Sentinel Complex is Bournemouth-based duo Jamie Everett & Josh Grayson. Fusing traditional orchestral sound with modern electronic elements into an aggressive rock/metal mix, Sentinel Complex has truly captured the sound of the singularity to come.
With their work featured in both film and video game media, Sentinel Complex aims to break down the walls and bring together all forms of media into one shared universe. Here is our introduction to Sentinel Complex, with both Jamie and Josh filling in the blanks.
DGM: What are the origins of the band, and how long have you been playing together?
SC: Back in 2014, we started making music together for multiple indie game and film projects, and after a while we started developing a style we both loved to write in. Shortly after, we began writing our first EP under our original name, Nova Prospect. It dawned on us, however, that the name would probably get us into some legal heat, so we rebranded as Sentinel Complex in 2016, and since then it’s been pretty smooth sailing! We have been developing our sound ever since, and have released two studio albums and a number of singles with more on the way.
DGM: How did you feel performing your first gig? And how was it?
Jamie: I was always in bands growing up, so my first “gig” was in the early years of secondary school. I never really felt nervous performing, so when I joined my first band outside of school it came pretty naturally! I’ve always loved performing, so I guess the first one kinda just set that off for me!
DGM: What should people expect when they check the band out? How would you describe yourselves?
SC: Essentially, don’t expect one genre. We are a metal band at heart, but we have so many influences from other styles like electronic music, industrial and orchestral pieces, film scores. Each single we release is always a new mixture depending on what sort of thing was inspiring us when we wrote it.
DGM: The new music scene is bursting at the seams with fresh talent. In what ways do you feel a band has to stand out from the others trying to build a name?
SC: When it comes to new and upcoming bands, it can be hard for a new act to stand out because basically everything has already been done! This is why we think that if a band tries to branch out and make different styles of content rather than just music, it gives a lot more depth to the band as more of a “brand” as such, and would also give a number of different ways for fans to engage!
DGM: What are you working on at the moment that people can check out?
SC: Currently we have a number of different singles we are working on. We aim to release a compilation album in a year’s time of everything we will have put out. If anyone wants to follow what we are doing, we are releasing demos on our individual SoundClouds of the ideas we are working with, and we are always posting stories to our Facebook and Instagram accounts with updates!
DGM: What band out there at the moment do you feel that you would be best suited to open for?
SC: To be honest there are many bands that come to mind; the most suited in our opinion though would be bands like Cypecore, Fear Factory, Nine Inch Nails and The Anix. We would love to open for Swarm too as we are huge fans, and he’s probably the only electronic artist that could get away with having a metal band as an opener!
DGM: Who do you feel will be the next band to break out?
SC: Probably a band like Sleep Token. They are such an underrated band who deserve a whole lot more attention than they are getting right now.
DGM: What are your first musical memories? And what was the light bulb moment that made you go “I want to do that!”
Jamie: I grew up in a family of musical people and have always been around it, so I was sure to get into music at some point! It was watching a friend of mine play his guitar when I was about eight that really got me wanting to do music myself though, and since then it has just been a big part of my life. When I started actually studying music, I found myself deep in the rabbit hole of recording, mixing, and learning to play other instruments. Without music, I have no idea what I would be doing. Before I started doing music more seriously I wanted to be an engineer, so it’s probably something along those lines!
Josh: My earliest memory of music in my life would have to be sitting in my nan’s living room in Oxford with my uncle. He had MTV2 on when Marilyn Manson’s video for Dope Show came on and I was transfixed by the sounds and images. I have always seen myself as an artistic type, always playing around with media. I looked up to people like Clown (from Slipknot) and Manson, and due to following artists like them for years, to me music became like painting time with sound.
DGM: What was the last gig that you attended as a fan?
SC: The last one we attended was seeing Periphery in Bristol last year. We finally saw them after about five years of missing their last few UK shows, which are few and far between as it is!
DGM: What is the album that you have in your collection or Spotify playlist that would surprise most people?
Josh: I was gifted a beautiful Jimi Hendrix ‘Electric Ladyland’ Deluxe Edition. It’s a big picture book with unreleased home sessions and demos alongside a digital remaster from the two-track master tapes. As for streaming, I would have to nominate my recent rediscovery of Duran Duran.
Jamie: For me, it’s probably eastern artists like Lay and Taemin. A friend of mine introduced me to similar artists and they’re so goddamn cool. But, yeah, either that or the sheer amount of synthwave and darksynth on my Spotify account, as opposed to the usual stuff I listen to.
DGM: What are your plans for the remainder of 2020?
SC: As lockdown is still mostly in place, we are just focusing on writing as much material as possible so we have a good amount of songs that we can release steadily over the year. Like we mentioned earlier, eventually we want to put them together into an album. We are also working with a few different artists on several things so keep an eye out for those!
DGM: How active are you on social media and where can people connect with you?
SC: We are very responsive when it comes to social media and there are a good amount of ways that people can follow us and get in touch! The most common ones are Instagram and Facebook, but we also have our own website: www.sentinelcomplex.co.uk which has all of our platforms linked under one page!