Ever listen to a band and wonder why you hadn’t heard of them sooner? That is exactly how I felt about the band I interviewed that day. Solid music and they’ve definitely made waves through the music scene. Their YouTube channel has 2.41 million subscribers and they feel like the best of them is yet to come. Let me introduce everyone to Fate DeStroyed!
Their current lineup includes Franccesca De Struct (vocals), Jonni Law (guitar), Roger VonBohlen (guitar), and Cameron Franklin (drums). At the time of the interview with Franccesca and Cameron, the band was without a bassist, though she joked the band was just the two of them. The band out of Los Angeles, CA area started back in 2016 as a one-off project. It wasn’t until 2018 when they decided the band would become more than a one-off and started becoming more active to permanent status. Franccesca and Jonni were the original members from the original lineup and Franccesca is thrilled with the members they have today. “I really couldn’t be happier with our lineup now. We haven’t had a lot of member changes, but the ones we have had were for a very good reason. And now we’re just this collection of killers who like every single person who has been welcomed into the band family is at a ridiculous skill level.”
When I asked them to define their music, Franccesca was quick to call out, “What kind of artist, what kind of creative wants to put themselves in a box and say, ‘I am this and only this and can be only this’?” And she makes an excellent point. Fate DeStroyed easily spans themselves across different genres depending on the song you hear. “For some of our songs,” she continued, “we’re definitely more hard rock…I think we’re a really good in-between mix of some parts of our songs are more hard rock, some parts of them are more metal, some parts of them are more technical. I think what’s important is as we evolve as a band, because we’re still new in our inception since 2018, we spend a long time still trying to hone in on what our sound is. And especially as our lineup changes and as we sort of develop into our own, we sort of want to define our own sound. We’ll always have aspects of metalcore, or metal, or hard rock, or prog metal, or hip hop or whatever in our music. But, I think what would be most ideal is that we pave our own way. And kind of do our own thing.” Cameron added in, “We’re trying to write stuff that we want to hear. Not try to fit in any box.”
The writing process from the band is very much a collaborative effort. In the past, the majority of their songs were written by the former drummer. But now, “We all get to bring to the table the things that are important to us and our own influences,” Franccesca said. She added that she didn’t have many influences from a vocal standpoint. Musically, she mentioned Jet and Trivium as influences but added, “It’s just difficult because the bands that I listen to I don’t think we sound much like any of them.”
They have released one studio album titled Within These Walls, which has an interesting naming story. “What’s interesting about the album name is we actually had our fans choose the name of the album,” Franccesca started off, “I wrote up five or six different ideas and we had this contest on our Facebook page…we let everyone commented with a name that they wanted.” “Within These Walls is not actually what I wanted to name the album,” laughing as she said it, “But, what the fans request, they get!” She said the name actually seemed fitting for the time as many of the fans made a connection between the title and being stuck at home during the pandemic. The album came out in May 2021. Franccesca gave us this perspective, “We actually started writing that album pretty much shortly after we became a band. And it took us so long to finish it. By the time we were done with it, I feel we had progressed as musicians and we had already gotten our single for the EP that’s coming out later before the last album was done. We have come so far from that. I like it. It’s good. But, we’re so much better now.”
The single from that album, “The Need That We Kill For” is what Franccesca actually wanted to name the album. And her first words about the single was not what I expected. “The first time I wrote it, I hated it. And there’s actually two or three versions of the song that I completely scrapped…I had this existential crisis during COVID where because everything was grounded, we couldn’t do music anymore, couldn’t do anything artistic anymore…I started to really question like why I did music. Why am I doing this? I was feeling really frustrated. Was it worth it? Am I getting too old? And that’s why the song talks about that hunger for success and learning how to measure your own success against other people. It really is a song about those superficial feelings of I need internet validation, I don’t know why I’m doing this, is this the feeling that I’m killing for? Is this what I’m seeking? Is this what is missing in my life?” She was ready to scrap the song completely from the album until the lyrics with these feelings hit home and then they knew that not only was this the song, it was the single.
The video for the single in her own words is “an engineering masterpiece”. None of the members of Fate DeStroyed were in the same state when the video for “The Need That We Kill For” was filmed. “Different states, different videographers, different times,” she explained. The video was shot using green screen for all of the band members. “”At the time, our guitar player Roger was living in Colorado, which I’m glad because then we would have never met Cameron,” she paused and smiled, “He [Roger] went and filmed at a green screen studio in Colorado, I filmed at a studio in Culver City, somebody else filmed at a studio in Hollywood. And so we basically had all these raw pieces of footage that the guy who directed it, Ron Thunderwood, put together in this video that actually is really cohesive and looks like we’re all in the same place when we’re absolutely definitely were not.” Franccesca said they also filmed the video for their single “Crave”, which she says is their most popular song on Spotify, in a similar fashion using cell phone footage because that was at the peak of the lockdown when no one could go out and see anyone.
I asked both Cameron and Franccesca what were their favorite singles they like to perform. Cameron said, ““The Need That We Kill For” I love the play. I love the breakdown in it. But my favorite song I like to play wasn’t a single called “Rather See You Dead” off the full length [album]. It’s like really bouncy and it’s got a good tempo. Fun to play live. It’s catchy and gets stuck in your head by the second chorus.” Franccesca chimed in that “Rather See You Dead” is their highest streamed song on Apple Music. She said her favorite song is an underrated song that only she loves and even when they play it live the fans don’t seem to connect with it. Even though it has “our nastiest, dirtiest, hard hitting, guttural breakdown of any of our songs.” That song is “Art of Betrayal”. Cameron added the song has a significantly higher tempo than the other songs in the set so it’s a standalone compared to the rest of the songs. Franccesca added about the song, “the words mean a lot to me and the breakdown is dirt nasty.” The lyric video is below. Give us your thoughts on this single!
As for the new EP, Fate DeStroyed expects to release it the first full week of September, which would make it right during Blue Ridge Rock Festival. Compared to the first album, Franccesca has a much different perspective on the EP. “Every musician I think feels or knows when they have that ‘this is it’ moment…I feel like with our last album, especially being a fledgling band, and especially our first album being so easily influenced…I think a lot of our first album was emulation. And I feel like everybody on this album instead of trying to emulate something we’re trying to do something completely new….I think this EP will be the first time we get a glimpse of our sound.” The first single from the EP called “Death Signs From The Sky” features a rap artist, something they wouldn’t have considered doing with the first album. Another track Franccesca will do no clean singing at all. The band is taking the time to find themselves with this next release. She feels the fans will truly connect with this one more than the first album because “there’s authenticity and we’re not chasing anything. We’re just trying to do music, like Cameron said, that we like.” Cameron added “There’s nothing else that I can compare it to or think of anything else that it sounds like and that’s like a really big thing for me. It’s also really catchy and fun to play…I really like the new direction and the new sound.”
Fate DeStroyed like many of the other Rising Talents submitted to be considered for the Blue Ridge Rock Festival. They had seen the post on a Facebook group and send in their EPK to be considered. They were accepted onto the 2020 lineup, which was then postponed due to the pandemic and invited to come back again for 2021. Right before Blue Ridge Rock Festival the band will be playing at Whisky A Go Go on August 29th in California. Cameron is super excited about that show as he’s never played it and they consider it a rite of passage. After Blue Ridge Rock Festival they’ll be performing on Thursday, September 23rd at the Rebel Rock Taco Metal Party in Orlando, FL. And after that, they’re on the road in October with Vampires Everywhere. Franccesca is ready to tour where people are going to “throw the F down”.
When they’re not performing or writing or practicing Franccesca and Cameron both keep busy. Besides her modeling work, she is an avid car enthusiast. She has project cars that she works on and races some of them too. She’s very active in the car community and loves motorcycles (she owns a Harley) as well. Her current project cars include a 2019 Ford Fiesta ST with a big turbo and 400hp and a 1992 Miata that she’s building as a drift car. As for Cameron, “My #1 hobby is drums, my #2 hobby is drums, and my #3 hobby is drums.” He loves to hike multiple times a week. Cameron also used to do a lot of playthrough videos but hasn’t found a place to setup his video equipment yet. He did enjoy learning how to edit videos during the pandemic.
The two bandmates do both love Alien. Cameron had an Alien movie poster hanging on his wall behind him that I called out that caught Franccesca by surprise. She immediately rolled up her shirt sleeve on her left arm to show off a tattoo of the xenomorph from Alien (it’s pretty cool). For Cameron, “It [Alien] was one of the first horror movies I ever seen.” His Dad took him when he was 9 or 10 years old and it terrified him. He also immensely enjoys all the H.R. Giger imagery in the movie. For Franccesca she jokingly said, “Sigourney Weaver in a little white muscle tank. That’s why I like Alien.” Her true answer, “I love John Carpenter films, I love sci-fi. I also love the H.R. Giger aesthetic.” She was also on this 80s horror kick and loved the lack of CGI and more the prosthetics and puppeteering.
Cameron can’t wait to get back out on the road and tour. Franccesca is super excited to be playing Blue Ridge Rock Festival and can’t wait to meet the other Rising Talent and the fans. Fate DeStroyed plays on Friday, September 10 at Blue Ridge Rock Festival. Please come see their set, buy their merch, their album, and their upcoming EP to help support them doing what they love to do, make music! You can check out their social links and the full video interview (it’s a long one) below!
Fate DeStroyed Social Links
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