The Fall of Troy

By Rob La Gatta

Photo by Aya Sato

Mukilteo, Washington may be little more than a small Northern community located along the calm Puget Sound waterfront, but that never stopped The Fall of Troy from finding something to get crazy about. Young, loud, and full of aggression, this technical three-piece has already carved out a unique niche for itself somewhere between indie rock and hardcore punk.

“Kids don’t really have too much to do, so either you do a bunch of drugs or play music, or you do both,” says Andrew Forsman, drummer for the trio, speaking of his hometown. Venues are nonexistent, he notes, so when it was time for a show the band would usually make the journey to bigger cities like Seattle, 25 miles south.

But the mentality of The Fall of Troy — a group that will surely be riding its way to the top with its latest release, Manipulator, out May 1 — seems to be one rooted in the “do it yourself or it won’t get done” school of thought.

The band recorded its self-titled debut while still in high school. It was done in one take over spring break when Forsman was a junior and guitarist/vocalist Thomas Erak and bassist/vocalist Tim Ward were seniors.

“We recorded it at this place called Hall of Justice,” said Forsman. “It was owned by one of the guitar players for Death Cab For Cutie, Chris Walla, and it’s just kind of like a trashy little studio. But it was really fun for our first album.”

Though the album was distributed on a limited basis to record stores nationwide, the group relied on peers at school and in the local community to spread their sound. The band had already built up a reputation under its previous moniker, The Thirty Years War (which was the trio plus another guitarist, Mike Munro). Though the group released two EPs, Munro eventually left, and Erak, Ward and Forsman chose to carry on as a trio.

“I was kind of bummed when Mike decided that he didn’t want to do it anymore,” Forsman says. “But then I realized that with the amount of skill that Thomas has, it could actually be cooler to be a three-piece and try to make insane amounts of noise than be a four-piece like a lot of other bands and kind of be lumped in with that.”

That noise caught the attention of Equal Vision Records, who signed the group while its members were still attempting higher education around the area. The effects of signing to a label of this size took hold almost immediately, and the band’s touring/recording schedule forced them all to abandon their academic pursuits.

Last year, Equal Vision rereleased the band’s self-titled album, though it was not remastered, rerecorded or remixed. The reason? The original tapes have since been recorded over by another band, destroying any possibility of a different version ever seeing the light of day.

The Fall of Troy’s latest album, Manipulator, the follow-up to Equal Vision’s 2005 release Doppelganger, sees a departure from the group’s traditional sound — if such a word can be even be used to describe the frantic noise The Fall of Troy is known for. Still present is the technical madness that has helped the band gain notoriety, but listeners can also expect stylistic additions that include a blues song and what Forsman describes as a “really poppy, Weezer-esque” piece.

“I think we’re just trying to be better songwriters as opposed to ... wankers,” he says. “We want to play music that’s technically challenging, but we also don’t want that to take away from the song.”

Though The Fall of Troy are still a bunch of young twentysomethings trying to find their place in the crowded Puget Sound music scene, their proactive attitude has already helped launch them into the national spotlight, headlining a U.S. tour earlier this year. Soon, the band’s ability to continue crafting songs that defy traditional genres should be making people utterly rock out nationwide.

www.thefalloftroy.com