Las Vegas American Hard Rock band Bravo Delta is slated to release their first full length album Unbreakable on February 1st, 2019.
“This new album and single is three years in the making and features the best material we’ve ever created. Being broken, disconnected, kicked to the ground…and still having the will to get up, fight, and learn from it is the spirit of Unbreakable. And I think you can feel that in the music, the artwork, and everything about this new album” says Brandon Davis.
Bravo Delta was formed in 2011 and is comprised of Brandon Davis (vocals/guitar), Andy Ingraham (guitar), Brian Scott (drums), and Roman (bass). The band’s previous independent releases include two EPs Shutdown Sequence (2013) and Sunset Wasteland (2012). Bravo Delta has shared the stage and toured with Nothing More, The Used, P.O.D., Corey Taylor (Slipknot/Stone Sour), Adelitas Way, Saliva, and Alien Ant Farm. The band is known for energetic live shows, gritty rhythmic guitar, & socially conscious lyrics that explore the darker side of the soul.
Music Madness caught up with Brandon Davis to talk new music and what’s in store for Bravo Delta in 2019.
Music Madness: Listening to some of your earlier music and then your new music there appeared to be a maturity to the music.
Brandon: Yeah, we’ve definitely taken the time to craft our sound and find our spot. We’re really excited about this new stuff.
Music Madness: Congrats on the new record, Unbreakable. Tell us a little bit about the making of the new album and the obstacles you guys encountered along the way.
Brandon: Thank you. About three years ago we started tracking what would become this album, but we originally didn’t anticipate it being a full length album originally, we were just going to release singles, a new single every month or every couple months, every quarter, something like that. In our society where things move so fast and people are like, “What’s the new thing?” Give it to me now. So we were going to try to fit into that mold. I’m glad that we didn’t, because we started tracking it to do this and then the drummer has an appendix rupture, and has surgery and complications. Then I had two kids. Just a bunch of different things in our band that kept us from being able to move as fast as we wanted to. Over the course at time, we chipped at it little by little, hit roadblocks and hit setbacks and different things like that.
Finally got to 2018. We’re like, “Okay, we’re going to finish this thing this year, but what do we want to do?” We had some time to really think about what our goal was and what we wanted to achieve. We came to the conclusion that, man, we wanted to do a full length album. It’s something that we’d never done before. We’d released two EPs in the past, and a couple of singles. We’re like, “Let’s do something for us. Let’s not try to fit into a mold. Let’s not do something that everybody else is doing. Let’s do something for us, something we’ve never done before, something new, something fresh.” We decided that we were going to do the full length album. We’re going to have the instrumental track, and just this epic thing with great, creative artwork and really well thought out. That’s what we decided. We finished it in 2018 and set a release date for February 1st 2019. I couldn’t be any more proud of what we’ve accomplished and the direction we decided to take.
Unbreakable, itself, fits that, right? So after surgeries and setbacks and different things, the band slowing down and almost coming to an absolute halt at one point, we have become unbreakable. We’re moving forward. Our city (Las Vegas) has been through a lot over the last year or two as well, with the tragic events and different things. So battle worn, we’ve become unbreakable. Everything just fit that mold that we wanted to carry that torch.
Music Madness: Right on. They say timing is everything and sometimes things happen for a reason. So maybe that was the universe letting you know, “All right. Do this the way you need to do it. Then it’ll be that time.”From what I’ve heard so far, it sounds like that has definitely bled onto this album. I think people are really going to be digging it.
Brandon: Yeah, 100%. Thanks, man.
Music Madness: No problem. So we have the new album, Unbreakable coming out on February 1st. What else can Bravo Delta fans look forward to in 2019 after the release of the album?
Brandon: Yeah, some pretty cool things. If you’ve followed the band over the last couple years, we put out a song called Virus as a single. It was actually the first song that we started tracking three years ago. It was this awesome song. We’ve been playing it live for a long time. But we felt like when we first released it, it didn’t hit the mark as far as what we thought it deserved on the production and quality of the recording side. So we have re-recorded it, remixed it. It has a new life and it’s going to be on this album. We’re really excited about that. It’s an old song, but it’s brand new, which we’re really excited about that. So that’s a little nugget for anybody that has followed the band for years, to know that they’ll get a fresh take on that.
We have Unbreakable being pushed to rock radio all over the country right now. We just released the video for it as well. Then we’re not sure exactly when, but probably closer to March we plan to get out on the road, but we’ve got another single that we’re going to push. It’s going to be the second single on the album. I won’t tell you which one it is yet, but that is something that’s pretty cool that we’re looking forward to, that’ll have a video associated with it. It’ll go to rock radio as well.
Music Madness: Very cool.
Brandon: Really excited about that. So lots of touring to promote the album, more videos, more content. Then later this year, if we want to even dig deeper, there may be some cover stuff. Anybody that knows the band, that has seen any of our live shows over the last six months or so, we’ve been including a specific cover in our sets by a band called Living Color that may or may not get recorded and released somehow. So lots of exciting things this year.
Music Madness: Outstanding. So NAMM is coming up this weekend. Will this be your first time attending?
Brandon: So we’re heading to LA on Thursday night. Then we’ll be there Friday and Saturday, so we’ve got a ton of stuff. Actually, for all our guys, it’s none of our first time. It’s always an interesting experience. It seems like it takes on a different life every time that we’ve gone. We’re going to stop by Hot Plates, TRS Guitar, so we’re going to stop by and say hi to the guys and see what they’ve got going on, and just check in on the gear and see what’s new. The the biggest thing is really connecting with people that are going to be there. Then checking out some of the after parties. So we’re really excited about that this weekend. No performing, just taking it in, lots of meetings, lots of interviews. So we’ll be focused more on that, which is nice.
Music Madness: Right on. Can you tell us about the formation of Bravo Delta?
Brandon: Yeah, so in 2010, I was living back in the Midwest, in Oklahoma, of all places. The band that I was in, that was based out of the Midwest, ended up folding. When that got done, I started performing acoustically under the moniker of Bravo Delta. It was just an old nickname that I’d had for years. I would get in the car and I’d go hit Dallas, and St. Louis, and Kansas City, and everywhere in between just doing these little acoustic dates. Then an opportunity arose to become part of a project with Marcos Curiel of P.O.D. It was a side project called The Accident Experiment. So I packed up everything and moved out to Southern California to work on that a little bit.
Shortly after me moving out there, P.O.D decides it wants to get busy again, and Marcos didn’t have any time for the side project, and left me there with nothing to do, so started to build Bravo Delta and looked for musicians to play with, and to build a full band around it. It was at that time that Andy Ingraham was moving out to Los Angeles from Oklahoma. I knew he was a phenomenal guitar player, and I had been in a cover project with him back in the Midwest for years, and just knew that he was awesome. So we started writing together to build a full band, and then brought in a couple of guys to fill the band out at that time. That was in 2011. Each of us in the band is one quarter that makes the whole. We all contribute. This isn’t my band, and then there are these guys. We’re family, we’re a company, we’re together. The core of our writing comes from Andy and I piecing things together. Then we bring it to the band. They put their flavor on it, and we cohesively come up with a final product.
Music Madness: Have you played any of the new tracks live yet, other than “Virus”?
Brandon: Yes, all but three of them. There’s three tracks that we haven’t played live ever, that we will be playing at our album release party, here in our home town of Las Vegas on February 9th. That’s going to be really exciting to be able to play those. But the last show that we played, we did a show with Corey Taylor from Slipknot and Stone Sour. It was a benefit show. We were raising some money here in Las Vegas for an amazing charity. We pulled out a couple of the new ones at that show. That’s been pretty exciting.
Music Madness: How was the response?
Brandon: Oh, the response was great. Yeah, it was really great. It’s always weird, because you’ve got your crowd there. You play some songs, and they’ll sing along. Then you play the new stuff, and then they’re standing there. They’re like, “I don’t know what to do, because I don’t know the words, right? So I’m just going to rock out.” All the feedback has been great. We’re really excited about the direction that we’re going. Yeah, so far, so good.
Music Madness: Awesome. Do you have a favorite track to play live, old or new?
Brandon: I think our favorite one collectively right now, is a song called “Insignificant”. I want to say the third to last song on the new album. We’ve been playing it live for a few months now. It’s a little bit heavier. That’s one of the ones that’s being pushed to metal stations, just because it fits. It’s heavy, and I think at the end of the song, it’s got this breakdown, just this heavy fucking guitar that you can’t help but move. I think that’s our favorite one to play live right now.
Be sure to check out Bravo Delta’s new LP Unbreakable. The video for the title track “Unbreakable” can be seen here: https://youtu.be/ih3P7W9rV3o
Interview by Steve Carlos