Your Music: King Snyder

Brad has been in the music business for ages, but tells us it was a while before he decided to hear the calling and work at it full time.

"I got into singing for bands at around fourteen years old. A neighbourhood friend of mine played guitar and he invited me over to sing along. We would play our favourite Metallica and Slayer songs. From there, I formed a number of different bands and got more and more serious about making it my career as the years went on.

"King Snyder has been together for six years now and this is by far the best band I've been a part of."

"'Uncharted' is a song about going insane. Feeling yourself slip into a psychotic state and trying to find your way back to reality ... as if you had a biological map and your brain is in uncharted waters. I've felt that way before, so I put those feelings into lyrics for this song because it has a very spastic, almost out of control sound."

Like other disabled artists featured in this section of Ouch, Brad's traumatic birth inspired him to write a track, 1975.

"My birth in 1975 was difficult. There were lots of complications, and they didn't know if I was going to make it. The result was CP. I wrote the track with the feeling that we all have demons and dark sides. We’re all going to pass some time and face judgement. Life is a chance to make the right choices, to do the right thing for yourself and people around you. This is my second chance."

America seems to have just as many inaccessible venues as the UK, but it doesn't seem to be getting in the way of Brad's lust for rock stardom.

"Most everyone I've encountered in this business has been happy to help us out and make accommodations if necessary. Some clubs we play aren't accessible and getting my chair up on stage is a bitch, but we have a great crew of guys and girls that travel with the band so I'm never short of a helping hand. Even the place we rehearse in has an inaccessible toilet, but luckily I’m a man, so can just go outside."

Nice! We’ve been doing Your Music for a year now, so feel we no longer have to tiptoe round the big subjects. So, with our disability paranoia mode turned to its highest setting, we directly asked Brad: "Is the reason why King Snyder aren't signed because no record company will touch a metal band with a wheelchair user in it?" And he said:

"We are taking it slow, and just working on our first full-length album now. We’re not ready to sell our souls just yet. A lot of people have said to me though that I have more stage presence than most able bodied singers."

The final track we have from King Snyder is called 'When a Demon Grows Wings' (and don't let anyone tell you that disabled rocks stars don't abuse their bodies like the 'normal' ones do after reading this).

"'When a Demon Grows Wings' was written during the peak of my struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. It was a cry for help. I was still using and abusing, and I poured a lot of feelings from that into the song. Without asking directly for help, I wrote it out and put it on the line. I was in rehab a year later, and believe that some of the strength needed to get me there came from writing that song."