If I think about it honestly, although the band only started in earnest a couple years back, truly Past The Fall began as something as simple and pure as a friendship made over ten years ago.

Leaving school at 17 felt like the easiest descision I’d made for a long time, much to the alarm of my parents that felt I was wasting my life, but then again I was armed with an unshakeable assumption (or rampant ego perhaps?) that I would be the prodigal embodiment of the next wave of the music I loved and felt in my heart. A music style that had transformed my life, shown me, listened to me, about the ever growing cacophony of hypocrisy and futility surrounding me growing up in a small backwater town. So what was this music you ask? namely- Heavy Metal.

To say metalheads were in a minority back home when I was a teenager would be the understatement of the year, in fact I think you could count us on the fingers of one hand! Undeterred this certainly made forming a band and making music a simple process- ‘you play drums?…you’ve got the job!’ So consider my luck after ditching school when who would call me up? only who in my opinion is the greatest guitarist I’d ever heard (well we’ll leave Dimebag out of it for now…) and nonchalantly ask- ‘you sing yeah? I need a singer- how bout we make a band?’ Done. That man was Thomas Cope.

Strangely Past The Fall didn’t begin there, other opportunities came and we joined other bands, touring and all the other pleasures of a teenage rampage for both of us got in the way of putting something together, and plus I had that ego (I mean unshakable assumption) to work off and forge into something infinitely more useful- respect! Both of us kept busy, and to this day I still say the only way I have learnt anything has been to fail at it completely first! I still remember trying to get my first show by marching to every venue in the nearest city and demanding they put us on!

That’s not to say that time was wasted though, between us we played every toilet imaginable, lost all the little money we had, slept rough in rehearsal rooms, drank cheap beer, made great friends, lost great girls and learnt it the hard way, and you know what? We loved every minute of it. Don’t get me wrong theres no magic carpet ride, and I’m certainly no prince and (as a wise and much missed man said once) theres so much bullshit in the music industry you’d need a jcb to shift it, but it leaves a huge whole in my heart if I think of a life where I can’t make, share, and travel with something bigger than me- MUSIC.

So there you have it its ‘Rock n roll damnation’ for me, no choice I’m afraid, and to paraphrase Bill Hicks- ‘gimme the satan worshipping family around the block with all the good albums any day of the week’!
3 years ago me and Tom hooked up again a little older, (maybe not much wiser!) but also changed- I for one had added bass to my arsenal and laid the guitar down, and we jammed for nothing but the pure intent of what were about and it floored us, no ifs, no buts, this was the band! Hey presto PAST THE FALL!

Fast Forward 2 years, the EP, the album, the touring, England, Europe, South America, USA, Living after midnight with ‘The Ripper’ thrashing the road with Hirax, bumping heads with Lich King- it still feels as fresh and as right as the day I started down the rabbit hole.

But in the end its not just the mileage or the success that makes a band for us, theres always gonna be older bands and richer bands, and there always has been- its knowing your doing something that comes from the gut and isn’t afraid to talk about the worlds we live in- good and bad. Standing up for the decisions we make and taking them with integrity and responsibility, just like the bands I grew up listning too, hearing a truth and intensity beyond a plastic wrapper of smoke and mirrors and cookie cutter sounds, a reality. There is no right or wrong way to make music that’s the beauty of it but for us without truth theres no beauty and there in lies the rub, what’s our truth in life?

But perhaps even more importantly than all of that, it’s YOU, the listener, that makes all of it matter. Yeah it may sound corny but that is the bottom line- does a band with no listeners make any sound? (Yeah I just totally Chinese proverbed ya! :-P)

I look forward to many more sometimes hard, sometimes beautiful, but always worth while experiences along this musical journey. Here’s to hoping that you are part of that journey.

If you’d like to hear our latest milestone of that journey, click hear to listen to our Debut Album, From Insanity’s Ruin’.

Thank you for being a listener and for making it all matter.