Meet Bite: Rising From The Underground With Style

In tracing the history and development of male fashions, it will have become obvious to the reader that apart from the necessity, or general desirability, of wearing clothes, two particular influences have manifest themselves through - sociological and economic trends. Briefly, the wealthy man has a large and varied wardrobe, the artisan, a basic one. In the past, clothes have been more of a symbol of status and wealth than the mere desire to be well dressed. The social structure of Western civilizations has almost always kept the working class in place. At that time, the artisan, with any pretensions to rise-up in ranks would have become ostracized from his very own social group. In consequence, his clothes have always been of inferior quality cloth and workmanship. Even in style they have been slower to change, although they have always had a relationship to the dress of the period. And now, more than ever, the apparel and fragrance market is honing in on the trendsetters.

In this century music and technology have perhaps done more than anything to alter attitudes of male fashions in the USA. With formal clothes relegated to rare and special occasions and the general acceptance of influencers and casual forms of wear, the old social barriers have come tumbling down. This change has cemented its roots into the 21st century. 

The curious result of all this is a change in role of the leaders of fashion. The current revolution in menswear has its origins in music. In fairness to the singers and songwriters, it is they, who have launched a new style in menswear. Although it must be remarked that while they may have triggered-off the new feeling, it is the widespread acceptance together with the consequent commercial success, that results in completely fresh look being taken at the general direction in which menswear is aimlessly drifting.

Any pioneer movement, which goes against the general tide of opinion or inclination, is bound to meet with some pretty stubborn opposition. For example, environmental influences are still probably the greatest psychological factor in choosing clothing these days. In addition, sociological and environmental influences sometimes clash. In short, personalities and backgrounds always manifest themselves to observers and consumers who usually choose their clothes to be in harmony with their favorite influencers. And apart from identification with success, many men buy clothes to identify themselves with good looks.

Often enough, the music that dominates the radio sounds too similar to one another. Same clichéd, banal hook. Same mass-market, overly "pop" chorus and uptempo dance drums. We might start to think we're being programmed. Little pun intended…

Every now and again, though, the music gods provide a talent with a distinct sound and approach. A flare, emerging from the crowd, signaling something new approaching. Just the possibility of experiencing a refreshing and innovative sound should beckon you to incline your ear. It looks like this season's offering is the band, BITE, coming out of Brooklyn, NY. Initially  just trying to survive in the Brooklyn underground, a group of misfits, Noah Metzdorf, Chris Chridges and Daniel Jüde formed a friendship that naturally expresses itself through music. While experimenting with nostalgic vibes from the 80's and 90's and sounds ranging from alternative, rock, punk, pop, and hip hop, the collective each have their respective talents they bring forth to blend together. 

The trio connected to construct their debut album,You're Not Naked, launching November 15th, 2019. Noah takes the lead in the rhythmic verses, Chris croons on the hooks and Daniel provides vocals on a few songs as well. While all three had a hand in the production, Noah chiefly wrote the lyrics, Chris supplied most of the beat ideas and Daniel mixed and mastered the tracks.

Both myself and Joshua Colón recently had the privilege of speaking with Noah Metzdorf and Chris Chridges, two of the three musicians that makeup BITE, about their upcoming album and how they identify their sound gripped to tackle the third decade of the 21st century. Meet the band that is daring to be new and different while bringing nostalgia and newly developed style to the fore.

Joseph DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: Where would we be without music?

Noah Metzdorf: It's something that kind of fills up my world. Being into storytelling, I think it gives my life and everybody else's life a soundtrack. For different moods, different styles. I definitely believe that, being in a creative mindset, as I am and Chris is, it's something we've been attached to from an early age and something we can always relate to no matter what genre we pull from. It can be a soundtrack to our mood.

Chris Chridges: I think you can really express yourself through music and if we didn't have any it would be boring. I feel like with music there's a lot of connection and relationships you can get with people and can get to see them from a different level without having to really talk about it. Music is everything. 

Joseph DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: Can you elaborate a little more on how music plays a part in helping us to connect with ourselves and others?

Noah Metzdorf: It's like when you're going through your life and you hear a song that kind of brings you back to a state of mind or a place you were and can smell the air, remember what the lights looked like and feel something. It's like air to breathe. When we're in the studio and we listen to something we recorded, where each of us has a piece in our minds and we hear it back after we put it all together, it's like an air bubble. When we have an idea in our heads and we find a way to bring it out, we say, 'oh, that's what I was looking for!'. It expresses itself from ourselves to others. You feel it in your chest and it drops right to your stomach. And you know that's what you were looking for.

Chris Chridges: You definitely feel it. It's like that "butterflies" feeling. And you know when it's relatable and the people will respond positively to it as well.

Joseph DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: Talk about your creative process and how the inspiration starts for you…

Chris Chridges: We could be in the studio for a while but we know when the moment feels good. It could come in the last thirty minutes of our six or seven hour long session and we knew that was what we were looking for. It takes patience but it's rewarding. We know [what we're making] is going to be more than what it is right now. Noah captures in words what I capture in music. 

Noah Metzdorf: It comes in a lot of different ways. There are times where we're chasing something, like a melody, but it feels like we're forcing it and exhausting ourselves until those last fifteen minutes. We'll do it a different way and it'll hit us that what we just did is what we were looking for. We've learned a lot by working through that and communicating. We're trying to capture that feeling we're chasing in a jar. A three minute and twenty five seconds jar. Some of our favorite jams are the original recordings we made before we actually made a song. That original idea and gut feeling of what it is.

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colón: I really liked your song, Acid Dreams! What's the story behind that one?

Noah Metzdorf: I always wanted to take a psychedelic. So when I went through a pretty textbook breakup, I thought that was a good time while I was alone waiting for Chris to come over. It was beautiful. The many thoughts juggling around in my head came out and laid on the table. I got to see everything I was in that relationship, everything I didn't have, everything that bothered me. And it kind of just explained itself. It put everything in perspective and I got over it that day...I wouldn't go to people and say, 'You're having trouble? Take this tab of acid and you'll figure it out', but for me, I'm fortunate it really helped in a lot of ways. It was a hallucinogenic baptism. As the trip was coming down, I started dreaming and had all of these ideas and I wrote a love letter to the past. It was a trippy feel. An explicit poem of those raw feelings. We wanted to do something experimental with hip hop and that's where Chris and I pulled from. It starts off with a somber melody. We wanted a spacey vibe and wanted the song to embody feeling lost. 

Chris Chridges: We wanted the beginning to sound like you were on acid. Entering the unknown. 

Joseph DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: It made me think of Kid Cudi…

Noah Metzdorf: It's funny because we just got compared to him. I was just talking to our manager today and he said he was listening to our latest single, "Zombie", and he said it sounds like we're a mix of Kid Cudi and Third Eye Blind. It goes so nicely with our aesthetic and what we're going for. We met in October. We looked at each other and said we're going to do something. We describe ourselves as "New wave". Every decade there are "New wave" artists. We blend alternative with pop and hip hop and try to create something new out of that. Even rock influences and poetry. We come from an area of 90's influences. We take much of our sound from that. I was born in '96. Growing up I listened to all of my dad's Cd's and it was everything 90's, and I just feel like that's my sound...You can listen to the best artists with a twelve track album and find maybe two songs that were different. They're selling records but I ask myself: 'Where's the expression?' We've built our aesthetic around doing something different. That's something we pride ourselves on but that we're still looking for as well.

Chris Chridges: I'm surprised to see Noah with the experience he has with music. I'm a decade older than him so I've been through generations of music and seen how it's changed. But it's crazy to see the experience Noah has musically, for him to know where certain music came from, like the 80's and 90's. That's when music started to get really crazy. We needed to come with something new combined with sort of what it used to be. A lot of music is too controlled now but we wanted it to be natural for us.

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colón: Talk about the concept for your upcoming album...

Noah Metzdorf: We're coming out with it November 15th. It's entitled: "You're Not Naked". We're showcasing our sound with it. It's an album title we've always wanted to do. It's about someone being very free and everyone else looking at them disgusted because they're free and no so insecure. With our album cover, we did this idea with a New York Skyscraper and this woman who's parachuting from it totally naked. She's  wearing a harness and everyone is looking out from their windows like, 'What the hell?!', but she just has the biggest smile on her face. She's an angelic and free woman. When you picture someone free, they don't have any makeup. They're  just naturally themselves. And it's just this thing where everyone is so insecure with who they're supposed to be. But we're telling you to find that expression. Be you. That's what we want to do with this album. It's seven tracks, maybe eight...I'm so proud of us for what we've done [with the album]. 

Chris Chridges: I like the artwork for the cover because it's saying, 'Don't be afraid to jump. Just jump'. Each song taps into its own thing. You want a nice, dance song? Okay then you have dance song. You want a somber, melodic song? You have this one here. 

Joseph DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: What made you decide to do seven tracks, possibly eight?

Noah: I wanted a package deal for us. In the beginning I wanted to release four singles one after another. We're building our sound, trying to figure out who we were. We got our name out there now. We thought to ourselves to do the album in a way that captures our sound and aesthetic. Seven tracks was this beautiful thing that we came up with where we can say, 'This is who we are'. Someone is going to take a song from that. All of the songs are strong songs. Every song is going to represent us. 

Chris Chridges: With BITE, you can't identify us. That's why we touch so many genres and styles. We want to keep that freshness and have people wondering what we're going to come up with next. That's what I like and why I love this album because it's so different. It's its own category. The first song doesn't sound like the next one. If you're going through a breakup then we have a song for you. Music is just noise but the right music can be very poetic. 

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colón: How did you come up with your band name, BITE?

Noah: The name, BITE, literally came to me in a daydream. I took a trip to Florida and would constantly sit outside or go for a walk and kept thinking about what Chris and I talked about when trying to come up with our name. We kept saying that we'll know when it comes to us. But I was looking too hard. So one night after watching, Bohemian Rhapsody, I felt zenned out about what I wanted to do. I started dreaming: I was in the car. All you can see were headlights shining on the street. Evergreens in each side. I was just going down a highway. Somewhere in Maine, the vision felt like. And I was just meditating. As I was going, all of a sudden, the car crashes into big, bright, teal letters that were in the road. They spelled out B-I-T-E. It really felt like the name hit me and not me searching for it...As far as what it means, I would describe it as if in every episode of the show, Black Mirror, they used all of the same actors. Different characters, different stories but same writer. It still feels unified.

Chris Chridges: Once Noah came to me with the name, I knew instantly that was it.

Jospeh DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: How much of your music, would you say, is for your own expression and healing, and how much is for other people to benefit from?

Noah Metzdorf: It's definitely 100% all of that. It's for us. We want to express ourselves, we want to get creative. We want to showcase what we can actually do and be entertainers so that everyone can take something from what we're doing. They can relate and enjoy. Maybe something makes them sad, maybe it pisses them off. It's for them but it has to stem from you. It's spiritual, man...I would personally feel established when I have these songs out to the public.

Chris Chridges: It's for them but I think it starts always with you. It has to or it doesn't work. If you just try to do it for them then where are you? We don't want to tell ourselves, 'You only did that because you were told to'. I find so much zen in doing music. We're not trying to sell to the masses. We want the masses to come and see what we're doing and how we're original. 

Joseph DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: How did you both meet?

Noah Metzdorf: We met working at a restaurant. We hung out one day and talked about what we wanted to do. We saw each other as super creative. But we bonded based on our humor. We're both silly dudes. Very chill. We make the dumbest jokes. We meshed because of our personalities...That time when we hung out for the first time, we went up to the food court above the restaurant and talked for about four hours. Chris mentioned he had dabbled in music production for about fifteen years. And he has been with a series of bands and done live shows. And I just thought that we should do something. And originally we were going to do a short film together. So we started working on the score for the film. The whole feeling of the film and music was 80's and 90's nostalgic vibes. The entire feeling of what we started working on translated into the music for BITE...I definitely think if you are a certain way and you find someone else who also is a certain way you can truly find yourselves in each other. You need someone to push you. And we have that symbiotic relationship. 

Chris Chridges: I think the best people in this world are the ones who can take a joke. Just get insulted and if you can take that, then you're the coolest person in the world. People are too sensitive nowadays. And that's how we get along. We laugh at each other's jokes because we actually think we're funny. We encourage each other to be better. 

Joseph DeAcetis/Joshua Colón: What is the message you're trying to send in your music?

Noah Metzdorf: Overall, the big picture is: be you. Every song that we have on the album is it's own story and means something. For example, one of the songs off the album is called, "Eaten Alive". It's about anxiety and depression. If you let it, anxiety and depression can eat you alive and take over you. I wrote that song the day I came back from the hospital. I took myself to the hospital because I felt like my head was going to explode. I was panicking. I had a lot of repressed feelings. The doctors told me I have chronic anxiety. I wrote the song from the perspective, 'I let this happen to me? I wasn't paying attention to myself.' If you don't pay attention to an issue it's just going to cause a larger problem. That's the standpoint I write from. If we say anything, we would like to think that's who we are...I'm realistic. Chris is super realistic. Even being a decade apart, we're on the same wavelength. 

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colón: Who/what would you list as your influences/inspirations?

Noah Metzdorf: The Strokes, Dirty Heads, Weezer, Nas' Illmatic album, Mos Def, Sublime, some of MGMT's original sound because those are two dudes struggling to find their sound. The flip flopping of trying to figureout who you are. That's human. A lot of old school sounds as well that make me feel nostalgic influence me. 

Chris Chridges: I go from commercial theme songs to Japanese Anime. Rock, Grunge, Lo-Fi genres.. I respect bands like Deftones and Tool. 

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colón: What have been some of your struggles to get to this point? 

Noah Metzdorf: Definitely what the song, Zombie, captures. Just being stuck in the New York grind. Trying to get through the barrier of finding our sound and then being able to get our music out there. We can yell as much as we like but sometimes we just need a platform, like Forbes, to get us out there. Coming from a modeling background, I never really had an opportunity to speak my mind. But I still did. Music allows me to do that and feel like an actual person. 

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colón: Do you have any trepidation going into the music industry?

Noah Metzdorf: I think everything stems from knowing who you are. We know who we are. We know the head that sits on top of the shoulders. I think we'll be fine going into any room. We're super firm in what we want to do and aren't nervous at all. I think we're at peace with what we're doing. 

Chris Chridges: We're going in confident in whatever direction we feel is right. If people get to know, BITE, I think they'll love us as people. We're not trying to pose as other people. 

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colon: Talk about your lead single for the album…

Noah Metzdorf: With the buildup for the album, we're releasing a single called, Zombie, on October 18th, a couple of weeks before Halloween. The song is a ballad for the nine to fivers. By the end of their week they feel like they're waking up dead. Stuck in the grind. People walking around trying to feel something. I think that's something people can relate to.

Joseph DeAcetis/ Joshua Colón: How would you sum up the message your album, You're Not Naked, is trying to convey?

Noah Metzdorf: Be who you are...Don't think too hard about it; don't practice for something you already know how to do. That is you. The album will identify us and where we sit in all this mess. It's about standing on your own two feet in the crowd...

Chris Chridges: Don't let the music create you; you create the music. We want the album to be a breath of fresh air and bring nostalgia to the people...