Ellsbeth

# 1 RANK INDIE GOTHIC METAL BAND IN THE WORLD ON MYSPACE

"‘Eden’ and ‘Say Goodbye’ have great metallic groove mixed with a striking melody…(it’s) a little haunting," said The Ripple Effect. Ellsbeth has also been described as "Avenged Sevenfold without all the screaming and with female vocals." “Hauntingly honest music” said Chris Spilfogel, Grammy award winning Engineer / producer (Dreamgirls, Hair Spray, Repo! The Genetic Opera)
Since the beginning of April 2009, Ellsbeth has held the #1 rank in the Gothic unsigned band category in all of They have also ranked #4 in the Progressive category and #22 in Metal. After 5,761,668 plays, 8,480, 010 profile views and 73,000 fans, someone must be listening........

We don’t care if we’re famous or not. We want to share our music with the world and be the best musicians we can be and if fame is a byproduct of that, fine. But we don’t care about being on everyone’s television or on their posters. What I do care about is giving people a piece of who I am, and saying, ‘You’re not alone.’ I am willing to give you a piece of my soul, even if I don’t know you,” says Ellsbeth vocalist Shannon Quamme, laying her cards face up on the table for all to see. Ellsbeth, the Los Angeles-based band is happy to fight, scratch and claw their way up the steep music industry ladder, but they are doing in on their own terms. “We love what we do yet how we’ve tried to climb is very human. It’s what everyone in the world does, it's no different. We all face challenges and try to accomplish our goals. It's how you set out to accomplish these things is what sets you apart from the rest.”

It’s this very “of the people” attitude that connects Ellsbeth with the fans that love (and will grow to love) their music, a brilliantly balanced blend of aggressive Rock, Metal, Gothic and Industrial. The band’s debut studio effort, Well Dressed Killing Machine, was released via iTunes on April 1 and was produced by Chris Spilfogel (Dreamgirls, Hairspray) and Ellsbeth’s guitarist, Sean Lacefield, who worked on music for the video game Dead Rising for Xbox 360, and for Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Quamme actually deems Ellsbeth’s music “Neogothrockpopsoulmetal,” a hybrid term she coined with Spilfogel, who had worked with pop stars but was itching to work with a harder edged band and chose Ellsbeth. Ellsbeth’s eclectic style of music is due in part to the fact that all the members hail from disparate backgrounds, bringing unique elements to the overall sound. Quamme, who originally hails from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, attended the Musician’s Institute on a scholarship. Sean found her on Craigslist believe it or not, after he came out of another project that “ended badly.” But Lacefield was undeterred. He says, “My former manager and I set out to form another band and after many horrifying auditions, Craigslist was for once, useful and I stumbled upon Shannon. We met at Starbucks and immediately started writing.”

Lacefield and Quamme had amassed a ton of material and entered the studio. “We didn’t compromise with any aspect, from members to songs to the engineer to the studio, ” Lacefield said. The duo entered Westlake studios with the Grammy award winning Spilfogel at the helm. After recording, their music took off on MySpace, where they were voted the #1 Goth band for six weeks and accumulated over 10 million plays over the course which is no small feat in the social networking sphere, where bands trying to get noticed are innumerable and infinite.

Quamme has an interesting view of how Ellsbeth are surviving and thriving as an independent band in the oversaturated music industry and that’s the band’s ability to lay everything on the line, to walk to the musical/emotional tightrope, sans a net. “It’s like McDonald’s cheeseburgers,” she says. “There is all this effort that goes into processing of the meat, the cheese, the bun and the wrappers. It’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. Then you eat it and are like ‘Eh!’ That’s not us. We want to give people something to hear and be brutally honest, tearing our chests open. If it affects you, then we’ve done our job. That’s why Sean and I adore haters almost as much as our fans, because if we make you react, good or bad we’ve achieved our goal.”

After Lacefield and Quamme had laid the foundation for the band, they set about finding members to complete the band and the vision. Drummer William Liermann, originally from Biloxi, MS, joined with guitarist Scott Ramsay. Liermann views Ellsbeth as “seasoned, but new at the same time, with heavy and full riffs. There’s a little bit of heavy, a little bit of melodic. But it’s never too insanely heavy for average person to listen to.”

Ramsay, who was born in Scotland but was transported to LA at the age of three, spent much of his formative years playing in rock bands and in the house band at Lakers games, where he played the “DE-FENSE” chant! He says the gig “was something anyone and their