Blessed by a Broken Heart Reveal Unlikely Influences

If you have already heard Blessed by a Broken Heart's 2008 album, 'Pedal to the Metal,' then you know how crazy the band's musical attack is. The six-piece outfit incorporates everything from metalcore and synth pop to the Sunset Strip-style choruses usually found on records by Pretty Boy Floyd and Poison. Noisecreep spoke with guitarist Shred Sean and asked him about the group's unlikely blend of influences. It turns out that Stryper fans were a bit hesitant about Blessed By A Broken Heart at first.

Blessed By A Broken Heart's music has had listeners scrambling to figure out a way to describe your style. How would you explain the band's sound?

That's a tough one. I would say it's like a Def Leppard chorus meets a Killswitch Engage breakdown sprinkled with the keyboards on Van Halen's 'Jump,' and then mix all of that with some over-the-top Racer X-styled shred. That twisted blend gives you a Blessed by a Broken Heart tune.

Do you find that, when you play more traditional metal bands, the crowds are more resistant to the band?

Unfortunately we almost never play with traditional metal bands. But there was this one time we opened for Stryper. It was actually in my home town in New York. It was when I first joined the band, so we were still playing some of the old songs from the first record (please don't buy that piece of junk -- I'm not on it, and it's all metalcore crap). When I first met the band, and they gave it to me, I was playing it in my car on the way back from the audition, and I actually pulled it out of the stereo and decided it was a better suited as a frisbee. But I digress.

Back to opening for Stryper -- there were a few dudes raising some horns, but let's just say we didn't win the whole crowd over. Only when I went for the solo did I feel the room warming up a bit. After the show, I was greeted by four or five Italian guys telling me in a thick New York accent that I got to go solo, "Ditch the losers," and have I ever heard of Jason Becker.

I tried to explain that shred records weren't all the rage as they once were, and I needed to have an album with a band doing something current and gain some recognition through that before I could persuade a select few guitar nerds to buy a solo effort of pure guitar masturbation/art whatever you want to call it. Although I have always wanted a solo album, and I'm finally working on it now.

Since Blessed by a Broken Heart incorporates elements of everything from glam rock and hardcore to thrash metal, do you have trouble trying to make it coalesce when you're writing material?

It's not always easy for all of us to agree as a band with song material. But the different influences and struggle between us is part of why the music sounds the way it does.

How is the new stuff your writing shaping up? Will it be as spread out musically?

The new music will still have some diversity of the last record in it, but expect more '80s, more over-the-top shred and a lot less metalcore/hardcore influence. I'm slowly poisoning their minds (laughter)!