Detroit once had a reputation for churning out heavy rock bands, including some of the first—the MC5—to the most extreme—The Black Dahlia Murder. The Motor City's newest heavy metal export, is Battlecross; four instrumental virtuosos and one screamer, who are finishing up a year of intense touring behind their first album, Pursuit of Honor. Battlecross will play Frankie's Inner-city this Saturday, December 8.
This summer, Battlecross opened the Trespass America tour, a big package bill to support Five Finger Death Punch, who already receive heavy radio rotation. The choice seemed counterintuitive at the time—Battlecross play faster than most radio-friendly metal bands, and only use screaming vocals. “There's a gap in heaviness between Five Finger Death Punch and us. They wanted to push us with the hardcore death metal crowd, and then Velda [Garcia, band manager] really pushed it as a great opportunity,” said Hiran Deraniyagla, guitarist and co-founder of Battlecross. The band's fanbase grew the most during and after that tour. “When you look at the analytics of our fans, our Facebook likes, we found out the majority of our audience came from Trespass America. It opened so many doors for us.”
Battlecross see the small tour coming through Toledo as a litmus test for how loyal the fans they acquired this summer actually are. They're swinging through the midwest, hitting small towns like Peoria, Illinois; only going as far west as Des Moines and as east as Richmond, playing the same intimate clubs Battlecross has played for the last decade before their album release.
Deraniyagla founded Battlecross with his childhood friend, Tony Asta. The two bonded over a mutual love of classic heavy metal like Metallica and Testament, and learned guitar from the same teacher in middle school, hence the tight twin-guitar solos that typify Battlecross's music. Deraniyagla still takes classical guitar lessons from the same man. The duo's fretboard pyrotechnics caused some skepticism about how popular Battlecross would be on Trespass America. “We definitely straddle the two sides, but there is a side of us that seems more mainstream because don't go a million miles a minute constantly, and we don't do technical stuff all the time—there's a songwriting aspect.” Fortunately for their bandmates, Deraniyagla and Asta would rather be catchy than shred. “We play songs that are fun but are also a challenge. We push ourselves as musicians, but we don't like to show off. Who cares other than the musician? The average music fan doesn’t care that you can sweep and tap for two minutes.
“Even in the early stages Tony was the driving force behind the band.” admitted Deraniyagla. “Whenever someone missed practice he got very upset, he would be very militant. So he whipped the rest of us into shape. Missing practice was like missing work.” The two were so determined to play their own music live that Battlecross played its first show without a drummer, at a country bar. “We showed up and said 'you know we're metal right?' she [the promoter] didn't have any idea what to do.”
According to Deraniyagla, the band's newfound success after ten years of slogging through the local metal circuit springs entirely from their work ethic—he claims to have only ever cancelled one show. The band's rust belt identity shows in their promotions and their music: the band is labeled “blue-collar thrash” in press releases, and their lyrics focus on the value of determination and perseverance, as opposed to the overt violence of many metal groups. A patriotic thread runs through all of The Pursuit of Honor—the video for its lead single, “Push Pull Destroy,” was shot at the historic Yankee Air Museum, and features WWII aircraft. “There's this black cloud over Detroit, over Michigan. Nobody expects anything good to come out of it,” Deraniyagla said, “Instead of crying and complaining, we're trying to make our point by doing our thing. We're showing people that there are good people from here, and there is such a thing as character and a good quality to people that will give you something to show for it.”
After this tour finishes, the Battlecross camp will go silent for a while, as the band writes and records the followup to Pursuit of Honor. “ We're planning on hitting the studio before 2013. We want a record out by summertime.” The wait may stretch out, thanks to the same work ethic and perfectionism that served Battlecross so well in 2012. “We're very picky. I hate to write like 20 and then pick ten from that; I like to focus. We tend to write our songs one by one. Some of these songs are a bit old—one was almost ready for Push Pull Destroy but just wasn't cooked yet.” Deraniyagla also said he'd prefer a shorter, tighter album as opposed to a longer one with sloppy music.
