With the vast quantity of small, unsigned bands crawling out of the woodwork left right and centre these days, few are lucky enough to have the right amount of talent, skills, connections, support and pure luck to be able to bag themselves a record deal and truly make it. Oracle, however, a melodic hardcore four piece based in Northampton, have been a band for a mere few months and are already beginning to make a name for themselves in their hometown. “It was a new project, something we’d never been able to do before,” explained Jack, the band’s guitarist, when asked about what inspired them to form Oracle. “It meant more to us than just a college band.” Although Jack Munton, 17, has been playing guitar for seven years, it was around two years ago that he realised he wanted to take his skill further. With all but one of the boys studying Music Technology at college, and with a few attempts at playing in bands and writing their own songs previously, they finally realised that they worked well together as a unit, and the strong friendship held between the boys is undoubtedly what has helped them make so much progress and achieve such success at their level in such a short period of time. “We’ve made a massive bond between us that has really helped us keep going.” remarked Sam Maclean, bassist of Oracle. Jack added; “Yeah we’re really comfortable with everyone, but due to college work, the writing process is fairly slow. But we’re really pushing for it and working as hard as we can.”

With a wary and cautious start playing gigs at their college and local shows with other college bands whenever possible, in the early months of Oracle, the boys received a largely positive reception almost straight off the bat as they began to perform their first written songs live to friends and acquaintances. It is a rare occurrence to find a band in such an early-day period that carries a real sense of fellowship, drive, passion and pure undeniable talent, and Oracle never fail to deliver this kind of impression with every single performance, so much so that their local crowds are left almost astounded by the quality of their music and comfortable stage presence. Putting a clever twist on hardcore music, Oracle incorporate elements of metalcore into their sound with the inclusion of harmonic verses and heavy breakdowns. The seemingly effortless way in which they push out as many melodies and harmonies as possible whilst still maintaining a deep and heavy sound with such celerity and flow is arguably what makes them so impressively intriguing and different to other hardcore bands out there.

One of the most significant opportunities that has already arisen for the band this year was landing themselves with a support slot at the Northampton show of the upcoming alternative rock band Violet’s UK tour this April. With Violet gaining themselves thousands of fans across the UK and even Europe after their recent tour with US band A Lot Like Birds, even playing one local show with such a band will perhaps be Oracle’s first opportunity to finally be able to play to a different kind of audience, and the way the band won their slot at the show was pure proof of how popular they already are as a band in their own town. “There was a voting system on Facebook for the support slot, and Oracle won by 70 or so votes ahead of all the other contenders. The other bands would have deserved the slot too, they’re all great bands and we will be playing gigs with them all later this year. We were just incredibly surprised by the amount of people that backed us, and we’re so grateful for it.” explained Jack.

Luckily, the Violet show isn’t the only exciting plan they have ahead of them as a band. “We have our first merch design being released soon which is representative of the upcoming ‘Vulpes’ EP. It’s available as a tshirt and a vest, in white or black.” an excited Jack tells us. “We’re really excited to finally get something out there,” adds Sam, “This will actually test if people like us or not, because we’ll be able to see how people feel about the merch and it’ll be a sign of whether people take us seriously enough, whether people will appreciate it and buy it and wear it.” In addition to the merch, created by Indonesian design company ‘Braininjected Art’, the band are also hoping to secure a few more plans for the rest of 2013. “Our first EP should be finished and out by late Spring or early Summer this year. Then we’re hoping to maybe get onto a real booking agency, starting work on our second EP, getting more recognition outside of Northampton and generally sort of starting to branch out and play shows elsewhere,” Jack elaborates.

When questioned on how they felt about the kind of reception they’d had from their audiences so far, the band seem incredibly thankful and pleasantly surprised. “We’ve had really good feedback so far, it’s been amazing. It would be nice to have feedback from different perspectives, though, like bigger and more unfamiliar audiences. We’ve had much better feedback than we’d ever expected.” With the promising amount of support and concrete future plans and shows that they’ve gained so far, who knows where Oracle could be headed beyond college education and over the next five years or so. “In five years we just want to be touring, all around Europe, getting on more festivals. We should be doing a few day festivals in July and August this year actually, but nothing’s confirmed yet. We’ll see what happens. We haven’t come far yet, but we’re really thankful for everything we’ve had so far, and there’s way more to come.”