Dressed head to toe in black, Royal Ascent ooze every ounce of teen angst that you would expect from a young metalcore band.
Fronted by Marcus White-Bower alongside Ru Gilfillan, Lewis White-Bower and Will Blything, the band were formed in Worcester at Nunnery Wood High School in 2013 and have since been making a name for themselves locally by playing gigs in establishments like The Marrs Bar and the 02 Academy in Birmingham.
The boys are still young and have had many influences growing up, citing A day to Remember, The Devil Wears Prada and Eminem as their main inspirations when starting out.
“We grew up in different areas and all became friends towards the end of high school, so we have different stories from being young,” said Ru.
“But we all bonded over our love of the same music, obviously Lewis and Marcus are brothers so they have grown up together listening to the same punk music as their parents.
“This has given our music an eclectic feel as we really love to experiment with sound.”
“I want to tear my vocal cords”
The boys all studied music in school and sixth form, clearly a passion throughout their teenage years.
Marcus said: “I definitely couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.
“From a young age I looked at all these cool bands and thought that I want to tear my vocal cords in that way as well.”
Despite only having been together for a few years, the group have already managed to grow themselves a small but dedicated group of fans.
“They come out to our shows and give us really good energy when we are performing,” Marcus explained. “This is so important as it actually makes us want to continue and improve.”
Ru added: “It helps that we have played lots of local gigs with other bands who play similar music so all of our fans have kind of merged together.”
Royal Ascent have already played some small headline gigs alongside other local bands such a Kick the Clown and Burning down Alaska.
And the boys have already set their sights on a collaborative project with Michael B Jordan.
“I love that man,” Ru said. “I watched Black Panther yesterday and honestly he looks like he’d be sick on the drums.”
But drummer Lewis isn’t taking any offence at the prospect of losing his spot: “I’d happily let you guys kick me out if you could get him to replace me!”
Super talented
Although the band are growing they admit it isn’t plain sailing with half of their members still in education.
“It’s hard because Lew’s away at uni a lot of the time,” Will said. “We try and make it work but it’s hard for him to commit 100%.
“We are struggling because not many people are good enough to cover Lewis as he is genuinely super talented.”
But as an influx of angsty young bands have bloomed on the local scene, what really sets Royal Ascent apart? Is there any more room for unsigned local artists struggling to pave a place in the industry?
Ru said they were determined to make it work: “We give our all into every live performance, we want to grow and develop and we have so much passion.
“We know that this is a turbulent environment and we are prepared to take knockbacks and work our absolute balls off in order to make this work.”
Marcus added: “We would love to incorporate more EDM and experiment with new styles
“We just want to keep creating music that we love and are proud to put out.
“We are working on our first EP at the moment so we can’t wait to have that finally complete – it’s been a long time in the making.”
