UPAS

UPAS is metal with a twist. It's rooted in metallic grooves but enriched with funk and folk and rock and alternative and ... well, a lot of stuff. You're about to get thrashed by creativity. Metal is a growing genre that exhibits more fresh ideas every day and UPAS is one of the purveyors of the new idioms in metal. Tossing in a variety of influences and melding them together with talent and polish makes for songs that are deeply textured and startling in their originality. This is metal to motivate you. UPAS is Rusty Forgey, vocals and guitar; Justin Jokela, guitar; Mike Voss, bass; Ty Rosal, guitar; and Mike Clayton, drums.

More About UPAS

Music is as real as the concrete world around you. Yet, says UPAS, it rises above the everyday, surpassing absolutes, become more than mere reality. Every emotion is expressed in, absorbed by and emitted through music. This enables it to be a form of therapy; it can cathartically function as an expression of one's anger, providing a way to deal with strong emotion, whatever it may be. It is life and pain, the totality of expression in sublime form. UPAS is providing more than entertainment with its music. It's providing an essential social service and doing a damn good job.

UPAS believes in putting one's all into music. How else will the music have its full force, say its full message, provide full catharsis, spark the best mosh frenzy – how else will it rock like it's supposed to. Every time this band plays it hits like its the last show on Earth. This band likes to play loud. Music and metal are integral parts of this band's existence; music is a direct extension of their creative minds, reaching out from within them and handing energy and positive rage over to audiences that are ready to thrash themselves into a frothy frenzy. What else would you expect to come from full-blown passion? Without music, there would be no options for life. It would be a case of go crazy or die.

UPAS refuses to erect artificial boundaries around itself. This is a band about breaking walls, resetting parameters, creating new paradigms. Originality is required for every UPAS song; these guys shoot for purity and distinction every time. A UPAS song sounds like a UPAS song. These are free spirits all about finding a new way to say what needs to be said.

It's important to remember that as much hard work and intensity goes into the writing and performance of UPAS songs, it all comes down to having fun in the end. UPAS wants to enjoy life and their songs are a companion, a direct pathway, to having fun, getting the most out of life. Life is short and should be enjoyed. That kind of enthusiasm is all over every song that comes out of the UPAS creative processes. It's time to blow open the music scene! \m/ UPAS