{"id":11134,"date":"2016-07-13T05:30:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T09:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=11134"},"modified":"2016-07-12T10:36:47","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T14:36:47","slug":"act-of-defiance-lives-up-to-its-pedigree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/13\/act-of-defiance-lives-up-to-its-pedigree\/","title":{"rendered":"Act of Defiance Lives Up to Its Pedigree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In their 30-plus years together, metal group <strong>Megadeth<\/strong> has seen eleven different musicians occupy the lead guitar spot. <strong>Chris Broderick<\/strong> \u2013 Megadeth&#8217;s lead guitarist for more than six years \u2013 announced his departure just before Thanksgiving 2014, citing \u201cartistic and musical differences.\u201d That same day, longtime Megadeth drummer <strong>Shawn Drover<\/strong> announced he too would be leaving \u201cto pursue [his] own musical interests,\u201d ending a decade-long membership in the group.<\/p>\n<p>But Broderick says the two announcements weren&#8217;t part of an orchestrated plan. Though he and Drover soon decided to start <strong>Act of Defiance<\/strong>, a new group of their own, that idea \u201ccame out of the taking Shawn and I were doing right after leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/act_of_definace.jpg\" alt=\"act_of_definace\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11135\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/act_of_definace.jpg 500w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/act_of_definace-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The longtime friends and musical comrades set their sights on creating something different from Megadeth, but as they began looking for players to round out the group, they intentionally didn&#8217;t define their goals beyond that. \u201cOur only criteria at the time was [to find] a singer who had character in his voice,\u201d Broderick says. \u201cOther than that, there was no exact direction. We were just looking for people with individuality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They found the person they needed in <strong>Henry Derek<\/strong>, former vocalist for <strong>Scar the Martyr<\/strong>. They also recruited <strong>Matt Bachand<\/strong>, former bassist in <strong>Shadows Fall<\/strong>. With their lineup complete, Act of Defiance signed with Metal Blade Records and cut their debut album, the highly-regarded <i>Birth and the Burial<\/i>. That album, released in August 2015, featured ten tracks written by band members working alone or in collaboration. <i>Birth and the Burial<\/i> earned positive reviews and performed well on four different album charts, including a #18 position on <i>Billboard<\/i>&#8216;s Top Hard Rock Albums chart.<\/p>\n<p>The band mixes familiar elements of extreme metal \u2013 precise, breakneck drumming; technically exacting guitar work; and aggressive vocals \u2013 with the beauty and expressiveness of classical music (in the form of Broderick&#8217;s acoustic guitar playing), often all within a single song. But Broderick doesn&#8217;t believe that Act of Defiance consciously aims to bridge those disparate styles. \u201cIt just ends up being the prevailing style that I write in,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"float: left; padding: 10px; width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=as_ss_li_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B010FP0WA2&#038;asins=B010FP0WA2&#038;linkId=999a319aac7279be19583283365a1962&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><i>Birth and the Burial<\/i> doesn&#8217;t include any writing credits from bassist Bachand. And while Act of Defiance hasn&#8217;t yet begun writing for their second album, Broderick already knows how it will differ from their debut. \u201cIt&#8217;s definitely going to involve all of us more collaboratively,\u201d he promises. \u201cEspecially bringing Matt into the fold; he&#8217;s a great writer, and he has really great melodic ideas. So we want to make sure that we utilize those as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All four members of Act of Defiance have well-established pedigrees in former groups, but their goal is to concentrate on the present and the future; you won&#8217;t hear any old Megadeth or Shadows Fall tunes at their shows. They do, however, play the occasional cover in tribute to some of their fallen metal heroes. On their last tour, they played \u201cAce of Spades\u201d in tribute to <strong>Mot\u00f6rhead<\/strong>&#8216;s <strong>Lemmy<\/strong>. \u201cThis tour,\u201d Broderick says, \u201cwe&#8217;re doing &#8216;I&#8217;m Broken&#8217; by <strong>Pantera<\/strong> in tribute to <strong>Dimebag Darrell<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The group&#8217;s primary and current focus is touring in support of <i>Birth and the Burial<\/i>, and they&#8217;re currently playing dates with like-minded groups <strong>Devildriver<\/strong> and <strong>Hatebreed<\/strong>. Though those other bands have styles of their own (melodic groove metal and hardcore metal, respectively), Broderick thinks that having all three bands on a single bill is a good idea; it encourages all the players to bring their very best. \u201cWe want to make sure that we bring out all of our heaviest stuff,\u201d Broderick says, \u201cand show these hardcore metal fans that we can keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In their 30-plus years together, metal group Megadeth has seen eleven different musicians occupy the lead guitar spot. Chris Broderick \u2013 Megadeth&#8217;s lead guitarist for more than six years \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,46,49],"tags":[2775,2776],"class_list":["post-11134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-metal","category-new-release","tag-act-of-defiance","tag-megadeth","cat-41-id","cat-46-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11136,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11134\/revisions\/11136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}