Today we’d like to introduce you to Forced Edge.
Hello Forced Edge, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Levie Ramsey (Lead Guitar of Forced Edge) – Forced Edge started when we were all in high school, and we all pretty much met in the same gym class. Out of the blue one day, our singer (Facundo) came up all excited and said “Yoo this guy plays D&D,” and that guy just so happened to be John the bassist! John (Our original bass player) Hit it off almost immediately, talking about our favorite punk bands, like Descendents and Bad Religion. After class, that day after we met John said something about how his band, he’s got with some buddies needs a guitarist, so naturally, I was all in. We exchanged phone numbers and then went to our other classes. over the rest of the week, we arranged our first “jam session” that Saturday. Throughout this week though I started to worry about the kind of band that I just joined. I wanted to join or start a fast hardcore/80s punk rock band, but all these dudes wanted to play were slow classic rock crap. Basically here’s the rundown of how that band was: Drew was a Sax player that wanted everything to be PG all the time (and he never practiced), Ethan was a piano player, and a damn good one, if I might add (shame he wanted to waist his skills on Elton John covers), John was a bassist who was into punk rock but wanted to play in the Beatles, Me (A punk), and a percussionist who played in the school band (who never played a drum kit in his life). 3/4 of these 16-year-old kids decided to call this band “Tundra.” I’ll give you 4 guesses about who didn’t like it; the first three don’t count. Anyways Saturday rolls around, I and John are just waiting in his living room, plugged into amps, and we even set up John’s sh*try Walmart drum set. sooner than later, none of the other “band members” show, and they didn’t even say that they couldn’t make it. We decided to just start learning a song, and just have a sleepover at John’s house, and play Dungeons and Dragons the next day with our friend Facundo. So, in the morning Facundo arrived, and we played D&D…. that is the day that “Tundra” Died. A few hours into D&D we got bored and decided to play some music with the already setup music equipment. I hopped on the drums, we gave Facundo a microphone, and john used his bass. Facundo has never sang in his life. We decided to learn the song Carousel by Blink-102, and it sucked, but it was fun. We left that day thinking that I was gonna play drums, but obviously, it didn’t turn out that way. At first, we decided to call this project “Nuclear Burn”, just Cuz it was one of the original band name ideas that we liked. A few months later, we had just a couple of practice sessions, and Facundo completely wimped out on us. He wasn’t replying to messages or showing up to band practice, so we just stopped doing practice completely. But during these months, we also got ourselves a drummer. Except he didn’t actually play. He was John’s friend from gym class again! His name is Galush, and he pretty much only had a drum kit because his brother played drums, but he went to college. Anyways, we did a few band sessions before we just stopped for a while again. Skip another month or so, and one of John’s friends was holding a talent show for her school. She wanted to do an anime song with us playing and her doing vocals. I took this as an opportunity to start the band, so I convinced her to ask her teacher if we could have more time to play (I was expecting maybe to be able to play 15 minutes), and she came back the next er for practice and said that we need to play a full hour. We didn’t have that, so we started on some covers. That show went horribly, but it was the real start of Forced Edge and certainly wasn’t the end.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Whoa! Totally not smooth! We seem to have problems keeping members; like, John quit the band because of girlfriend issues in the band if you know what I’m saying. Our Galush went to college, and we’ve never gotten a committed drummer since (that, and drummer that just personal sh*t came up, and they couldn’t do it anymore). We also can never afford studio time, so I basically just learned how to record/engineer our music for releasing. You can hear me getting slightly better from every release, and the stuff we’re working on now just sounds better!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Forced Edge is a hardcore punk rock band from San Diego, California. And we are known for punk rock! I think most people know us as that modern old-school punk band, which is exactly what we were going for, so it’s cool. I consider us “2020s Punk,” though.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you, or support you?
If anyone wants to collaborate with us, we will always be down! We would love to do more interviews, features, and splits! Just email us @[email protected] or DM us on Instagram @forcededgerockz
Contact Info:
- Website: forcededge.com
- Instagram: @forcededgerockz
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCN3-ulmfZZaxx4Sk_qdSoLg
- Other: https://forcededgerocks.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
Facundo Lopez
Louis Ramsey
Kenny Wolfsbane
