Phoenix Rising excited to open up for Seether

By JOHN BENSON

Entertainment@vindy.com

When local modern-rock band Phoenix Rising was pegged as an opener for national act Seether on Friday at Club Gossip in Austintown, its band members were ecstatic.

“This is absolutely our biggest show to date,” said singer-guitarist Armand DePaul, a 2005 Ursuline High School graduate studying business administration at Youngstown State University. “It’s definitely surreal to be playing with Seether. Like two years ago, we were in a kitchen playing riffs and throwing stuff together. And now we’re opening up for one of our favorite bands that we’ve been listening to since high school. It’s wild to think about it, that it is possible and things like this do happen.”

Phoenix Rising is far from an overnight success. With more than 50 shows to its credit over the past two years, the quartet — DePaul, Kevin Merrell (guitar), Matt Hodge (bass) and Cory Tacsik (drums) — released its debut EP, “Seeking the Way,” this past January. A full-length record is planned for early 2011.

In looking back at the band’s coming together, DePaul feels as though it was fate. This also explains the band’s moniker.

“Our guitar player, bass player and drummer have been jamming together for six years,” DePaul said. “And then I met them in 2008 through a mutual friend. They were calling themselves Phoenix Down, and when they met me they said we have a singer now, we should be Phoenix Rising. And when I looked up phoenix in the dictionary, it said it’s an eternal creature. It’s immortal in the sense that it recreates itself and reforms itself out of its own ashes, and a new one comes up and lives forever. So that’s a pretty cool meaning.”

DePaul said the band plans on playing its EP material, as well as choice covers from Breaking Benjamin (“So Cold”), 10 Years (“Wasteland”) and Trapt (“Echo”). Trying to get DePaul to discuss his group’s influences, as well as comparisons, proves difficult. Finally, he opens up with jovial results.

“I’d say I’m a jazz head, and the other guys are rockers,” DePaul said. “So we have influences like Porcupine Tree, Incubus, 12 Stones. I like to say we sound like ourselves. I guess you find some elements of any band in every group, but whether or not you agree is another story. I think we’re Incubus-meets-Creed. One of my buddies was joking around, saying, ‘You guys are like a Creed with talent.’”

DePaul quickly added, “That’s a compliment, for sure.”