VIBEANT MUSIC ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Deadlite
A unique 3 piece Post-hardcore/metal band hailing from Toronto composed of Nyl, Andrei and Allen recently dropped the music video to their highly anticipated song, Selina. We sat down with them to learn more about how they came together, the process of working on the Song Selina, and what to look forward to in the future. Join us as we discover Deadlite.
Can please every member introduce themselves, where you all grew up, what is your Canada Story and how the 3 of you got together?
Nyl:
Hey. I’m Nyl. I yell, play guitar, and write for the band. Before Canada, I was living in Bulacan mostly, my parents have decided later on to move here to Toronto for a chance at a better life and way better opportunities. So after I finished high school, waited for a few months and we flew to Toronto, arrived here in November of 2009.
The three of us got together back in 2016, we tried starting a project that didn’t really work out. I knew Andrei first, met him back in 2010-2011, we both clicked for our love of Kamikazee & Story of the Year and that’s how we got stuck with each other. We started writing together around 2014, around the time I also started doing production work. We demoed out a bunch of riffs and songs for 2 years. Fast forward to 2016, Andre has been jamming with a bunch of different people, one of them was Allen. I met him through one of their jams. The rest of the guys told me that Allen can sing his ass off so I invited everyone to hang out at my crib later on. Andrei told me about a song that he and Allen were working on, they played it for me in acoustic and it blew me away that I had to ask that if we can create a full band version of the song, and from there, I became a member of that band and that song became our debut single “Gunshot (Things That I have)”.
We tried working out that project but due to scheduling conflicts and lineup changes, we had to rethink our plan of action. The three of us didn’t want to stop working with each other and writing music together so thus, Deadlite was born.
Andrei:
My name’s Andrei; I play guitar, write and sing for the band. For most of my younger years, till I was 7, I was living in Luzon. Mainly, Nueva Ecija with my mom and siblings. Then my mom decided to go abroad the same as my dad, who was in Qatar at the time but in Hong Kong. Since our parents were out of the Philippines earning money for us, our grandparents on my mom’s side took us in and brought us to General Santos City, where I lived most of my elementary, high school, and little college years right up until my mom brought us all here in Canada. Hats off to you, ma.
The band really got together when Allen introduced “Gunshot” to Nyl and me at a party held up at Nyl’s place. Beforehand, Allen and I were in a cover band, playing songs we loved and knew playing. Nyl would just come along to hang, mosh and sometimes play with us in The Sound. Shoutout to Paul and Scott Thomson of The Sound Rehearsal Factory for making us feel like we’re home whenever we came by and jammed in one of their rooms. )The song really gave us a sense of direction and pushed us on become not just a band, but a unit.
Allen:
Hi, I’m Allen; I am the lead vocalist of Deadlite. Unlike Andrei and Nyl who do everything for the band, I only have 1 job. And that is to be a proper frontman for the band. Yeah, I help Andrei with writing from time to time, and Nyl with setting up equipment and just generally lift stuff. But yeah, mostly singing my ass off with them.
I was born in Sta. Barbara Pangasinan (my mom’s province). During my childhood years, I was traveling with my mom back and forth, going from Pangasinan to Manila to Bicol (my dad’s province). My dad took care of me and my siblings through grade 1 to grade 4, and this was the time my mom went abroad here in Canada. I came here when I was in grade 5, May of 2006, and the very first thing I did was climb a tree. Back then in my hometown, that’s usually what we call “playing outside”, which is to climb guava trees and cerise trees. So, my mom straight up yelled at me to climb down the tree in our backyard and told me, Allen, we don’t do that here. The police are going to arrest you if they see you up there. So yeah, my mom taught me everything from holding my knives and fork properly, chewing with my mouth closed, elbows off the table, no double dipping I can go on forever. Saying all these now, reflecting on my younger self I’d say I was… primitively barbaric.
At the age of 12, I started to enjoy listening to music. My mom got me a walkman, with a bunch of CDs, including the Shrek 2 motion picture soundtrack. I loved that cd. The biggest struggle of it was, I couldn’t listen to music and walk at the same time. I would put my walkman inside my cargo pants pocket, and every time I took a step or two, the music would stop and lag every 3 seconds. Ah the irony. But that didn’t stop me, growing up discovering the internet, I would download songs and eventually, it was only Linkin Park I listened to most of my high school years. That was the beginning of my exposure, and passion for music.
In my teenage years, my first job was working at Mcdonald’s. After my shift on my walk home, a random dude approached me from the back and told me Mayday Parade just released a new album. He figured that I’m a fan because I was wearing those rubber bands from Hot Topic that had band names on them. A couple of months later I attended my first concert, which was Mayday Parade, and upon exiting the venue, another random guy was trying to catch my attention yelling “Hey yo!!”. I wasn’t sure if it was me because I don’t recognize the guy, but it turns out it was that same guy that approached me after my shift from McDonald’s. The coincidence was mind-blowing. After that, we exchanged information on the subway on our way home. A few weeks later, he hit me up and wanted to jam. So I met up with him with his other friends. The first thing I noticed was this really wide, full-on smile coming from one of his friends and that was the first time I met Andrei. And so we were jamming our cover songs in the studio, and another one of his friends entered the room eyeing me on how I played my guitar (I was on guitars at the time, and it was my first time playing the guitar while standing up LOL). Then he picked up the bass and started wilding out, jumping around, and playing our songs. I stared at him with amazement, and that’s how I first met Nyl.
3 Piece Post Hardcore band, that’s what really caught my attention when I first started following your group. How do you make that work and how are you blending each other’s influences into one?
“We have this open-door policy when it comes to ideas and influences. We acknowledge and use our musical differences to our writing advantage. Andre’s influences when we started writing together was ranging from Deftones and Kamikazee and Allen had that rock radio and top 40’s influence and I am a metalhead that also enjoys reggae, hip-hop, and a bunch of other eclectic kinds of tunes. So at the end of it really, we never aimed to write according to what genre we considered ourselves or what’s everyone doing but we aimed to write for the sake of the music and writing itself.” Nyl said.
“Humility, patience, smart/hard work, and pure creative freedom; We all have this agreement to always “serve the song” and not our musical egos, especially since we’re all coming from different musical avenues. Basically, we decide what would go really well with the vibe of a track. “Head’s Up, Dear” is a really good example of this. That song has been on a continuous revision since 2017. We have made it as heavy as possible but it’s just not working with the vibe of the song until recently when we diverted from what we were doing and just went with a more solemn take. But in doing so, we have found the right feel for it.” Andrei followed.
“Nyl and Andrei just have great tastes in music man. Nyl feeds me with his dose of metal and dope ass bangers. And Andrei feeds me with his “simple is more”, soul singing, and other surprisingly super interesting genres of music. I happen to love licking both sides of the Oreo if you know what I mean haha. But I’m usually more of an all-around kind of guy.
We all love Deftones. Nyl’s influences include Architects, Crystal Lake, Silverstein. Andrei’s influences include Loathe, Frank Ocean, and J Cole. My influences include Thousand Foot Krutch, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, and The Maine. Nyl and Andrei write their riffs, Andrei and I write the lyrics and melodies. Nyl works on music production, Andrei and I work on giving good takes at the vocal booth. Everyone is a support pillar of one another, and it just works so well for us. We’re aiming to be even more collaborative on our future projects.” Allen remarked.
What is the song that would be an introduction to Deadlite and why?
Nyl:
I got 2 answers for this question. Personally, I think our song ‘Breathe Again’ would be a good intro to our band. Everyone’s voices and influences are really upfront within the song. The energy, riffs and overall vibe really caught what we are as a band.
On the other hand, “Gunshot” is what really brought the three of us together and the song has this very catchy ass chorus and gives out this rock anthem vibe.
Andrei:
Selina, our newest single; I believe this song is a great example of what we have to offer as a band. It has a balanced mix of the heavy and soft side of the band. Honestly, I can’t really choose. Arms Of Failure and Head’s Up, Dear are highly recommendable, too. AOF is a peek into our metal side while Head’s Up, Dear dwells into our other influences like shoe-gaze, lofi, hip hop and RnB. Whichever one chooses out of the three to listen first, is a good representation of the band. Gunshot and Breathe Again come to mind, too.
Allen:
That is a very good question. Deadlite takes on two sides of the spectrum, heavy post-hardcore and emo/punk soft-rock vibe. For me, I would say Captive would be the best intro for the band, since it’s the most balanced out of the two. We have not released it yet, but once we do, come back to this Article again and you’ll hear what I mean. If it is a song that we have right now, Gunshot (Things That I have) is holding that spot.
Can we talk about the new music video you dropped, talk about the experience of working on this music video? Walk us through how it came together.
Nyl:
Selina. Wow. What a roller coaster ride. The whole process of this song coming together felt like a snowball effect.
The concept of the video was born out of seeing the Great Hall Room in Faultylogik, which is owned by a good homie, Dan La when we had the Filcan Artists meet up there. We were assigned in that room, alongside these artists, Gee and Sienna.
We were sold on the place and got to work. We set up a meeting with our director, Matthew Guarassi ( Spectrelight Media), started brainstorming ideas and we ended talking about having a dancer or two, in the video. It took us a few days to lock down a dancer who’s crazy enough to create a choreography with our music. But we really got blessed that Sienna agreed to meet and hear our pitch and luckily for us, she was very stoked about it. She brought on board her talented dancing partner, Jewel Claudia.
These ladies blew my mind with how quickly they created the choreography and how elegant they performed it. The whole shoot was a blast, everyone was in high energy spirit, which made the shoot smooth, collaborative, and just overall fun. Last but not the least, our homie Nicola Sudano, our go-to-drummer, the Italian stallion, and a certified homie. I’ve been working with Cola, personally, for years in a bunch of different projects and recently, he smashed the skins in our recent music video for Arms Of Failure.
So shout out to our team!
Andrei:
The idea really came to life when we first got into our would-be set in FaultyLogik studio. The band was there, first, for a photo shoot. Shoutout to Vibeant, FilCan, and Mr. Raygee himself for offering us to be a part of that amazing event. Anyhow, in that gathering we got partnered up with two photographers and another music artist, Gee. Accompanying him was Siena, who would turn out to be one of the dancers we’d have in the music video. Just seeing the room for the first time, we immediately said to each other that we’re gonna shoot a music video in it. We already had a song in mind for it; Selina.
Soon after, we contacted Mattie of Spectrelights Studio, a dear friend and amazing videographer/photographer, and told him about the plan. Upon discussing the matter, the thought of having dancers for the video came into mind and we were all for it. When things were set on the planning part, we reached out to Dan of Faulty Logik to book the room, gathered all our resources like the lamps and the gears, and contacted a few dancers before ending up talking to Siena for it. Luckily, she liked our song enough to say yes to our ludicrous offer to dance for it. And on top of that, she brought along Jewel, another amazing choreographer and dancer, for the music video. Everything just really came together smoothly thereafter. We created this picturesque set and the vibe of the room was so electric because of all the collaborative and massively creative people coming together for this music video. T’was truly a blessed day that day to make something dope.
Allen:
Yes! Our new single, “Selina” is out now. You can listen to it on most music platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. We have an Official Music Video as well you can find on our YouTube channel “DEADLITE band”.
Firstly, we were working on Captive (supposedly our next single release) at the time, and we just needed to add a few more layers for the vocals and screams. When we’re at Andrei’s place having a band meeting about our plans and future projects. Then Andrei suddenly mentioned that he wrote a song, and he was currently working on it. Nyl loves new projects coming in and so he was just like “Alright, demo it up son”. Andrei picked up his acoustic guitar and started singing Selina.
We were both in awe the very first time hearing it. It had such a calm, flowy, driving music vibe to it and I instantly fell for the song. And so, we had a couple of jams at the rehearsal studio, had another meeting, and decided we should rent a recording space soon since Nyl’s place was not available at the time. I had an idea where what if we could just rent a BnB and do the recording there. I saw a place in New Tecumseth, booked it, and we brought all our recording equipment with us.
And so, we recorded more vox for Captive and recorded Selina from scratch. To our amazement, the recording session was bliss. Finished 2 songs all demoed up, and the Airbnb place really helped us juice out our ideas. It’s in the middle of a forest, trees, the vibe just got us in the mood. After slowly realizing it, Selina just made the top of the queue, and we were just constantly working on it. We planned the music video, reached out and got dancers for it, the ladies did the choreography in 4 hours, we made a full storyboard for the music video, found a place for the shoot, reached out to our videographer, and just shot the music video within the few months.
Working with Matthew from _spectrelight (our videographer), Sienna Marie and Jewel Claudia (the dancers), Dan from Faultylogikstudios (event space), and Nicola (our session drummer) were phenomenal. They were all on point, they were passionate and strongly dedicated to Selina. We couldn’t be happier having such a dream team, everyone went above and beyond our expectations. Thank you all so much for being a part of this project.
Are you working on something that we can look forward to in the future?
“Yes, definitely!” said Nyl. “Aside from Captive, we have a lot of songs in the works. Deadlite’s catalog is pretty much stacked hahaha. We’ve been writing non-stop since 2016. We just need to finish them, and we are super stoked to share all of them with you.” followed by Allen. “We have heaps of demos we’re gonna be working on. It’s gonna be busy for us in Deadlite for a while.” Andrei responded.
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