Justin Brannan, guitarist for Most Precious Blood, received his first guitar when he was in third grade.
"I pounded on that thing for years before it started making the noise I wanted it to," Brannan said by phone from New York. "I had always known I wanted to be in a band. My parents played music all the time. I knew everything from the Temptations to Captain Beefheart."
Brennan, bassist Matty Miller, guitarist Rachel Rosen, vocalist Rob Fusco and drummer Sean McCann got together in 2000 to form Most Precious Blood. "All of us were from other bands," said Brannan. "We all grew up together and had known each other, and all followed the New York hard-core music scene."
After a stint on Roadrunner Records, the band signed to Trustkill Records. "We have something to say about the world. And we are fortunate to be on a label that will allow us to do that. We're a hard-core band and not a metal band that talks about partying all the time."
That's one of the reasons Most Precious Blood is on PETA's "Compassion Over Fashion" tour. "The band has always been issue-oriented," said Brennan. "Through our hard-core band contacts, we were introduced to PETA. As with all bands in the New York hard-core scene, it's never too late to learn something new. And as a band, we feel responsibility to give our audiences a chance to learn about something. And that's one of the things that sets us apart from metal and rock bands."
The most important thing for Most Precious Blood, said Brennan, is to let people know how great it is to be alive. "We are all here to have fun, but spread some sort of positive message. And we have a responsibility to ourselves and to our fans. We want to be a positive influence in the world."
Brennan said he is grateful for his legions of fans who have remained loyal over the past four years. "We have a trust thing going with our fans. We do things because we want to. And our fans let us. However, we know if we started putting techno riffs in our songs, that would probably be hard for our fans to swallow. So we don't.
"But our fans do know that we take pride in doing things on our own terms. We strongly believe that our fans might have a hard time with us if we did something totally different, but they would respect our decision to do it."
If you go
What: Most Precious Blood, Remembering Never, It Dies Today, Dead to Fall
Where: Wagstaff Theatre, 9000 S. State
When: Wednesday, 7 p.m.
How much: $10 at the door
E-mail: scott@desnews.com