Lyrically relevant, creatively bound, and harmonically emphasized. Promise Game is a Southern NH “multi-genre” punk rock band, that finds balance between early 2000’s & modern day punk sounds.
Please list all of your band members and their roles in the band.
Colin VanDenBerghe – Vocals
Adam Elverson – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Eric Schneider – Piano, Synth
Matt Eisenstadter – Bass
Mark Elverson - Drums
For starters, what bands were you guys a part of prior to Promise Game? How long has the band been around?
Mark was the drummer for an epic synth pop punk band The Yellow Team and Matt was the bassist for an awesome band call Dive Team, Colin, Adam and Eric were all in bands but not in recent years with much notability. Promise Game was established in the early months of 2020, originally just as a project to create a pop punk EP for our friends. It obvioudly became more than that!
What’s the origin of that name and have you changed the band’s name before?
There really isn’t a meaning behind the band name. When we were thinking about what we wanted, the main goal was to make sure it was unique. We also wanted to make sure that we were easy to find on social media/online – it was very important that we didn’t have to put an underscore or “band” after our profile names.
After looking around for about 3 weeks, Colin came up with Promise Game and saw it wasn’t taken across all platforms (except TikTok). We all loved the name, and that was that! We have not changed the name, nor do we ever intend to.
Who writes your songs? What are the main themes or topics for most of your songs and do you think these topics will change over time?
Adam is the primary songwriter for PG, and generally brings new music ideas to the group. Other times, someone from the group may have an idea, brings it the band and Adam will work the lyrics out. From there, we work as a collective group to build the overall foundation of the track. It works really well.
PG songs definitely trend towards the sad side, talking a lot of about depression and other things that people go through that aren’t the greatest. At the end of the day we take this theme and try to make fun music so people can relate and have a good time all at once.
What bands are currently inspiring the music that you’re making?
We’re really loving what we hear from everyone in the scene, but our music is heavily influenced by bands like New Found Glory, Motion City Soundtrack, Bearings, Early November, Silverstein, Something Corporate, Rage Against the Machine, The Wonder Years, Trophy Scars – we’re all over the place with influences but that shows in our music as we do consider ourselves a “multi-genre” band.
Was there a particular band/artist or concert that inspired you to start a band?
It wasn’t one specific band or event, it’s really our collective love for “punk” music. The five of us have all been friends for a very long time, we’re all part of this group of pop punk friends that have been hanging out for what feels like forever. We’ve all played in bands, some of us have played with each other bands in our past lives - but we had never played as this group.
Colin and Eric were talking one day and thought it would be awesome to write a pop punk album for our friends, and we knew exactly who we wanted to do it with. From there, we started playing “pop goes punk” style covers in Colin’s basement and soon realized we had something way more powerful than that.
What do you do to prepare for a show? Any flexing, exercises, ect …
Promise Game started right as the pandemic hit, so unfortunately we have not been able to get on stage just yet. We’ll be hitting the stage for this first this fall!
What has been the biggest highlight of the band’s career so far?
We’ve had so many amazing successes since releasing our debut EP in February 2021. Our track “Take it Back” became a huge hit and was featured across countless radio stations, podcasts and other media channels. Our music video for “Thanks for the Anxiety” surpassed 10k views which was a huge goal for us, and now our new single “Any Reason To Party” is tracking to blow away all our streaming and YouTube music video view counts!
Other than that, our very first show (we can’t talk about it yet as it has not been announced) is set to be our biggest highlight – we will be playing with two bands that are taking the storm by scene, both signed by a label that we’d love to be a part of someday!
If you could tour with any bands, past or present, who would they be and why?
Oh man, the list here could go on and on. I think the best way to answer this one would be to give you our dream list of bands we’d love to go on a festival tour with like right now: Bearings, Driveways, Settle Your Scores, Goalkeeper, Ruthcrest, Aim High, A few Too Many, Good Terms, Glimmers, Another One Down!, Keep Flying, Brooklane, Cheer Up Dusty, Penny Bored (again this list could on too!)
Is there anything else you would like to add?
We just hope everyone reading this enjoyed getting to know us a little bit more, and will go check out our tunes. We just dropped our new single “Any Reason To Party” ft. Joshua Herzer of Lions Lions on 7.23.21, which is now available on all streaming platforms, along with the music video we shot on our YouTube channel!
We also launched our brand new merch store last week, complete with some awesome high-quality “not your typical band merch” swag! We appreciate everyone’s support, thanks for listening!