Hi this is Luca from With Pride ,we are a mosh hardcore band from Amsterdam/Gouda.

In the first place we came out with the name My Pride but then we found out there was already a Canadian band with the same name. Then we thought about other names but one day we were having a conversation between us saying that we are a band with 4 members from 4 different countries and this was really special. It was great to be unified in music. ”What do we do we do it with pride” we said…and then we thought it was the perfect name for the band.

Well I must say a lot of energy and a lot of music made with the heart. We all had different bands before but we found the perfect spot in this band cause we are all true to ourselves and we all go in one direction. We express this in every song we make and during every show we play.

As I said before we all had different experiences in other bands, some of us also in quite professional ones so this helped us a lot in the way that we knew we didn’t had too much time to loose, we already knew what we needed to do even before the band was complete.

 

We can honestly say that we are surprised. I mean we are not the tightest band in the world, but in every show we have a great response from the crowd and not only in the moshpit. This is really important for us cause it means that the people received the vibes that we tried to transmit to them from the stage. We always try to make a unique show, the crowd and us….together. We need the connection with the kids.

Stef is a great friend and an awesome guitar player, and K-Again are writing the new album now so he is out of tours for quite sometime. We tried some songs with him just for fun and we saw that his guitar was adding a lot to our songs ,more power in the breakdowns, the possibility to harmonize a lot more and so on. So we asked him to help us. The week after he was in Holland to make a couple of warm up shows and the feeling was great…so the rest is history. But this won’t be the only experiment we will make. In fact for the Dutch shows Jurgen from  All Heads Rise is playing guitars with us (when he can of course) and he is also a great guy. For us the most important thing is the friendship in the band, we want to feel comfortable with the people we play with, this comes way before the technical skills. That’s why our official line up is for now still with 4 members.

Of course we can say that the experience of Pigo helped us a lot. Basically regarding the management of the band and the booking. But also his skills as singer helped us a lot in writing vocal lines and lyrics. And I think there’s a really nice interaction between Alma (the singer) and him; 2 heads are better than one when you compose music. And we are 4 heads.

Well ..I don’t know. Actually I don’t think so. The fact that the band is an “international band” is just a matter of facts. We consider ourselves a Dutch band cause we all live in Holland and we love to live in Holland, even if we don’t have a Dutch passport (not all of us at least) we really love to live in this country.

Pigo is born as a musician playing guitars. He made 2 albums before K-Again as guitar player and one as bass player. He just wanted to come back to his original instrument. I also think that a musician likes to express himself in different ways. Especially in the Hardcore scene it’s really easy to see members of the bands playing different instruments in different bands. I think it’s a natural process.

Pigo saw Alma in her previous band when he was on tour in Europe with K-Again and he was pretty impressed. So as long as he knew that she was available for new bands due to the split of her previous one, he really insisted to have her in the With Pride line up. We don’t make differences between girls and guys…music is music and musicians are musicians. It doesn’t matter if you are a boy or a girl and we think it’s really funny that some bands in the  metal scene decide to take a female musician to create more interest around themselves.

As I said before everything is normal for us. Of course when we are on tour we respect the privacy of each other if you know what I mean, but for the rest nothing special. We talk ,we eat, we sleep, we play, we travel together….we consider each other a sort of a small family. For me personally it’s like to have 2 other sisters and a brother.

Of course they can. But we are always really straight and clear regarding our music. We can’t really lie and this is what we do. You can call it honesty or stupidity it depends by the points of view but since now I  think it’s honesty. People want something new you are right, but we like what we do. Maybe in the future with the evolution of the band something will change, but we all grow up with this kind of music and we like to play this kind of music. Nothing more and nothing less.

Actually it’s a bit different. We don’t really know what will happen in the future or what we expect from the future. Our only goal is to play as much shows as we can because this is what we really like to do. Playing shows. Regarding the merchandise I must say that we focused on that just because we found out that is going really, really well. We started making 80 t-shirts and after our 1^st Italian tour they were already sold out. So we printed them again…again sold out. So we decided to release a CD (DIY) and after we printed it in August we already sold more than 100 copies only at the shows. So we decided to focus on the merchandise and we have a guy (a great guy) Simone that is taking care ONLY about our merchandise from the designs to the prints to the choice of the items to release. Thanks to him and to the Hardcore Italian shop Sunset Blvd Store ( www.sunsetblvdstore.com ) that sells our official merch online. We are now able to have our own van and to save money for the next album, and hopefully in a near future to save some little money for ourselves too. We are convinced that the merchandise is the real way to survive for the bands.

Yes it’s true we released Pride Honour Faith Destiny this August. I think people can expect a lot of violent mosh songs played with the heart from the first note to the last one. We decided to don’t make a lot of editing on this album, we wanted a rough album and our Italian producer Edge agreed with us on this point. Maybe it’s not the tightest album ever but when I listen to it I still think it recreates the ambient of our shows. This is the most important thing for us. Why should someone buy it? Honestly I don’t know but I hope that if someone wants to do it is because he saw us live and he had fun with us.

The Dutch scene is really good and competitive. There are a lot of great bands. But still the scene is too local. Bands has to stop bitching about each other and they have to start to cooperate and to respect each other because this is what hardcore is all about. Stay true and believe in what you are doing…forever!!! Thank guys for the space you gave us, Metalrage rocks!!!!