College Times

Media Credit: Chuck Jackson

Evergreen Terrace seems to love inside jokes almost as much as playing music. The Florida-based metalcore band is named after the street the Simpson family lives on in “The Simpsons.” Their song titles reference author Chuck Palahniuk, “The Big Lebowski,” MC Hammer, “Family Guy” and other movies, books, bands and TV shows too numerous to list.

While Evergreen Terrace is serious about their music, they also clearly have a sense of humor, which became evident when we caught up with guitarist Josh James as he was driving to band practice recently.

College Times: From your name to your song titles to your penchant for cover songs, you guys seem obsessed with pop culture.

James: You know what’s funny? I never ever connected the band with pop culture. Then people started bringing it up a whole lot. Then I realized that I guess that it definitely is. The majority of us read a lot and the majority of us are really into watching movies and just seeing how things go as far as the entertainment business. It’s not like anyone’s obsessed with it, but it just ends up reflecting through the band, I guess… Some of us are pretty big nerds and we had an actual book club, so we’d read these books weekly. I think that influenced some of the lyric writing and some of the ideas behind Wolfbiker.

You guys are unique in that most metalcore bands do the scream/sing/scream thing on every song, but you guys actually go entire songs without any melodic vocals.

It’s funny, because a lot of people ask us if we have a certain formula on how to write the songs or how we do certain things. Really, it’s just like, we get into the practice room and if someone has a riff, we just go for it and we just end up seeing how it turns out. Every record that we’ve recorded, with the exception of maybe one or two songs, we have no idea what the vocals are gonna be like until we’re actually recording.

What do you think of labels like “screamo” and “metalcore”?

I think it’s kinda inevitable to be labeled something. I think the name “metalcore” just sounds ridiculous. With a band like Evergreen Terrace, (we have) so many different influences. We’re influenced a lot by playing various different styles of music, anywhere from a punk band like Propaghandi or Good Riddance to a hardcore band like Hatebreed and Trial and Boysetsfire to rock bands like Foo Fighters and U2 and Weezer. I know that we incorporate all those different styles of influences that we have, but if you really wanted to break it down, I would have no idea how to classify a majority of the bands that are out nowadays… I think a lot of bands, the label just doesn’t do them justice. I think a lot of bands do play outside of the box that the label puts them in.

So how would you describe your music to people who’ve never heard it?

Um, I’d probably just say it’s metalcore. (laughs)

Evergreen Terrace w/Underminded, Go Great Guns, The Shakedown, Brickhouse Theatre, 1 E. Jackson Street, Phoenix, 602.258.7888, April 19, 7 p.m., $10 adv, $12 dos

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