Band: Duressted
From: Greenville, North Carolina
Their formation story:
(Kyle Witmer, vocals): "The name came from a Zach Fox song! Duressted started from a 2-piece beatdown band called Becky with my best friend/ drummer Patrick Rogers. We gained attention under Becky since we were bringing heavy music back to our town Greenville, North Carolina. That drew the attention of our guitarist Tyler Carlyle to reach out to Becky to join but we weren’t interested in making it more than a 2 piece.
"We wanted to play music with Tyler so we decided to start a whole new project. We had a local show for Becky but decided to have Tyler hop on when us and we played together and mentioned that we were starting a new band called Duressted. Our good friend, Nic George, who is also in a local screamo/skramz band called Clout Funeral, saw our set and basically told us he was now the bass player for Duressted. Now here we are, a 4-piece heavy hardcore band."
Their sound in their own words:
"We honestly just say we are 'heavy hardcore,' but the truth is we have no clue what our genre is. We just love playing heavy music. We touch a lot of heavy genres in our sound.
"Our influences range from Thirdrail, Xibalba, Disembodied, Jesus Piece, thrown, Knocked Loose, Gnumb, Backlip, Gnasher, Cemented In Fear, Line of Scrimmage, Before I Had Wings, Funeral Massacre, and our bassist comes from a screamo/skramz background so he brings that into our sound as well."
Latest release info:
"We just recently released a self-titled EP on Christmas. It’s short and sweet at 6 tracks of pure raw emotion that will be sure to get you moving. I tried to keep our lyrics short and too the point, and are pulled from real emotions within me. 'These Hands have Blood,' which we released as a single first, is about my early life of getting in trouble being bad, fighting and stuff like that.
"'Straight Down' is about feeling like a failure and being a low place in life and just kinda excepting it. 'I Am' is about people thinking they know me but not actually knowing me. Having a perception of me they created in their head. It mostly came from my relationship with my father, and my ex wife! 'Empty' is also about feeling low and like I’ve completely lost myself. 'Edge of the Knife' is about my constant struggle with suicide."
Future plans:
"The future of Duressted is bright! We are already working on new music! We plan on releasing a new track hopefully by march! Also, we hope to put out another EP by the end of 2025. We are trying to play a lot more shows in a lot more places. Hoping to do a small east coast tour in the spring or summer. We just want to continue to grow and play music."
What other bands from their region should we check out?
"So, North Carolina has a lot of sick bands currently! In our town of Greenville. Bluegill is a band to look out for! Them boys are sick! They play like a heavy shoegaze but I don’t want to even call them shoegaze. Definitely a must-see live band. Their energy live is powerful. We got another local to Greenville band called Clout Funeral, which is screamo/skramz.
"We got Demiurge out of Winston Salem, they are just heavy hardcore badass shit! We love them boys so much. Donnybrook out of Jacksonville, North Carolina is like beatdown, deathcore, hardcore mix. And them boys rip! Gnasher out of Greenville, South Carolina are a big influence on our drummer. Really, the Carolinas have some talented gnarly bands that shouldn’t be slept on!"
Duressted on social media: Instagram
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