creatively it's been easygoing and I think we all knew the assignment and we all kinda have similar likes and are openminded with ideas so it's always just been fun.
(Shaun): Exactly, collaborating with 5 individuals from different places makes it so much more unique and opens up more ideas that one person may not even think of cause they're coming from a different angle or whatever. It just all comes together and is super fun to work that way, man. I remember back in the day, first band, you know we're 16 or 12 or whatever and we're like ''no it's gotta be this way, you can't change this song, this is my song'' and this is not even like that haha. This is like an open drawing board for the best possible outcome.
(Alec): Yeah, we came together later in life and so we don't have any time to fuck around basically. It's really just like I mentioned earlier, when somebody comes with a song 9 times out of 10 it's a complete song that we are able to work with.
This question is for Alec and Shaun, when writing songs do you guys stick to being the rhythm and lead guitarists or do you switch it up and are these more like shared duties?
(Alec): Yeah we enjoy playing off each other. Regardless of who wrote the song, we don't argue over who gets to play a solo or anything. It's a band, there's 5 of us and we all have the opportunity to get the spotlight in a live situation. Some songs don't even have solos, in some songs it's Shaun and in some songs it's me and there's one song where we trade off solos you know, cause I've always loved the Iron Maiden thing back in the day. For instance in our song ''Suffering In Silence'' I wrote a solo with harmonizing parts, it just makes it more fun and interesting.
(Shaun): The funny thing about that solo is that for Wacken I hadn't done it live yet. I only worked on it at home and we've practiced it a few times so I never even played that solo live so that was a shaky knee moment for me! But yeah, Alec and I are really hungry for solos, we love that. We want harmonies and we want that epic moment where it breaks out in the harmony part. People have also told us they love that stuff like after shows they'll come up to us and tell us they loved the harmonizing parts in the solo.
Speaking of fans, what's your fanbase like? Is it mostly 80's guys or do you find there's more of a mix going on?
(Dustin): I was just talking about that last night with my wife, we see that as time goes on that our fanbase spans age ranges.
(Bobby): It's ageless.
(Dustin): It feels ageless cause when we started there was more of an older crowd but then we started playing at different venues and we noticed that the younger crowd liked it too. There's like a generational crossover thing going on there.
A question for Bobby, have you always been a bass player or did you start out as a guitarist?
(Bobby): No, I never started as a guitarist, I have always been a bass player. I love locking in with Seth and being that foundation for Shaun and Alec.
How about Shaun and Alec, did you guys ever start as bass players or have you always been guitarists?
(Alec): Yeah I've always been a guitarist. My first love was Ace Frehley from KISS so immediately I was like ''I need to play the guitar''. I can play the bass but I would never call myself a bass player. I would play the bass like a guitar player would play the bass haha.
(Shaun): Same here, I was handed a guitar and Iron Maiden's ''Seventh Son of a Seventh Son'' album and that was the end of that. Or rather the beginning of that!
Alec, you mentioned Ace Frehley. Do you all have one specific artist you've looked up or you take inspiration from?
(Seth): Joey Jordison, I think, he's a big one for me. He was amazing.
(Shaun): Early on I was really into Iron Maiden, Dave Murray and Adrian Smith were the reason I got into harmonizing as well. After that it was like Kirk Hammett and Dave Mustaine and the guys from Sepultura and Slayer. I had never seen anything like those guitar players.
(Bobby): I think growing up it's gonna be super old school players, obviously. Rudy Sarzo, Billy Sheehan, Gene Simmons, you know. But now playing in this band, I like to adapt and learn different things so I listen to some of the younger guys like Jacob Umansky or Jared (Smith) from Archspire.
(Dustin): At a young age, before high school, I had Black Sabbath's ''Paranoid'' record and I would listen to it over and over again. I loved Ozzy from a very young age. I just like singers with a unique voice where you can immediately tell who they are. Ozzy sounded like otherworldly to me at the time and I loved it. When I got to high school I got into Korn and Jonathan Davis became that same thing to me but heavier.
Of the songs you have released so far, ''Dirge'', ''Fear Romancer'' and ''Suffering In Silence'' have pretty clear and relatable themes. ''God Particle'', however, seems to have more of an abstract concept going on. Could you explain where that song came from?
(Dustin): Yeah, the theme around that song came to me a long time ago when they started messing with the Hadron collider at CERN. So it was kinda inspired by that when they discovered the god particle, the Higgs-Boson, I always thought ''man we shouldn't be messing with this'' so the song is written from the perspective of the god particle basically saying ''beware of toying with this or I'll destroy everything'' or whatever. That's kinda where that came from.
(Alec): It came from a very conCERNed place.
Is there an album in the works?
(Dustin): Yeah, I am very happy to give you the story on that! Our first album is finally complete and is on a schedule to be released. We'll have some singles come out this year and we'll drop the album in January next year.
Do you have a name for the album yet?
(Dustin): It's gonna be called ''The Weight of Nothingness''
Is it going to be similar in style to what you have so far or will it go a different direction musically?
(Dustin): There's a pretty good range of styles throughout these songs but they have common nuances that make you recognize a band but there are a lot of different dynamics. Some are fast and crazy with some Meshuggah type stuff and others have like a clean part in them. There's a good range going on.
Assuming there will be some solos in there as well for Alec and Shaun?
(Shaun): You got that right!
(Dustin): Absolutely!
How about a drum solo for Seth?
(Shaun): We're working on that!
(Seth): Usually we'll throw like one bar of drum solo in there like a quick fill.
(Alec): You know, I don't know if we could do this without Seth, to be honest with you. I've had many comments about Seth because if you watch him playing drums it looks like he puts 0 effort into it but then you hear what he's playing and you're like ''wow is this guy a fuckin' robot?''
(Seth): I've been putting in more effort to make it look like I'm putting in more effort. I don't know, I do get into the music while I'm playing it. It's just more mentally but looking at me you'd think I was bored.
(Bobby): Seth is a really good drummer, though. Sometimes it looks like his body is completely still but he'll being doing 200bpm and you're like ''is he even sweating?''!
So have you always played drums?
(Seth): It started early for me, yeah, my parents would rehearse at our house and I could hear it through the walls at night as I'm going to bed. Growing up like that I got really into it and I would go and play on the instruments. Dustin and I blossomed musically in those days, I played drums all throughout high school and after high school we started playing rock and metal.
(Alec): Things are becoming more clear to me now as to why Seth looks the way he does while playing. He literally fell asleep to the drums in his walls so he associates drums with going to bed!
(Seth): It's like I get so comfortable.
On your website it says that the last time you crossed the ocean it changed everything for you. In what way did playing Wacken have an effect on you as a band or personally?
(Dustin): What I would say is that it doesn't mean stuff will automatically happen but if you stay on top of it and reach out to people, that helps. People knew us from playing Wacken and so we managed to open for Escape the Fate and a couple of other bigger bands. So it put our name on a map where people recognized the name from a video or whatever. I think that's probably the most meaningful change.
(Alec): It definitely opened some doors for us which is really cool. But Dustin is right, it was amazing to go through the process for Wacken but we only got to Wacken by going through all these metal battles. That whole year was preparation for Wacken. But even if you win, it doesn't mean anything (if you don't follow through).