Four Trips Ahead is a band from New York City. Their latest full-length album is called “...And The Fire Within”. This album was produced by lead vocalist Peter Wilson, and the tracks were mixed by Johnny Nice (Amy Lee, Joel Hoekstra, Rihanna) and Grammy and Emmy award-winning engineer Nick Cipriano (Dream Theater, Twisted Sister, Erasure, Donald Fagen) at Spin Recording Studios and mastered by notorious mastering engineer Roger Lian (Muse, Rush, Slayer, Pantera, Coheed and Cambria). About their newest album, Good Times Magazine said that Four Trips Ahead is “The Best of ReverbNation: Long Island and New York.” Their album “...And The Fire Within” has been successful on the radio, charting for 8 consecutive weeks in Metal Contraband’s National Top 50 Radio Charts, with its highest placement at #34 garnering a heavy rotation on American college, commercial and specialty Hard Rock and Metal radio formats.
“Bring Me Down” is a new single released by Four Trips Ahead. This band’s sinister sound and rock and roll attitude is obvious from the get go. The groove that opens the song is reminiscent of hard rock bands from years past, but with a modern twist. The vocals are guttural, growling, and have the perfect timbre for hard rock. The groove, while simple in nature, is the perfect backdrop to all the verses. The guitar work that breaks up the song in the middle is precise and has that classic face-melting quality that everyone knows and loves. It is clear from this song that Four Trips Ahead is a seasoned band with a well-established sound and method. This single stands up with some of the best the hard rock genre has to offer, and we highly recommend you give “Bring Me Down” a listen today!
Listen to "Bring Me Down" here and get to know more about Four Trips Ahead below!
Thanks for catching up with us! Being from New York City, how would you describe the rock music scene there? Has it changed a lot recently?
The explosive NYC rock music scene that we came up in is not really present anymore. There are less places to play in the five boroughs and most promoters and venues expect bands to do virtually all of the work rather than trying to help cultivate original artists and music scenes. More directly, NYC real estate has killed music and art spaces. New York still boasts some of the most innovative and creative artists in the world. And we love performing in our hometown—it’s truly special. I just wish there was more support to help promote the local scene and build more shows where audiences were treated to several great bands and artists on one bill.
Who would you say are your biggest collective artistic influences?
This is a very hard response to give with our diverse tastes and backgrounds—Queen, David Bowie, The Wailers, Thin Lizzy, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, the Beatles, Nina Simone, Sly + the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, Bad Brains, King’s X, Tool, KISS, Van Halen, Metallica, Aerosmith, Faith No More, Rush, Soundgarden, Stevie Wonder, Living Colour, Peter Gabriel, NIN, Seal, Marillion, STP, Kate Bush, Meshuggah, Steel Pulse and Prince as well as a host of others.
What is your method like for writing? How does the music go from basic ideas to a fully- fledged song?
The chemistry in Four Trips Ahead is central to our writing. Generally, guitar and bass riffs, drum beats and vocal melodies are freely shared and we all vibe off what each other is playing. There’s a great deal of trust and openness when we write which I have grown to value deeply. Sometimes, choruses come first, other times it’s verses or bridges. Or sometimes, a wave of great pieces all come out almost at once which is a fully realized song. I usually have a lot of homework as I tend to overwrite lyrics and sing different configurations in rehearsals and during pre-production sessions. Eventually when tracking, I finally commit to stanzas that best capture the spirit and message of the song. We also use the live stage to try out new songs to get the audience reactions from our new material before we commit music to tape so to speak. And during basic tracking, we play live together as we do at our rehearsal space to capture the same magic vibe that came when writing something new that we are excited about.
You definitely nailed the hard rock sound. Is this something that has always come naturally by the band or did you spend lots of time refining it?
Hard rock and metal music are in our individual and collective DNA. I think it’s our natural approach to what we write and how we play in FTA. Through rehearsals, writing sessions, recording, and live shows as well as spending time together, we have honed the big FTA sound, although I think you can hear lots of other influences within our music other than just hard rock. All good music that is soulful and sincere has flashes of different musical genres.
What can we hope to see from Four Trips Ahead in the future?
Currently, we are smack in the middle of recording our new album at Spin Recording Studios in Long Island City. Other than some additional guitars and a few background vocals, we are nearly done with five new songs with the intention to release a single this fall. Once we confirm what will be our first single, we will shoot a video, hopefully something thematic as our new album is really shaping up to call for it. Continuing in heavy writing mode, we have the intention on solidifying and tracking five more songs in the coming months for a spring 2020 full album release. We also have some interesting things developing with regard to our last album, “…And The Fire Within,” that I can’t divulge just yet. Four Trips Ahead is booking a few shows in the summer and fall where we will debut lots of the new material in our sets. We are super excited about everyone finally hearing what we’ve been up to for the past few months.
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