Part 1 - Voices Within

 

In 1985 three teenagers from Knoxville, Iowa formed a group called Fallen Angel.  The band’s founding members include Brent Scott, Marcus Peterson, and Doug Beary.   Trying to find the right chemistry for their band, they discovered Brian Harrington and John Parrish.  Soon after, the newly formed Defiance began writing songs that eventually turned into their first demo under the self-titled cassette “Defiance” which was recorded in 1989 on a shoestring budget in a 16 track studio.  The lo-fi four song demo included the songs “Gypsy,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” “Love’s a Bitch,” and “Second Death.”    Using nothing but a dual-cassette deck they dubbed 100 copies of their demo.  After playing a few local shows and selling their demo the band started to generate local buzz.  In a short matter of time their most popular song, “Gypsy,” was being played on a local radio station.  They continued to write, play live shows, and save every penny they could to return to the recording studio.  In 1992 Defyance released their new album “Voices Within.”  It was their first full length project and was soon packaged and pressed into a 300 cassette release.  The band sold them locally and continued to save for more recording sessions.  A year later they had 30 CDs burned off for a select number of people that requested them.    Until now this CD was never made available to the public.  As a special bonus on this CD are 3 songs off of the original demo that was recorded nearly 25 years ago!

 

Part 2 – Amaranthine

 

“Amaranthine” was a Frankenstein project for Defyance that took almost 4 years to finish due to several life obstacles and tight funding.  They would go into the studio on and off and record one song at a time.  Financially it made perfect sense but the consistency, production, and quality suffered.    Also during this time, Brian had joined the military which caused the band to re-evaluate the future of Defyance.  Brent and Marcus decided to go to college and eventually Parrish left the band.  He was soon replaced by Brent Wagner and the band continued writing.

 

The band struggled to maintain the dedication they had once had.  Ultimately, Brian Harrington had to leave on military assignment and with their future in limbo their bass player also left. This was a major disappointment for the remaining members of the band.  After more than a year of wondering what they would do, the band gathered up all that they had recorded and released “Amaranthine” in 1996.

 

Part 3 - Time Lost

 

The response from “Amaranthine” was better than they could have ever imagined.   Thanks to metal blog sites and online CD stores the band started getting some international following.  It helped to inspire Brent, Marcus, and Doug. They still had a lot of music that had been written when Brian was in the band as well as new ideas they wanted to record.  They started a search for a bass player and found Rob McGrath.  Rob was an important addition to the band and fit in perfectly, but they continued to struggle to find the right singer to replace Harrington--most of the material was written with him or with his vocals in mind.

 

After extensive auditions they were convinced they had found the right person and went back into the studio to begin recording the new project.  This time they were able to take a different approach and record all the music in a few sessions, which gave them a much more consistent sound.  When they started tracking vocals they realized they were not getting the “Defyance sound” they wanted.  Engineer Sean McMahon felt the same way and pulled them aside to tell them they had to re-think the vocals.  He suggested someone with whom he had worked on other projects--Scott Andreas.  The guys knew of Scott since he had been around the local Iowa scene for some time.  He was known for having played in a band called Atomic Opera with other respected musicians.  Intrigued by this idea, they gave Scott a shot.  

Scott came in and laid down the vocals for “Fight.”  The band could not have been more pleased with the results. It was different than what they had originally intended, but it was a solid and new direction they felt was right for them.  The CD “Time Lost,” named after the countless setbacks and effort, was thus finally released.