This past Friday, Dutch trio Paceshifters delivered their fourth album – ‘Waiting To Derail’. A cocktail of straight-up anthemic rock with hints of heavy grunge and snarling punk, the three-piece deliver an adrenaline-fuelled set of songs.
For example, ‘Strangers’ is a gritty, razor-sharp rollercoaster while ‘Unfolded Pieces’ and ‘My Gateway’ sees Paceshifters tip their collective hats to 90’s alt-rock. As for songs such as ‘Yearning Desire’ and ‘Dead Eyes’, it’s clear they have the potential to reach a bigger audience.
Having produced a well-balanced, mixed back of rock bangers, they’re currently on tour in the UK supporting Frank Iero. As they travel up and down the country, we asked Paceshifters to pick out five records that have shaped them along the way.
Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
Paul Dokman (bass, vocals): The sound and feel of this record is so cool and everyone in our band played this album so many times. We all especially love the dynamics the Smashing Pumpkins brought on this record. Heavy songs and slow, and loud and very quiet. When you only listen to the beginning of song one side A, ‘Cherub Rock’, you know what I mean. Jesper is especially a huge fan of Jimmy Chamberlin, because he always plays exactly what a song needs – an awesome drummer. We are always told everyone thinks we are grunge-influenced, but to be honest we think we are more influenced by a band like the Smashing Pumpkins but hey that was the 90s too.
Nirvana – Paradiso 1991
Seb Dokman (Guitar, Vocals): As a kid, I was a real big fan of Nirvana. Especially Kurt Cobain is a huge inspiration to me. I watched the ‘Paradiso 1991’ set on DVD (a bootleg) tons of times. I was crowd surfing on pillows through the living room and screaming made up words. And I wasn’t even born when they played the Paradiso show. It’s pretty cool that we had the honour of playing that exact live set, 25 years later in a huge sold out venue.
Hüsker Dü – Candy Apple Grey
Jesper Albers (Drums, Vocals): The cool thing with Hüsker Dü is that somehow they are able to start out with a very loud verse and then on the next verse it sounds even heavier. They always top the following verse. Unfortunately, Grant Hart recently passed away, a great songwriter… And besides that Sorry Somehow is one of our favourite songs to cover.
Supersuckers – The Evil Powers Of Rock ‘n’ Roll
Paul: When I was 16 years old and needed an internship for school, I was lucky enough to be able to get on the road with Supersuckers as a roadie. They taught me all the ins and outs of being in a rock n roll band on tour and I found out pretty soon it wasn’t an easy job but I loved it. So that didn’t stop me from trying to live that life. And when Seb (my brother) and I started the band and didn’t have enough songs to fill our set, we filled it up with some Supersuckers covers. And this album from the Supersuckers is just awesome from beginning to end.
Unfortunately a very true lyric for a lot of years already: Rock-n-Roll Records (Ain’t Selling This Year)
Whiskey Town – Strangers Almanac
Seb: It isn’t just all “loud” rock music what inspires us. We all also love music from, for example, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Ryan Adams too. It is no coincidence that our record is named after a Whiskey Town song (Ryan Adams was in Whiskey Town before going solo). So we just have to include this album.
‘Waiting to Derail’ by Paceshifters is out now on Hassle Records.
