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“Growing up I didn’t listen to any metal music. I had very conservative Christian parents,” APATE’s clean singer Caleb Patch says.
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It’s a memory shared by the APATE’s lead vocalist Zakk Ludwig who chimes in (through his laughter), “I remember getting into Caleb’s mum’s car and every time there would be Christian music playing.”
For most of us, we found metal through a sibling or a skate movie soundtrack. For Caleb, he found it through Zakk.
“I don’t think I’d be able to write how I write now if it wasn’t for the music Zakk introduced me to when we were 16,” says Caleb. “When I met Zakk I’d literally just started dabbling into metal and trying to write metal songs. At the time Parkway Drive had become my favourite band, but Zakk had already grown up listening to all those bands as his parents were into heavier music.”
As so many have already discovered, finding a good metal vocalist can often be a seemingly impossible task, so when Caleb met Zakk at a 16th birthday party in 2013, it seems the group’s later trajectory started to take form.
“Someone was playing some good music so I was just standing by the speaker the whole night,” laughs Zakk.
“Caleb came over and started chatting to me. I told him that I screamed a little bit with a band I jammed with at school and it kind of went from there.”
“In the lead up to this birthday I had been told by kids at my school that Zakk was a good screamer who did vocals for a band at the school directly opposite mine. We’d just started APATE and had a few members but people were constantly leaving because they weren’t sure how committed they were to being in a band so when I met Zakk it all came together.” affirms Caleb, the group’s guitarist who also doubles up as a second vocalist.
“At that time [2013], Northlane were all the rage as they had just started bringing in that cosmos inspired djent sound which we just thought, ‘fuck thats crazy.’ Bands like Prepared Like A Bride had just started incorporating that sound as well so it felt like that was the next movement after the whole Parkway inspired metalcore sound,” says Zakk.
“We were young kids who had no idea what we were doing,” adds Caleb.
“When you’re a young band you kind of end up blatantly ripping off your influences. So we got absolutely slammed for our first music video, because we were so clearly trying to be Sworn In and everyone was like ‘yeah guys, you can’t do that. For Spit You Out we were really trying to find our sound. We were experimenting a lot, which is why every song on that EP is so different from one another. It helped us find the direction we did want to head in, which is where Rage came from.”
We were young kids who had no idea what we were doing.
[ Caleb Patch ]
In reference to Rage, Caleb is speaking about the groups second EP, which was recently released under the revered Human Warfare record label owned by Thy Art is Murder’s Andy Marsh.
Turning to more of a 90s inspired sound, Caleb spoke on how Rage differs from the group’s previous release, Spit You Out.
“Every song you release, you also realise how you’d do it differently,” Zakk says. “It’s just the natural learning curve of releasing music. For Rage we did reflect on a lot of the 90’s industrial nu metal sound, which was a lot of fun to incorporate whilst still trying to make it different.”
“The record is meant to be an experience,” says Caleb. “It starts hard at the gates and then lulls into a much more reflective and quiet middle section and lifts back into an angry heavy section at the end. The cycles of grief that we go through is largely the overall theme of the EP; mainly how we go through trauma and then come out of it with a much more reflective and self-growing moment.
“Although we are talking about our personal experiences, I would want anyone who is listening to find their own ways that it resonates with them. If people can relate their own experiences to the words that Zakk and I wrote, and our words can help that one person then that is enough for me.”
With Rage seeing release late last week, it seems Apate is not taking a moment to relax and reflect on their creation. Instead, the group is already hard at work one some new demos.
At this point no one knows what the demos may be for, but hopes are high for a full length album and nationwide tour once restrictions ease; it seems there is a lot to look forward to.
Purchase and stream APATE’s Rage here.
APATE are playing Halloween Hysteria 2021 with Spiderbait, Mammal, CLOWNS, King Parrot, Gravemind, Stepson, RedHook, To The Grave and many more on Saturday 23rd October, tickets available here.
