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Muscle Memory - Sound In The Signals Interview


I recently had the opportunity to interview Jacob of Muscle Memory. We discussed how they started the band, musical influences, their plans for new music, performing live, and more. Check it out below. 


First, thanks for the interview.


Thank you for having us :3


Can you tell me how you started the band for those who may be unfamiliar with it? How did you become interested in music? 


I’ve been interested in music since I discovered Green Day when I was in 5th grade, and Jared and I both picked up guitar around a year after that, but neither of us really started taking music super seriously until we went to go see The Wonder Years on their Upsides/Suburbia 10 year anniversary tour in 2022. From there we started getting much more involved in our local music scene and started really putting our all into writing music, and that just kind of snowballed into what it is today.


Jared (our guitarist) and I (Jacob, lead vocals/rhythm guitar) were in this pop punk band in high school and when I left for college we split from it, but we both wanted to continue making music together. We ended up rallying together a couple of our friends from high school together to come play with us in my uncle’s old shed that had a drumkit and just enough room for a couple amps and the four of us. We started off just messing around and playing a bunch of Fall Out Boy, Free Throw, and Hot Mulligan covers before deciding to refine our sound and start writing our own shit. We’ve had a couple of lineup changes since then, we just brought in a new bassist like 3 weeks ago in fact, but since then we’ve just been playing on any bills we can and writing as much music as possible.


You describe yourselves as “angry emo”. Can you tell us more about the meaning behind that description and some of your biggest influences? 


The term “angry emo” is kind of just a silly bit that we thought would be funny to put in our bio but I feel like it actually does capture the post-hardcore element of our sound pretty well. Muscle Memory songs tend to be on the faster, more aggressive side with a lot of screaming and a lot of yelling in terms of vocals while still maintaining some of the softer elements of emo music. Some of the biggest and most obvious influences are bands like Touché Amoré, Arm’s Length, and One Step Closer since we tend to lean into the more hardcore side of emo. Going off that we take pretty heavy inspiration from a number of hardcore bands like Verse, Defeater, and Poison The Well while meshing that influence with chiller emo bands like The Hotelier and Charmer.


Do you have plans to release music anytime soon? Is there any chance that you’re working on an EP or album? If so, what can you tell us so far? 


We have an EP that we are currently planning to record this summer and release hopefully pretty soon after that. We’ve been on and off writing these songs since around December 2023 so it's been a long time coming and hopefully it’ll be worth the wait. On top of that there are a bunch of new ideas and songs bouncing around that we also plan on fleshing out and releasing sooner rather than later, and these ones are so far higher energy and heavier than what’ll be on that first EP so I’m looking forward to those being finished enough to play live.


I watched some of the live footage from the Progamme show you played and it looked like a great show. What can people expect from your upcoming shows?


Emo is kind of in a weird place right now in terms of shows and the energy of said shows, and what I hope to do with Muscle Memory shows is bring back some of the edge and energy that older post-hardcore shows used to have. We heavily encourage moshing and two stepping to our stuff, we wrote the songs with dancing and the live experience in mind. Admittedly Muscle Memory shows have been pretty few and far between but we hope to fix that and be able to play a lot more in the future.


Do you have a favorite song you like to play live? Why? 


As of right now, the song is untitled but it was the 3rd song in our setlist as of right now. It’s the fastest and heaviest one we’ve got and it’s a blast to play live. It’s got the only dedicated mosh part on our first EP and crowds seem to respond pretty well to it which is sick to see.


Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have anything else that you would like to add?


I wanna thank anyone who’s ever come out to support us or said any kind words about our band, it really means a lot and it's really heartwarming to see all the support for a band that doesn’t even have any music out yet (soon I promise.)  Also f*** ICE and any d***heads who stand with them.


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Bluesky


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