Music Style Prog Rock

Musical Influences Radiohead, DMB, etc.

Artist History Matt Rusteika here. The story of Merant starts a long, long time ago in the fall of freshman year. In grammar school I had started a band called Birds Underwater with three friends. When we lost touch with our drummer, we decided to start over and named the new band Global Distortion. We couldn't find a new drummer for a long time, but soon I found out that Seth, who sat at my lunch table and was in my English Class, played the drums. We took Seth into the band. As Global Distortion we covered a few songs but never really wrote anything. When our lead guitarist left the band, I took over on guitar and we were a rock band for one more week before we started to look for horns to start a ska band. We came up with a trombone and an inexperienced alto sax, and we changed the name again to The Big Baka Kings. This period was hard for our new ska band, since none of us had much experience with ska except for listening to it. I also had a hard time trying to write and arrange all the songs myself. Though we had fun goofing around at Seth's house every Saturday, nothing much in the area of original songs came out of the Big Baka Kings. We disbanded in the summer of 2000 after a short existence.Meanwhile, Bobbo was a little bit more successful with his band, The Master Plan, in which he was the backup guitarist and singer. The Master Plan had almost the same setup as Merant does now, with the exception that The Master Plan had a DJ. As a band, The Master Plan did a few shows (a battle of the bands at the Worcester Palladium and a show in Malden with our friends Farside Frenzy), but broke up due to tensions between the members in early 2001. But I'm getting ahead of myself.Right before The Master Plan broke up, I was fully involved in another band called The Commons and wasn't much interested in starting a new band with Seth. The lack of bass players and available lead guitarists didn't help, either. Seth, however, was still trying to dredge up interested candidates. He succeeded in finding Lawlor, who's in almost all of his classes, to play guitar, and convinced Ginty to learn how to play the bass. Ginty bought a bass and they had their first practice for Merant. Seth was still trying to convince me to join the band when The Master Plan split up. As far as I can gather, Bobbo went over to Seth's house after a visit to Guitar Center and jammed for a while on Seth's Mexican Fender guitar, and after that, was suddenly a part of Merant. This was what finally persuaded me to join the band. With Bobbo there, I wouldn't have to write all the songs myself and I'd have someone who could improvise a solo. So now I'm in Merant.We rehearse every Saturday from noon to five, with an approximate one hour break for a trip to the 99 (Friendly's has been eliminated from our routine due to crappy food and "iffy" waitresses). We have original songs: "Goodbye and Goodnight," "Tag Methareus," "Let Me Go," "It's A Good Day To Be Confused," "Goat," and "Boston Connors High School" (otherwise known as "Connorsfest 2000," dedicated to our Satanic Chemistry teacher, Mr. Connors). All of these, with the exception of "Connorsfest 2000," were written individually by either me or Bobbo and were brought to the band because they didn't previously belong to either The Master Plan or The Commons. "Connorsfest" was written on the spur of the moment by Seth, Ginty, and me at our first rehearsal using the chords of other well known rock, punk, and ska songs with replaced lyrics. Merant has also covered a host of other songs by various bands, including the old Global Distortion/Baka Kings favorite "All The Small Things" by Blink 182 and "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Currently we have two low-quality recordings on Napster, one of our "All The Small Things" cover and one of "Goodbye and Goodnight." Check out the News page for more info on what Merant is doing presently and in the future. Thanks for reading the bio.

Group Members Matt Rusteika - Vocals, GuitarsBobbo - Vocals, Guitars + LoveMatt Mawlor - GuitarsGinty - Bass (Pronounced like the fish)Seth Needle - Drums

Instruments Vocals - Guitars - Drums - and maybe some Piano

Location Boston, MA - USA

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