Genre-bending quartet VRSTY have been blending metal riffs and R&B/pop sensibilities for the the last few years. With the new record, Levitate coming from Spinefarm Records next week VRSTY is about to be a major component on the playlists of music fans worldwide. As the band continues to pick up more steam on their way to Next Big Thing status, TGEFM was lucky to sit back with frontman Joey Varella in our Roll of the Dice series.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview! What should our readers know about the members of VRSTY, your history and your sound?
Thank you for having us. Well for starters we're all super lame people lol all we do is play video games & pray that we get more tour offers. I (Joey) started the band a few years ago solo and pretty much asked a bunch of my friends if they wanted to help me play some music I wrote live (lol). As for our sound, we have no idea what we're doing, we just kinda do whatever.
What album or band or significant singles made you go “Yeah, this is what I want to do” Not just an influence but who or what was the catalyst?
Michael Jackson. I remember listening to the album Off The Wall & immediately being drawn in. I would spend all day singing the songs on that record. One day I saw a vhs of one of his concerts and was like yeah… I wanna do that.
Over the last few years, VRSTY has been garnering a lot of (well-deserved) hype as one of the “next big things” in our scene. How is that high standard playing into the writing and/touring process? Does the high bar you've set for yourselves affect your creativity?
It hasn't played into it at all (lol) we really don't pay attention to what's said about us or anything like that. We appreciate it & love that people believe that about us but we always maintained the idea that regardless of what's said about us, we should all just be focused on having fun and making our live shows/music fun for people to get into.
VRSTY is a collective of genres. Is the diversity of sound intentional during the songwriting process? How has the blending of hard rock and R&B been received in a live setting?
Not intentional at all actually. It's honestly very random. So I'm pretty much an R&B singer but I'm a metal guitarist (lol). When I write music, I always just start with guitar things and never worry about how I'm gonna sing over it or anything like that. It kinda just happens. In a live setting it goes over really well, I think people don't expect that to come out of us when they see us up on the stage.
One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?
So many hahaha. Nevertel, Colorblind, MVSSIE, LEXXE, Monochromatic Black, Divide The Fall, I could be here forever naming bands.
What's next for VRSTY?
More touring hopefully? We've got a new record coming out October 27th and I've also already started writing more music. We honestly just wanna be on tour forever having fun.
Was there anything I missed that you'd like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
I think you got all the good stuff besides the fact that I collect plushies (lol), I'm addicted.
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at , and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed's musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he's self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
