INTRODUCING: Pravitas
The tech metal scene has flourished over the last decade with visionaries such as PERIPHERY, TESSERACT and MONUMENTS injecting their own creative spin on the genre established by giants such as MESHUGGAH, CYNIC and ATHEIST. UK-based quintet PRAVITAS have been causing quite a stir in the underground scene since their arrival back in 2014 but they have, by their own admission, let their performances do the talking rather than pushing the social media promotion side of things. Whilst this has allowed them to steadily build their reputation as an impressively tight live band they have realised in this current digital age that it has become a significant part of the process.
“We’ve played hundreds of gigs and that’s no exaggeration. There was a point where we were playing multiple gigs a week,” explains guitarist Joseph Taylor. “We were more focused on being musicians, rehearsing, practising and playing but it has become more apparent that there is a big shift in bands having an online presence now.”
“We’ve not done a lot of promotion over the years, we’ve kind of relied on just playing live shows to help spread the word and it has worked really well but I feel like we’re at the point now where we need to focus on our social media promotion,” admits guitarist Richard Barnes. “We always get positive feedback but we’re bad at telling enough people. We are still trying to get our heads around it all and make some shiny new videos.”
After a few shifts in lineup, PRAVITAS are entering an exciting new chapter with the recruitment of new vocalist Chris Sellers. “We’ve all been good mates for quite a while. Me, Joe and Conor all met at Leeds College of Music,” informs Rich. “Me and Joe started jamming and writing demos together with our original drummer. Our previous vocalist Jack left the band for personal reasons, there was no bad blood. We used to live with Chris at one point and he is in another band called AFTER THE ABDUCTION, so we knew what he could do and it seemed like a no-brainer to get him on board. It took a lot of the stress out of finding someone and wondering whether we would gel and get along.”
“I actually played bass for PRAVITAS at a few shows back in 2016 so it was great to be able to re-join the band further down the line,” adds Chris.
The impending release of their debut full-length album The Parasitic Divine is just over the horizon and as well as showing the progression in their songwriting abilities through years of grinding around the circuit, it is also a nod to the journey they have experienced thus far. “Some songs are completely new and some of the songs have been written for a long time, back to when we first met,” discusses Rich. “There is a song called The Crustacean which was written as far back as 2014 and was previously released on an EP but we felt we could do it more justice with better production. The album is kind of an anthology of sorts where we have modernised some of our older catalogue and we wanted Chris to put his stamp on them. It was produced by our friend Sam Butterfield at Pitch Black Audio. I like to dabble in mixing but he’s on a completely different level. He’s a wizard.”
“When we were talking about making the album an anthology piece it was quite difficult to whittle the list down of what we wanted to include,” adds bassist Conor Devlin. “We had around an eleven year period’s worth of tracks to choose from and we were conscious that we didn’t want to recycle too much as we want to show our evolution as a band as well.”
“When we’re writing songs we like to have a lot of guitar solos in them,” states Joe. “Me and Rich are really influenced by shred guitarists like YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, JEFF LOOMIS and JOE SATRIANI which also gives our music a bit of an old school vibe as well.”
The dedication to their craft has not gone unnoticed, being rewarded with multiple festival appearances which has only fuelled that fire further. “We’ve played Tech-Fest a few times, as PRAVITAS and as our MESHUGGAH cover band MILK AND TWO ‘SHUGGAH’S where we played the main stage, that was huge,” smiles Rich. “Our previous drummer Don left the band around 2018 so we were searching for a replacement and we have been friends with Les (Harrison) for a long time who is an insane drummer. He comes from more of a jazz background but is really into tech-death. He bailed us out at a really critical time as we were due to play Tech-Fest and he came in as a bit of an emergency situation and learned some of our songs in a matter of days. That was his first show he played with us, the rest is history! We also won Metal 2 The Masses in 2019 and played at Bloodstock. Hearing our single playing on the big screens walking around which was so surreal. I’m also very proud of us for getting this album out too as it’s a lot of hard work getting everything in order and getting the arrangements right. There are so many great bands out there that we want to make sure that we stood out from the crowd. Our first single Defragment has done really well. We got a few thousand views on our video within the first week and I know we’re not pulling huge numbers like METALLICA or anything but for us it shows we’re growing and we’re really happy about that. We’ve also released Monolith which shows the groovier side to our sound as opposed to the crazy, technical, note-filled music most people probably know us for.”
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