Courtney LaPlante sat down with NME to discuss her early experiences in music, reflecting on how age and experience shaped her confidence. “All of us had it happen whether slowly or really fast. At the point in our career where for most bands we’d be about 10 years younger,” she noted. “So I think maybe that’s one of the reasons all of us are a lot more cemented in our identities. We don’t really care if someone thinks rock’s dead. I don’t care. We say, ‘Call me whatever you want as long as you call me.’ I don’t care what genre it is, we all feel it, it’s heavy music.”
She also shared her perspective on influencing the next generation. “We all love rock music so I think that the next generation any of us will [never] get to the point where there’s any nostalgia about us, but I certainly think that we can get to the point where maybe the next generation’s influenced by us and then they’re the big axe. I see it happening.”
Her growth as an artist came with time. “I think it’s because all of us are more confident in who we are then if we had all gotten a little bit bigger 10 years ago when we were dumb kids. When I was like 18, 19, I was stupid and I sounded horrible and I made horrible music. So I think we all probably feel similar to that and now we’re grown.”
Early Inspirations and Learning to Scream
Before Spiritbox, LaPlante was in iwrestledabearonce at 23 and Unicron at 18, but her exposure to extreme vocals started even earlier. She recalled hearing Cannibal Corpse in ‘Ace Ventura: Pet Detective’ as a child. “My mind went, ‘Okay, this guy sounds like a primate of some sort or a gorilla or something from a National Geographic show when they’re talking to each other,'” she told Loudwire. “‘Ace Ventura’ loves animals, this whole movie is about animals… they’re just an animal band and that’s why he likes them so much because they sound like animals.”
She also shared how she first started screaming. “How and where did I practice? I only ever did it at band practice. I never could ever fathom like just going in my room and screaming probably until I recorded our little EP in my band I never had heard myself before. So just down in the basement.”
Now, after eight years fronting Spiritbox, LaPlante is gearing up for the band’s upcoming tour, which kicks off on April 3 in Dallas, Texas, and concludes on May 11 in Los Angeles.
