Artist Spotlight ~ Black Smoke Trigger

Artist Spotlight is a segment that we started to introduce our readers to some deserving up and coming artists/bands. They have made an impact on us for all of the right reasons. We think they kick ass, and we hope you do too! Today we’d like to shine the spotlight on New Zealand rock band Black Smoke Trigger.

With their debut LP ‘Horizons’, New Zealand’s Black Smoke Trigger have delivered a masterclass in
expansive, dynamic modern rock. Across 12 ambitious tracks, the album bottles Black Smoke Trigger’s electrifying live energy while demonstrating their creative diversity and astounding technical abilities through myriad influences and world class musicianship.

Recorded by legendary producer Nick Raskulinecz (Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters, RUSH) and mixed by Chris Lord-Alge (Green Day, Muse, Prince), ‘Horizons’ marks the culmination of a globetrotting journey to create a career defining record, with recording sessions in Nashville, songwriter collabs in Hawaii, and makeshift studios in New Zealand. In one of many surprise twists throughout its creation ‘Horizons’ was not initially intended to be a full-length album, as guitarist, Charlie Wallace shares “We were planning to record a six track EP, but Nick loved the songs and pushed us to make this a full length,” He continues “We had two stints of recording in Nashville, then Nick flew to New Zealand and we turned my entire house into a recording studio to get the final pieces.”

Being pushed to create a full-length album rather than a 6 track EP, whilst challenging, was the best thing that could have happened to Black Smoke Trigger. With the help of collaborations from the likes of Disturbed’s David Draiman on single “Never Dies” and esteemed rock songwriting collective, The 4 Horsemen, the band were able to create a truly 360-degree display of what Black Smoke Trigger is. In the band’s words “Writing so much and doing 12 songs instead of an EP allowed this record to be cohesive and also showed different sides of Black Smoke Trigger. It’s a whole piece of art, as opposed to just like ‘here’s a sampling of who we are.’”

The band are led by Wallace (creator of the hugely successful Guitar Mastery Method) who’s insane talent provides everything from delicate melodic motifs to face melting shred solos and stadium conquering riffs. They are fronted by incendiary vocalist Baldrick, who’s soaring vocal range channels icons like Chris Cornell and Layne Staley in both passion and versatility and provides that indefinable, timeless rock n roll soul to the Black Smoke Trigger sound. Bassist Dan Fulton, and drummer Josh Te Maro round out the lineup, joining forces to create a powerhouse rhythmic backbone and one of the most bombastic and inventive rhythm sections of recent years. Four exceptional individual talents, united in their tireless pursuit of epic hard rock excellence. “This record captures such an insane time in our lives; we called the album ‘Horizons’ because it felt like we were chasing something that kept escaping us… until we finally completed this record,” says Wallace.

We sat down with band member Charlie Wallace for a short but fun Q&A session!

Every superhero or villain has an origin, and a band is no different minus the radioactive spiders and secret government experiments. What is the origin of Black Smoke Trigger?

Charlie Wallace/Black Smoke Trigger: We all come from the same small town in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, I (Charlie) went to school with Baldrick and but had no idea he could sing until one night at one of my band’s afterparties Baldrick showed me some demos he had recorded, I asked “Who’s singing?”, he said, “Me for now, but I need to find a singer” and I replied “YOU gotta sing these songs!”, then it wasn’t long after that we joined forces and started playing music together. Fast forward a couple years then we had completed the lineup with Josh Te Maro on drums and Dan Fulton on bass.

Band names can have a meaning, or it can be a name pulled out of a hat. What’s the story behind Black Smoke Trigger?

It’s just a cool sounding band name that came out of the ether, we were trying to think of names and it just stuck. When we saw it written out on a piece of paper, it seems to encapsulate everything we wanted our music to be.

What are you currently working on?

We’re currently writing songs for our next record, we love the recording and creativity process. After wrapping up our recent tours in NZ & Australia with Filter and Europe with Bruce Dickinson, we have a lot of new ideas!

Are you a good cook? What’s your best dish to prepare?

I love preparing traditional Neapolitan pizza, the dough takes days and the wood fired oven is a lot of work, but all worth it for the taste.

We love cereal, especially at night. For some odd reason, it seems to taste better then. Do you have a favorite cereal?

You can’t go past Coco Pops (as they’re called here in New Zealand!)