Photo by Maq Brown Photography
When I first offered the opportunity to interview Blue Ridge Rock Festival Rising Talents, this was one of the first bands to reach out to set something up. And immediately, briefly speaking with their vocalist, listening to their music, and watching some of their videos, I sensed something special about them. And I knew this was going to be a solid interview. Without further adieu, let me introduce everyone to Dying Oath.
The metalcore band out of Wytheville, Virginia includes Mindy Jackson (vocals), Jakob Green (vocals), Gage Freeman (drums), Josh Hagee (lead guitar), Ryan Endicott (rhythm guitar), and Ryan Matney (bass). If you watch the interview, you’ll hear them refer to the two Ryan’s as Endicott or Matney so we know who is who. Even Ryan Matney refers to himself as Matney And yes, that did confuse me for a minute or two! The band formed in 2018 with Josh and Endicott as the primary members. They jammed together and with a few other musicians, but when they started to take it more seriously, they started auditioning for members. They had one vocalist who could do clean vocals well, but not the screams. They wanted to diversify the vocals and ended up finding Mindy who they loved for her singing style. They ended up bringing in Matney as he worked with Mindy in another band. Gage also joined after their original drummer left. Jakob is literally the most recent addition to the group.
Dying Oath is truly a family. Mindy and Josh have known each other since they were teenagers and both said they “used to party hard” laughing as they said it. Josh and Endicott have been friends for a while. Mindy and Matney live together as roommates and Mindy calls Matney her best friend. Gage and Mindy have been friends for a while as well. It was fate for Dying Oath to come together.
So why metalcore? “I picked up the Roadrunner United DVD it had a lot of their artists on there. I had never heard of Trivium before and I got introduced there. I started listening to Trivium and said, ‘Oh my God this Ascendary album is unreal!’.” And that was the start of the influence. Josh started finding more and more metalcore bands. “That’s what I’ve always listen to man. That’s what I wanted to try and push. And I hate that you don’t really hear anything like [metalcore] anymore.” And Mindy added, “We’re bringing it back.” Josh continued, “There are some things that I think are timeless, and that sound to me is something that I want to hear some new iterations of. I want to hear like new 2000s metalcore. We’re really trying to push that. I love that sound.” And he added in what you normally don’t hear in that era of metalcore, “Having a female scream it is just mind blowing.” I loved hearing how passionate Josh is about their music, their sound, and how they want to present it to their fans.
In cases where I have seen male/female vocalists, I’ve always encountered the male performs the unclean vocals and the female performs the clean. Dying Oath flips the switch with Mindy and Jakob and it is refreshing to see and hear. “It’s kind of what we set out to do,” Mindy stated, “to be completely different than everything else.”
Dying Oath does not have an album out as of yet with all their material. “We decided instead of putting an album out that we would release everything single by single,” Mindy explained, “And that seemed to really give us momentum along the way.” The band currently has 3 singles released to the public and 7 they perform in their setlist. Their most recent single is “End of Days”. “Josh always writes the riffs,” Mindy started off, “And sends it to us and we kind of all do our own thing. He had sent it to me and I listened to it. And right before I wrote the song, actually, I had this dream about the end of the world. For whatever reason when I heard what he had written, it made me think of that.” It took them about 6 months to release the track as it underwent many changes from the original music Josh wrote.
Photo by KB Photography
The video, on the other hand, was as Josh said, “a nightmare unto itself”. Everyone in the band wanted to do something different when it came to creating a video. “We got it worked out though. We all came to a compromise on trying to get every element that everybody wanted in. It worked out pretty well.” Josh said it’s one of his favorite songs to perform live. Endicott agreed naming “End of Days” and “Arise”, an upcoming single, as his favorite songs to play. “‘Arise’ is one of our more empowering songs,” Endicott said. “I get to slap the wall on it, it’s a pretty good tune. It’s an empowering song about…relating to situations, like your relationships, your life, everything, and empowering you to get out of terrible situations.” Matney calls out “Modern Testament” as his favorite Dying Oath song. “It’s like just rising above everything and standing for what you believe [in]. It has a great melody to it and so much fun to play.”
Since the “End of Days” video is age-restricted, we cannot link it here. Check out the video on YouTube HERE.
Dying Oath is an independent artist who, like many artists, would love to perform full time. But, Mindy says, “We really just set out to make people happy. We just want to help people and inspire people, but if we can do this full time and pay our bills, then hell yeah!” Josh added, “It’s got to be something legit though man. We’ve had a few offers from some smaller labels and it just doesn’t seem like anything that’s really going to benefit us beyond what we can already do for ourselves.”
The band does book shows and has toured in the Virginia area, surrounding states, and as far as Florida. Mindy said, “In the upcoming year our plan is to actually tour. We want to be prepared for that. We just don’t want to jump into, you know, into our truck and just take off and do whatever. We really want to prepare before we do that.” They are playing a number of festivals this year including Metal in the Mountains. After performing at Blue Ridge Rock Festival they will be going into the studio to record their debut album.
And then Mindy threw in this unexpected note, “We live in a town where they aren’t really any venues. We have one venue that actually is a haunted house.” Um, what? A venue that’s a haunted house at the same time?! “It would be The Pit” when I asked Endicott on the name of the venue based on his shirt he was gesturing to on camera. “The Pit at Helheim Haunted Attraction in Wytheville, Virginia.” Mindy added, “So you have the haunted house, but it was an old go-kart track. So the building itself is the haunted house. But, outside of that, back where the old go-kart track was, there is a building that they’ve hallowed out and that’s where everybody plays.” Mindy, Endicott, and Matney all also work at Helheim Haunted Attraction.
Once again the trend continues on gaming with musicians. Endicott says when they’re not playing he likes the fish and play video games. Ghost Recon and Destiny 2 are his current games. Matney simply takes it easy and when not playing or working, he still finds himself hanging out at work. Mindy is the extreme opposite and likes to keep super busy outside of band and work. She has a show on their local radio station 105.3 where she discusses horror films. The Nightmare on Elm Street series is her favorite. She has another show on Alloy Radio, an internet radio platform. She also does modeling and burlesque shows. Josh delves himself more into music. He’s been getting into producing, mixing, mastering, and engineering, which once again shows his passion for music.
The band wanted to provide some special shout outs to Will Baker who has been mentoring them and assisting them with their social accounts, the Helheim Haunted Attraction, to Adam Seelbach who is in charge of The Pit, their local venue, and gave Dying Oath their very first gig, and to the Haunted Honeymooners who are their endorsement and business partners and provided the band a lot of good opportunities.
Dying Oath will be playing on Friday, September 10th at the Blue Ridge Rock Festival and will be camping. I really enjoy what Dying Oath is bringing to the music scene and highly encourage you to check out their social links below, buy their music merch, check out their performance set at Blue Right Rock Festival and go meet them! Check out the full interview following their social links!
Dying Oath Links
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