The Shape Of Rock To Come: Shadow of Whales

Shadow of Whales

Shadow of Whales


With a sound akin to The Killers, Franz Ferdinand and a touch of The Beatles, Austin, Texas’ Shadow of Whales rocks their quintet with a series of flavors. In their music you’ll hear guitar swells, hard-driving riffs, and even five-part harmonies that transition to sing-along gang chants. It’s music you can dance to, and then music you can mosh to. Since the release of their EP, Shadow of Whales has seen coverage on KTBC – FOX 7, Music Biz Weekly, and played the Austin Convention Center. Ghettoblaster recently caught up with the band to talk about three songs that have inspired their output, in particular their EP. This is what they told us. “Two Weeks” by Grizzly Bear This song has a very ambient cathedral sound that we liked and wanted to try and mix some of that in with this EP. We were going for a quartet sound but ended up being something different. Grizzly Bear is a direction that we went to in terms of vocals. We try to utilize every band members voice where we can. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” has some influence in this compilation as well. Having that solid rock with harmonies here and there on big dramatic parts of the song. In general, Queen has been a big influence to all of us growing up. They were pioneers in the music they made by the way they recorded, the way they collaborated and the way they performed. They are an influence to us in a big way. “Dare You to Move” by Switchfoot Everyone in the band is a fan of Switchfoot and have our own favorite songs from them so it’s kinda hard to choose just one song that influenced this EP. Although “Dare You to Move” and “Meant To Live” are probably two of the first songs that got us into their music. There’s a lot of bands that inspire the way we make music, but Switchfoot has been critical to the “rock out” sections of our music and the “let’s throw everybody off” sections. Switchfoot has influenced us probably more than any of the other bands listed, especially in the recent year. (Listen to the band here: https://soundcloud.com/shadow-of-whales.)