Dressed head to toe in black, Royal Ascent ooze every ounce of teen angst that you would expect from a young metal-core band.
Fronted by Marcus White-bower alongside Ru Gilfillan, Lewis White-bower and Will Blything, Royal Ascent were formed in Worcester at Nunnery Wood High School in 2013 and have since been making a name for themselves locally by playing gigs in establishments like The Marrs Bar and the 02 academy in Birmingham.
The boys are still young and have had many influences growing up, citing A day to Remember, The Devil wears Prada and Eminem as their main inspirations when starting the band. “We grew up in different areas and all became friends towards the end of high school, so we have different stories from being young” explains Ru, “but we all bonded over our love of the same music, and obviously Lewis and Marcus are brothers so they have grown up together listening to the same punk music as their parents. This has given our music an eclectic feel as we really love to experiment with sound.”
The boys all studied music in High School and Sixth Form, clearly a passion throughout their teenage years. Marcus jokes “I definitely couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. From a young age I looked at all these cool bands and thought that I wanna tear my vocal chords in that way as well’
Despite only having been together for a few years, the group have already managed to grow themselves a small but dedicated group of fans. Marcus said, “We’ve actually started to amass a good small fan base who come out to our shows and give us really good energy when we are performing. This is so important as it actually makes us want to continue and improve.” Ru adds, “It helps that we have played lots of local gigs with other bands who play similar music so all of our fans have kinda merged together.”
Royal Ascent have already played some small headline gigs alongside other local bands such a Kick the Clown and Burning down Alaska. “We’ve been so lucky to bag some really great gigs early on in our journey” Playing live is their favourite aspect of being in a band, “I couldn’t believe it when we managed to secure the Download festival gig. I’ve been going for years and to actually play there was insane.” Says Marcus.
Another thing the boys are keen to stress is their love for Michael B Jordan and how they want him to join them on a tour. “I love that man. I watched Black Panther yesterday and honestly he looks like he’d be sick on the drums” says Ru. Instead of looking offended, Lewis looks delighted, joking, “I’d happily let you guys kick me out if you could get him to replace me.” It is clear that they are joking, but with half the band still in University they have faced some issues with formation, “It’s hard because Lew’s away at Uni a lot of the time. We try and make it work but it’s hard for him to commit 100%.” Will said, “We are struggling because not many people are good enough to cover Lewis as he is genuinely super talented.”
But as an influx of angsty young bands have bloomed on the local scene, what really sets Royal Ascent apart? Is there any more room for unsigned local artists struggling to pave a place in the industry? “We give our all into every live performance, we want to grow and develop and we have so much passion,” explains Ru, “We know that this is a turbulent environment, and we are prepared to take knockbacks and work our absolute balls off in order to make this work.”
Looking towards the future is a recurrent theme that comes from talking with the boys, partly because they are so young, with the whole of their twenties ahead of them, and also because of the positive mental attitude so apparent within the band. “We would love to incorporate more EDM and experiment with new styles.” Marcus adds, “We just want to keep creating music that we love and are proud to put out. We are working on our first EP at the moment so we can’t wait to have that finally complete – it’s been a long time in the making.”
Ru jokes about spreading himself too thin, referencing his side projects, an acoustic band called Driphead with Will, as well as another band called The Rift, “Why have one project when you can have three?”
It is clear that these guys are genuinely good friends who enjoy what they do, “We did a cover of A Day to Remember’s ‘Downfall of us all’ and me and Ru swapped, so I played bass, Ru was on lead vocals, so drunk, it was so fun.” Marcus said. Royal Ascent drip with energy on and offstage and are a talented group of young men who enjoy making and playing their own music, aiming to one day dominate a genre that is still fairly untouched in the mainstream music scene.
