Pledge: Post Hardcore / Indie from Portugal
Interview conducted July 15, 2021
By Dan Locke
Born in 2018, Portugal’s Pledge play what we might call a modern and fresh post-hardcore with no strings attached, influenced by what each and every member brings to the table. The band comprised of Hugo Martins/guitar (Larkin, On Equal, Killing Frost); Sofia Magalhães/vocals (We Are The Damned, Hicks Kinison, Vaee Solis); Vítor Vaz/ bass (Mr Miyagi, Dead Academy); Filipe Romariz/drums (Verbian, Local Trap, Lodge); Vasco Reis/guitar and synths (Verbian, Abnóxio) made their debut with the EP “Resilience”, which was recorded in a DIY style and was mastered by Chris Paccou (Napalm Death, Carcass, Brujeria)
Pledge (are)
Vocals: Sofia M.L.
Guitar: Hugo Martins
Guitar and synths: Vasco Reis
Bass: Vítor Vaz
Drums: Filipe Romari
How did you discover music?
Filipe: I’ve always been fascinated with people expressing themselves to an audience, through all forms, not just music. Since I was a little kid, I could feel some sort of a magic feeling whenever I would watch a theater play, a dancing show or even a football game. I felt as if the performers were some kinds of holy creatures, sent by the gods to cheer and amuse the people with their charisma and self-expression, to wipe away the sadness of their mundane lives, shedding some light in darkness or even, some darkness in light. Those things cannot be explained through words and, even though I didn’t quite understand what I was feeling at the time, I certainly knew, unconsciously, that I would be doing something like that one day, that I belonged to that world. Music was always present in my childhood as I grew up, as my father had lots of records and the majority of those records were played in the car when we traveled. From Carlos Paião to Spanish flamenco, from José Cid to Status Quo. There are no musicians in my close family and my father wasn’t, ‘per se’, a rocker or any specific type of music aficionado, he just loved music and bought records. The repertoire would be very rich and diverse and that, certainly, shaped my intellect around all those different sounds and expressions. When I was about six years old, I remember there was one record that, definitely, got me hooked, and that was the first and only Mamonas Assassinas self-titled album. My grandfather César brought it from Brazil. They were a young Brazilian band that tragically got involved in a plane crash, killing the whole band, shocking the whole country and even overseas. This whole horrible story intensified the ‘epicenes’ of their music in my infant’s brain and I would listen to it over and over again. I’ve always associated music with ideas. To me, music has to have some meaning or some context, not just sounds, and noises.
How did you start to write music?
Filipe: It was only until I was about 13 years old that I really wanted to be a musician. I first wanted to play the guitar, but as soon as I sat on a drum stool in front of a drum set, something happened at that moment and I knew I was a drummer. In fact, I was an avid consumer of rock and metal magazines from then on, and I would fantasize about being on a stage playing to thousands of people. My first real experience and, actually the one that shaped this crazy journey permanently, was my first ‘real’ band, Mais Uma Queda, a skate/trash/punk band. With that band, I played my first show and I got freaking hooked, for life! From then on, I played in a few hardcore bands and those experiences shaped my style of playing my instrument and in that journey, I met lots of beautiful people and had lots of beautiful experiences. Along the way, I gladly forced myself to learn some jazz drumming and tried to incorporate all the traditional rules and chops into my punk/hardcore essence of playing, always with the objective of adding something interesting and original to the music I was making. Nowadays, I approach music in a more organic kind of way, I really value live music as my main vehicle of expressing myself, alongside my bandmates. I want people to feel some deep emotion with my music, the same way I would feel it when I was a kid watching someone performing live, and I still feel it now. All of this in a simple and direct approach, even if it’s not so intellectual or dense. In fact, what I really want, is to make people dance, and that’s it.
Your band is from Portugal. How did your band form?
Filipe: The band form in 2018 releasing an EP, ‘Resilience’, and it served as an introduction of the band. In fact, we are a pretty recent band and that EP was our ‘battering ram’ into the doors of the world and, because of that, we hold it in a very special place in our hearts. The songs were entirely written and produced by our guitarist Hugo Martins who then, got in touch with Sofia, to write the lyrics and concepts and to be the voice of the band and with Vítor Vaz to be the bass player. I actually wasn’t even in the band at the time of the recordings. I got in the band right after they recorded the EP. From our very first show, we always felt great feedback from the audience and that gave us more confidence to go on, always raising the bar, musically and technically. There’s no turning back now. We released two music videos supporting that record, for the songs ‘The Peter, The Wolf’ and ‘Doom and Redemption’ which you can find on YouTube. In the meantime, Vasco Reis, who is also my ‘brother from another mother’ and my bandmate in another band called Verbian, joined the band as a second guitarist and more recently, as a synth player too.
How did you get your bands name?
Filipe: Hugo was searching for a name and while was reading a Washington Post article the word PLEDGE came out and……
What is modern and fresh post-hardcore without strings attached?
Filipe: It’s our album ‘Haunted Visions’, obviously, we wanted to take it up a notch, in terms of writing, performance and sound quality and we believe that we accomplished what we wanted in those topics. Basically, in ‘Haunted Visions’ we consolidated everything we learned since the beginning of the band and did our best to improve as musicians, individually, and also to improve our concepts and ideas, trying to make a meaningful record using modern synths etc…
What was your first performance at like?
Filipe: In 2018 we had the luck to be part of the SonicBlast Lineup, a huge festival that happens every year in Portugal, so the show went really well and the word spread out…When we are on the stage, we take no shit and we face the audience with absolutely no fear, it is like we are possessed, in a good way, and that adds to our charisma. That is the main thing that makes us different from some other artists and that is evident when you go to a Pledge show. We will definitely leave an impression on you and you will, for sure, want to know more about us and you will want to be present in the next show, even if this is not your favorite genre of music.
What makes a good songwriter?
Filipe: give you an example, to me personally, when writing my part in this album, I actually got inspired, in a more direct way, by the riffs and ideas from Hugo Martins, which, in my opinion, is a good songwriter, with whom I share a very simple and instinctive way of making music and which also made me dive deep in my drumming dictionary and musical trunk. Besides the music itself, and other musicians, the inspirations to make music come from a lot of other sources like cinema, nature itself, people and their peculiarities, or sometimes just a photograph or a painting, and that spark of inspiration usually comes in when I least expect it.
What is the process of writing your music?
Filipe: Usually, people gather in the rehearsal room and the songs are born there as they appear. The band is divided between Viana do Castelo and Porto, so, the distance is a thing we must take into consideration, but we have found our method and we are getting used to it. In fact, the next album is already being shaped in the same way. Hugo, as the songwriter and riff maker gives the first ignition sparks into what are going to be the ideas and main structures of the songs, so, he records those ideas on his computer and then sends them to me. I, then, listen to all of those, get inspired, and start creating the drums and grooves for those ideas. I try to serve the songs in the first place, trying to give it what it actually needs and not just what I want to put out as a drummer. I record the drums and send them back to Hugo. The song may suffer from some tempo changes or little structural alterations so, Hugo records the guitars again with that in consideration. Of course, this is a back-and-forth process, we are always communicating and remain flexible when it comes to altering our own parts if the song is needing it. Then it’s Vasco time to create his textures and to enhance the melodies, besides the guitars, he now has the freedom to explore some electronic parts and synths in some parts. Now we have something that finally looks like an album. Sofia now listens to it, gets inspired, and starts working on the concepts and lyrics, song titles, album name, and all the lyrical content of the record. She finally gives life and meaning to those songs. Vítor now takes on his four-string role and records the bass lines for the record. Of course, then comes the best part, which is testing it out in the rehearsing room, where we actually have fun and turn these ones and zeros into muscle and sweat and strings moving or skins vibrating.
You recorded your debut album” Haunted Visions with plans for 2020 release, then the virus hit. What did you think at first?
Filipe: We all suffered from this situation, not only as a band but also personally. Two of us lost our jobs and life is been teaching us some lessons, I must say. Right now, we all can see some light at the end of the tunnel, this is what we want to do, there is no turning back. As a band, as I stated before, we have seen all 2020 shows canceled and that was a big disappointment. Playing live is the essence of this band, so, you can imagine how that has affected us, not only on a practical level but also mentally, in all of us. It affected me personally not playing my music live, and I think I can speak for the band and say that we all felt really down for not doing what we most love to do. ‘Haunted Visions’ was supposed to be released last year, but we had to postpone it, giving the circumstances. In fact, when we released the video for the first single ‘Wrong Planet Syndrome’, we did not quite know how serious the situation would become later on. When we look back now, I think the song and the video gain a whole other symbolic meaning, given the time it was released and, actually the content of the song, which has almost become magical to all of us. It’s been a difficult time to be a band but it is also a time for resilience, the name of our first EP and the motto for all of us as musicians and as human beings. Pledge is here to stay and we are one hundred percent sure of that.
For your video “Wrong Planet Syndrome”, tell me about the making of the video?
Sofia: Well, I started by analyzing my own lyrics, for when I´m in the process of writing, I usually don’t think too much about what I’m writing about. Then I started listening to the song on repeat, especially during car trips. There’s something about being in motion while imagining different scenarios that really get my mind flowing creatively. So, some images started popping in my head, of empty streets and street lights, then an image of our silhouettes playing against a sunrise sky.
I talked to the boys about it, and they also liked the idea. So, I had to search for a rooftop to make it happen. Then we talked to André about it and asked him what he thought of it. He also liked the idea, so we booked a few nights with him to bring the concept to life.
It was pretty chill out, to be honest. Things just happened in a very natural and relaxed way.
Why André Cardoso as the director of all your videos?
Sofia: André is a very special person, with a great cinematographic view of the world. Plus, he is passionate about what he does, and it’s really easy to connect with him at a more personal level. He is into the same kind of music that we are, and he really liked our music as well, so it was easy to find a common ground.
He has a great capacity of understanding my weird way of putting things into words, and he is great at transforming concepts into images.
Since that’s not so easy to achieve with filmmakers, André became a part of the team in no time.
Sofia what hand did you have in the directing of the video Doom & Redemption?
Sofia: I came up with a brainstorming that could somehow illustrate my lyrics in a symbolic way.
Then I was inspired by the concept of a movie by M.Night Shamalyan, “The Village”, and mixed it with the dystopic narrative of George Orwell, to come up with our own narrative for the video.
In a way, I´m crossing the forest in search of my freedom, but I don’t know what lies ahead of the forest. My mission is to get to its edge.
I´m unaware that I’m being tracked down at first, but then I realize I’m being filmed by drones and surveillance cameras. The falcon, named Jonas, comes up as a symbol of nature, but also as a sort of “guardian spirit” and as a symbol of the sun (Egyptian Horus).
It is also known that the mythical Amazons used Falcons to hunt, and I really liked that reference too, for it integrates the concept of warrior women into the video, which is something that I find fascinating and even necessary to refer to.
What is your favorite track on your album?
Sofia: Well, that’s a hard one. I think probably “Ocean’s Depth”. It really gets me every time and it was quite a purge for me. I was experiencing some really intense feelings when I wrote it, and I was going through some really confusing times emotionally wise. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about them, because I couldn’t even explain them to anyone, so I wrote about my experience of contemplating the feelings that were arousing, without the necessity of really explaining them to myself.
What are you’re feeling about streaming music?
Filipe: It’s a new era, a technological revolution, the age of globalization, we know that Haunted Visions was bought from people around the world due to the digital platforms so maybe that is a boost for bands.
Digital vs. vinyl?
That’s not a question 😉
What song from the past is in your mind right now? Moreover, what is the meaning that song means to you?
Hugo: Deadly Rhythm from Refused. Is a piece intelligently composed and adorned by different styles of music in which the musicians perform the instruments near perfection and lyrically talk about the biggest problem that started to drive the world towards decline.
What have you been doing with your self-quarantine?
Hugo: We’ve written a new record that we’re looking forward to getting into the studio and letting the magic flow
