Subject to Change was started in mid 2013 when Rhythm Guitarist/Lead Vocalist Chris Custer, and drummer Tyler Williams were room mates in Hollywood, MD. They soon recruited Lead Guitarist Michael Thacker and Bassist Rob Wood to play along side them. The band started off as a cover band looking to play local bars and other places with musical entertainment. Original music started to develop shortly after the band started to practice on a regular basis. After a short time of playing together, the band project was put to the side.

Because of the synergy the members shared with each other, Subject to Change reformed their ranks in late 2015 with the same line-up looking to finish what they started two years prior.

The band released their self-produced, self-titled EP “The 301 EP” on May 16th, 2016. All of the band members are originally from Calvert and St. Mary’s county where the dominate area code is “301.” Tracks on the EP include: This Class Sucks, Start Again, Count Your Blessings, Memories, Friend Zone, Could You Imagine, and Welcome to the 301.

Subject to Change is currently finishing up their full length album, “Take it or Leave It” which is planned to be released by the end of 2016. All seven tracks from “The 301 EP” will be remastered and included on “Take it or Leave it,” as well as five new originals.

In this interview feature, we speak with Chris Custer of Subject To Change about music, motivations, the newest project and more.

Full Q&A, links and streams can be found below.

Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)

We’re from southern Maryland. There’s a tri-county area close to Virginia that is made up of Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary’s county. Our lead guitarist, Mike, used to live down here as well, but moved up to Frederick, MD some time back. We practice and record up that way at his house a few times a month. As for our music, I kind of like to call it “munk” or “pop munk.” It’s kind of a fusion of punk, pop/punk and a little bit of metal here and there. In almost all of our songs you’ll hear and 808 bass drop or two, some tremolo picking, and we’ve recently been trying to work some blast beats into our songs as well. Breakdowns here and there. It’s an interesting blend, but we’ve been getting some good feedback from it. Not too long ago we actually were the only punk band to play on a stage with all metal beats and some of the metal bands were diggin’ the 808 drops. They couldn’t believe they worked well in a punk song. It was pretty cool to have the appreciation of a way heavier genre.

What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?

Honestly the answer to this is just music. We all enjoy different genre’s of music, whether is be metal, punk, classical, or country. We settled on a punky style with some metal influences because we all grew up when punk was taking the scene. Our Mike is a metal head at heart. The rest of us enjoy some old Blink 182, NoFX, MXPX. Stuff like that. So we just sat down and started writing music and it sounded like some indie melodic punk. As it was coming out we were just like “hey, this sounds pretty good. Let’s keep doing it like this.” We haven’t really thought about changing our sound ever since.

Who or what are your biggest influences when it comes to your creativity?

I’d have to say Blink 182, All Time Low, and maybe a little bit of Green Day. We don’t necessarily try to sound like them, but sort of their general genre. We all grew up listening to those bands so of course they’re going to be a huge influence on us. We all take part in the song writing as well. One of us might come up with some instrumentals while someone else has lyrics that would work, or maybe someone just comes up with a cool riff and we just run with that. Pretty much all of our songs are about something in particular that has affected one of us one way or another. Like our song “This Class Sucks.” Our drummer wrote that while he was sitting in some crappy business financing class and brought me the lyrics and just said “Hey I wrote some lyrics.” I took them and came up with a simple fast melody and we had a song. We’re actually going to be starting a music video for this one in just a couple of weeks.

How is your new release different than previous ones? Did you set out to accomplish anything specific?

We’ve done everything so far ourselves. We write every bit of our own music, design our own album art, record, mid, and master our own songs. So really everything has been a huge learning experience. Everything we record is straight our of the amplifier and right into the computer. I mean we record in a basement after all. Mike’s the recording genius in the band. He makes everything sound great from what we have to work with. We released an EP back in May and it turned out… Okay, I guess. We’re happy with what we did with how little we really had to work with. There was 7 tracks on the EP and we’re almost done with a full album. We’ve learned so much from the time we started and where we are now. Our recording methods are better, mixing and mastering, too. We play on going back and remastering all the tracks from our EP to make them sound as good as the new stuff we’ve recorded. We’re really excited to get this full length album done.

Do you face any challenges as an indie musician in a digital age? On the flip side, how has technology helped you (if it has)?

I think the biggest challenge we face (like most bands) is exposure. We all work hard at promoting our work and trying to get our music heard, but it’s just hard. It’s incredibly fun, but really hard. We send our stuff out to wherever we can every day, advertise on social media, and all that stuff, and I’d say we’ve been getting some good circulation of our material. It’s hard to get into places to play showcases, too. A lot of places want popular bands that everyone knows, or those local cover bands that just play some music that people know and can maybe sing along to if they’re not too wasted yet. But we just want to play some original music that people might enjoy as well. Granted, we do play a few covers here and there, but not much anymore. On the other hand, without technology like it is today, we’d probably never have all the material we have. YouTube and tutorials go a long way when you’re just trying to teach yourself how to record, mix, and master music. Like I said earlier, Mike has done an incredible job with how little we have to work with. Our recorded stuff sounds great thanks to him.

How do you feel about streaming services? Any romantic attachments to the physical formats: vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, CDs?

Streaming services are pretty awesome. As soon as we could we got our stuff out on iTunes and Spotify. It’s great because you never really know whose radio it might pop up on one day and they might be like “Oh, who’s this? I like this, let me tell my friend.” Then, bam, you have word of mouth and more people might be adding your music to their playlists. However, I think we do love some CDs. For us it’s just having that piece of plastic in your hand. You’re holding someones hard work that you can keep forever. Even if all the computers in the world take a crap one day, you’ll still have that CD that someone worked so hard to produce. They’re just fun to collect too. Other bands that are up and coming, we trade CDs with them all the time. Over time we just have a huge medley of different music of all types.

Where can we follow you online and hear more music?

We mostly push our YouTube channel the most. We’ve found YouTube brings the most traffic. We also have our stuff on Soundcloud, and Bandcamp. Anywhere we can upload music to really. We also have a website as well. We usually get our new releases on there so they can be found on the homepage.

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVFKEasFRMj7UtBduCNG_mg
• https://subjecttochange301.bandcamp.com/
• https://www.stc301.com
• https://www.facebook.com/subjecttochange301

Anything else before we sign off?

A few things. Thanks for doing this interview, it was a blast to answer the questions and talk about what we’re up to. And I’d like to shout out our new bassist, Chelsea. We picked her up only a month ago because our other bassist ended up having to quit. She learned all our stuff in about two weeks (flawlessly, I might add) and added so much more to what we already have. Thanks, Chelsea! And lastly, keep local, up and coming music alive. Go out to shows, see some bands you’ve never heard of. It’s always a blast to meet new people and hear some new music. You never know what you’ll find that you might like. Also, check out our newest song “Taking Chances” on youtube! It’s one of my favorites so far. It’ll be on our first LP, “Take it or Leave it!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pBkRrA4iw