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Every Monday we will be bringing you interviews with unsigned UK or Ireland artists for Independent Music Monday. Recently we caught up with unsigned Belfast band Vale to find out more…

Who is in the band, how did you meet, where are you from and how did you come up with the band name?
The band consists of drums by Taylor Walker, bass/backing vocals by Dylan Esdale, Lead guitar by Brandon Esdale, rhythm guitar/backing vocals by Adam Hendry, fronted by lead singer Luke Baxter. The band met through school and having jam sessions during lunch time with each other, before even knowing how to play our instruments we started a band out of mutual passion to create our own sound. The band began practicing outside of school in a small kitchen in the Woodvale area of Belfast, this was before drummer Taylor or guitarist Adam had joined. After overcoming some horrific names, the band landed with Vale, taken from the name of where the band was formed.

Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
Our musical influences currently would have to be bands such as The Smiths, Queen, Nirvana, Arctic Monkeys, Rex Orange County, The Strokes, The Beatles and David Bowie. Growing up it would have been bands such as Motley Crue, Metallica, Pierce The Veil, Asking Alexandria, Bring Me the Horizon and few if the bands we are still influenced by today.

How would you describe your sound?
Our sound can vary depending on the experiences had by ourselves during the writing stages, different songs have different moods which gives them different sounds. For example, we have heavy fast pace songs as well as slow ballads. To narrow us down into one genre is quite difficult but we are mostly considered as post indie alternative.

What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
Our latest release was an upbeat fast pace song called Virtual Reality. The song was influenced by massive anti-social exclusion and online media involvement, people are living their life in a pathetic fantasy online and would much rather live in a “virtual reality” rather than a harsh reality.

What’s your local music scene like?
The local music scene within Belfast is changing at the minute, it seems to be growing as more and more bands are establishing. The venues are great, and the support is often great, I have confidence that the music scene will be one to love soon enough!

What do you have planned for the next 12 months? Any albums or festivals?
For the upcoming 12 months Vale plan on releasing more singles, playing as many gigs as possible hopefully supporting some big names within the music community and hopefully releasing a debut EP.

Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
Even looking at our influences you can see we all would want to have different collaborations but perhaps the one we would strive for more if he was living would be Freddie Mercury, as that’s impossible we would love to play with Johnny Marr or Alex Turner as they are both people who propelled the style of music we strive to create into the public interest.

Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
Funny stories from our live performances often arise from playing small stages, our front man likes to move about a good bit so there have been incidents when he’s ended up landing on top of our drummer Taylor because of his energy. At other times we’ve had our drummer disappear mid set from behind his kit due to falling backwards off the drum riser.

What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
I feel that one thing your readers should know is that we are a Belfast band but we want to break out of that and play gigs all across the UK, the way we see it is we love having our core fan base at our gigs but even better would be 100 new people who have never heard us and are ready to be surprised with our raw energy and live performances.

UPDATE: On 6th April 2021, Vale announced that they had changed their name to Casual Riots. You can find out more via Apple Music, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, TikTok, Twitter or YouTube.