INTERVIEW: BREAKKER (USA)

Philadelphia’s up and coming heavy metal unit Breakker are slowly but surely establishing a place for themselves in the scene and have just celebrated the release of their second single “Fever.” We caught up with the band to learn more about their story!

TheNwothm: Greetings! Can you tell our readers the bands name, who is the band and where you are from?

TheNwothm: And can you tell us about your formation?

Steve: I posted an ad on Craigslist looking for Hard Rock/Heavy Metal musicians to form a band with and wasn’t really having much luck until Ben responded. I knew Ben from the local Metal scene. I never spoke to him but our former bands shared the same bill once or twice and I was always aware of him. I knew he was a great musician so when he answered my ad I knew right away I wanted him to be in this band. The two of us tried out several musicians I think for close to a year and then it all came together when Clare and Teagan saw our ad and came down to jam. 

TheNwothm: How did you guys choose the name Breakker?

Ben: We had our name narrowed down to a few contenders, Steve suggested Nightbreaker after a Riot album, but another band had the name already, so we shortened it to Breaker, which is my favourite Accept album. There was a Canadian band from the early 80’s called Breaker that just had their early material reissued.. so we added the extra ‘K’ into the name (like Dokken). Looks cool, sounds cool. And it’s electric, like us!

TheNwothm: So you are from Philadelphia, PA! What can you tell us about the metal scene there and the area in general?

Ben: It’s fairly healthy from what I can tell. There’s a few area groups making a serious name for themselves nationally. Crypt Sermon, Sumerlands, Devil Master, come to mind. Younger kids are keeping it fresh and starting new bands of their own all the time. No big ego trips from what I can tell. Lots of room to forge your own sound and a pretty low barrier to getting up and gigging in front of supportive people from DIY basement shows, all the way to established clubs.

Clare: The metal community in Philly is pretty tight knit. It’s especially cool when national acts come to town– it’s like a big family reunion in the pit… and the parking lot!

TheNwothm: How do you feel about the heavy metal scene in general? I understand you guys are heavily influenced by the 70’s and 80’s stuff so how do you feel it has changed since then? Are there any newer heavy metal bands you are particularly enjoying?

Ben: I’m a child of the 80’s so I was surrounded by hard rock and metal. It was filling the concert halls, it was in all the record stores. Magazines like Circus, Kerrang! and Hit Parader were hipping me to  all the up and coming bands. As I got older, I absorbed more from early ‘77 punk rock and power pop through fanzines and word of mouth. Into the 90’s when grunge was supposedly everywhere, I was really getting into proto punk like the New York Dolls, the Dictators and MC5 and garage and action rock upstarts like the Hellacopters, New Bomb Turks, the Devil Dogs and the Didjits. But through all of that, I never stopped listening to heavy metal. And now I’m more into metal than I think I even was as a teenager. The common thread that ties all of my musical tastes together is ‘high energy’.  So many great newer bands! Tower, Sumerlands, Bloodstar, Shadowland, Wytch Hazel, Enforcer, Roadwolf. It’s a great time to be a fan of heavy music in general.

TheNwothm: You started off playing covers so how did you find the transition from that to making your own music? Was it hard putting your first material together?

Ben: Playing covers at first was the easiest way to get potential people into the band for Steve and I. The songs we picked were representative of the musical direction we wanted to head in. And we wanted to make our influences crystal clear to anyone who wanted to join up. Covers are also a quick way to get gigging once you have a lineup solidified. Around here, there are tons of places booking cover bands, too many if you ask me. But playing live is the best way to build your chops as a band. The plan from the start was to always play more originals than covers. But a band needs time to craft their own sound. We’re still at the starting line with our original material, but we’re adding more of our own songs to our set all the time and soon we’ll have enough originals to phase out most of the cover songs from our set. That’s my hope at least.

Teagan: I’d say it was actually super easy. Metal fans, while a bit myopic sometimes, tend to be pretty open to stuff that falls into the general metal universe.

TheNwothm: Can you tell us your biggest influences especially with regards to your music and have they changed since you were growing up? 

Steve: My biggest influences growing up were and still are bands like Judas Priest, Dio,Iron Maiden, Ozzy Accept, Ratt, Dokken, Riot ect, ect. I like bands that are heavy but also know how to keep their songs catchy and melodic. My top 3 favourite newer bands are: Crazy Lixx, Burning Witches and Frozen Crown

Teagan: As a guitarist, my biggest inspiration is Buckethead! I also would say Racer X, Iron Maiden, and Ghost.

Clare: I’m influenced by every brash and bold vocalist that’s inspired me to pick up a microphone at an early age!  A few that come to mind: Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Dolores O’Riordon, Freddie Mercury, Adam Lambert, Axl Rose, Paul Stanley, Bruce Dickinson, Pat Benatar, Patsy Cline, Ronnie Spector..  They’ve all contributed something to my style through technique and stage presence– and I find a new reason to appreciate them with every listen. Metal is the attitude, the charisma and the willingness to go over the top– while many of these artists weren’t “heavy metal” I can’t help but picture how much they’d kick ass in the genre!

TheNwothm: Vinyl has been making a resurgence in recent years so are any of you big fans of the format or do you have some gathering dust on your shelves? 

Steve: I’m not really a vinyl guy, but I love CD’s and have somewhere around 1,700 or so in my collection

Clare: I definitely hopped on at the genesis of Gen Z vinyl collecting. I remember back in 2014 I bought one of those shitty crosley turntables with the money I got for my 8th grade graduation. My uncle gifted me my first two records- Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind & ACDC’s If You Want Blood- both of which have been played to hell and are prone to skips at this point haha. I wasn’t aware of local record shops at the time; I got most of my vinyl at Barnes & Noble, and back then Goodwill was selling top-tier records for .25 cents! Fast forward to highschool and venturing out into the city with my bus pass, I discovered the goldmine that is Philly record shops like Sit and Spin/Vinyl Alter. My vinyl collection is over 300 at this point, and laying down listening to a record after a long day of work is a big chunk of my “self care” ritual. I haven’t bought much in the past year for my wallet’s sake, but every so often I’ll find something and “NEED” it!

TheNwothm: So can you tell our readers a bit about yourselves and what you like to do in your spare time? 

Steve: I play in an organised adult ice hockey league. I have been playing ice hockey longer than I have been playing music. I’m just as passionate about playing ice hockey as I am about playing music. My position is goalie.

Clare: I graduated college not too long ago with a degree in Musical Theatre. Upon graduating, I spent a whole year auditioning and trying to do the whole “broadway” thing– but I wasn’t getting equitable work, and got sick of the superficial nature of the industry– My mental health was at its lowest and the joy just wasn’t there anymore. Currently, I’m part-time teaching drama to young kids and that’s been super fulfilling. When I’m not rehearsing with Breakker, I’ll sometimes join traditional Irish sessions at local pubs, singing Irish Rebel songs to the tune of my acoustic guitar. I come from a family of working class immigrants from Northern Ireland, and their history shapes a large chunk of my identity.

TheNwothm: You have put out two singles so far the first being “Times Not Gonna Wait.” What can you tell us about the singles musical and lyrical themes and where did the band gather inspiration for the track?

Ben: I wrote “Times Not Gonna Wait” specifically for Breakker right after we got Tegan and Clare in the band. I knew we had a potent mix of real talent in the band finally after many false starts of Steve and I searching for the right people. I knew we needed to get right to making our own music and not wait around too long because I didn’t want to waste Clare and Tegan’s time and talents on cover songs. So that’s the urgency I feel when I write for Breakker and that’s what I hope I put into that first song.

TheNwothm: What can you tell us about the music video you made for the song?

Clare:We wanted to capture a similar energy to the 1980s MTV Headbangers Ball music videos; kinda making it feel like a “live” performance with lots of moving handheld camera shots and lower angles as if we had a crew walking around filming us. In reality, we were all cramped in our tiny practice space with a fog machine, our instruments and a couple of bucks to throw at whoever could help us out by filming it. We’re really lucky to have gotten Kyle Cognetti on board– he’s a close friend of Teagan’s and a filmmaker with years of experience. He did a fantastic job with what little we had! 

TheNwothm: And the second single “Fever” has just been released! So how does it compare to “Times Not Gonna Wait?”

Teagan: It’s hard to really compare TNGW and Fever as they’re stylistically very different aspects of our sound and both serve very different musical purposes. Fever draws from the hair and stadium metal sounds and, as such, doesn’t worry about being anything deep or more important than a fun song you’d wanna sing along to after a drink or twelve whereas TNGW draws more from NWOBHM and takes on more serious themes like raging against the clock and making the most out of one’s limited time here on earth.time here in our meat suits. (Some variation on this. I can’t help but hate my own creation lol)

TheNwothm: When approaching your writing and recording do you have any preferred methods? For instance in a room together bashing out ideas or sharing music online? And are you fans of recording in a room together or tracking individual instruments one at a time?

Teagan: Well, so far, it’s been mostly individuals coming to practice with a complete or nearly-complete tune. We all contribute our own touch to it as things go, of course, but the songs have usually been worked out compositionally by the time the rest of us hear it. It’s been more so out of necessity as a new band; fleshed out tunes are easier to get out there faster and get the ball rolling for us, you know?  Going forward, we’ll likely have a more collaborative songwriting process on the whole and we’ve all more or less expressed our desire to move towards that model of writing; finding a riff or some kind of idea, bringing it to the group to see what everyone else would play against it, and working out sections and lyrics together from there. 

As for recording, we have been tracking individual instruments at a time in our practice space. Again, it’s been more out of necessity. We’re completely DIY and working with each others schedules– we’ve finally finished tracking each song for our EP, and now Ben is working hard on the mixes to get it out there before Summer rolls around. Going forward, we’d like to experiment with different methods of recording to keep things interesting.

TheNwothm: So moving to live side of the band you have already shared the stage with a number of bands such as  Knights Reign, Evil or Divine, Denim and Leather just to name a few! What was that like?

Clare: Tribute bands fucking rule. Oftentimes, it’s better seeing them for 10$/15$ at a local bar than whatever version of the band exists today for hundreds of dollars. For example, Knights Reign/Evil or Divine cover Dio. They pull out all the stops– playing from the Black Sabbath era and Rainbow along with songs from the classic DIO records. They’re tight and extremely talented musicians that carry the torch of the late legend with honour. I also love that now we’re getting the chance to play with other up-and-coming original bands– forming bonds and helping uplift each other in this underground/DIY sphere. 

TheNwothm: Do you have any other bands you would like to share a stage with?

Clare: I’m really excited by other female fronted bands in the NWOTHM underground. Jo Gamel (bass/vocals in a new band Jupiter) started a youtube show this year titled Jo Gamel’s Rock Goddesses interviewing women in metal/punk/rock with a bunch of uploads every week, and it’s now over 40 episodes– a testament to how ladies are dominating the genres! ANY band from her channel I’d be honoured to share a stage with–Bronze, Bloodstar, Tower, Shadowland, Savage Master, Mean Mistreater, Viperwitch, Starforce, Castle Rat– just to name a few!

TheNwothm: What are your touring plans for the rest of 2024?

Clare: Well, we don’t have representation yet. Our gigs and exposure have been a product of a consistent effort reaching out to venues and sharing our music in hopes to get somewhere. We’re building connections with local artists, and we’re thankful for any chance to play! We hope to venture out– play some festivals, share our music with the masses- we just gotta keep hustling! 

TheNwothm: In regards to your musical plans you have an EP coming out in the summer? Can you tell our readers anything about that and what to expect?

Clare: We are unabashedly inspired by all the forms metal has taken since the 1970s. I think this EP is decorated in variety– there’s a little something there for everybody. We’ll be keeping everybody updated on our Facebook/Instagram pages– keep your eyes peeled!

TheNwothm: Where can fans buy your music and merch?

Teagan: We’re planning on making some Shirts & CDs once this EP rolls out. Our music is currently available for download on Bandcamp, and the merch will be there eventually! Breakker.Bandcamp.com 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/breakkerphl

If you’re east-coast adjacent and can make it out to any of our upcoming gigs in the Philly area, we always have some stickers to handout!

TheNwothm: Anything else you would like to mention?

Our linktree is the source of all things BREAKKER: 

https://linktr.ee/breakkerphl