User:Craibal/sandbox

= 46 Brigade - (pop/rock band)[edit] = Formed in 2012, and spearheaded by singer/songwriter Craig Ballantyne,, 46 Brigade is a pop/rock project based in Perth, Australia.

The music is melodically edgy, with a sound similar to bands like The Killers, Keane, Imagine Dragons and even Bruce Springsteen at times. In early 2011, Craig advertised for a drummer and bass player to work on song demos he had written, with a view to becoming both a 'live' performance and recording project. He was joined initially by drummer Bruce Fraser and bass player Dan Toal, however, after a few months Bruce left and a new drummer, Stefan Helbo joined the Brigade, along with an additional guitarist/vocalist, Matt Milford. This 4 piece line up played some shows around WA, and soon started work on recording their debut album 'Reverse The Future'. Just before recording started though, Dan left the band. He did, however, still play bass on a couple of songs.

Craig, Stefan and Matt, continued as a 3 piece and released a single from the album in Oct 2012 called 'Soldier'. It was a touching and heartfelt song about a mother's grief after losing her soldier son to the attrocities of war. The song was picked up by 'Legacy', a charity supporting families of deceased servicemen and women, and became the anthem to their national advertising campaign throughout Australia in 2013. 46 Brigade were also asked to perform the song at the annual Len Hall Anzac Day AFL commemorative match, featuring the Fremantle Dockers and Richmond football clubs, in front of a crowd of around 40,000 people at Paterson Stadium in Perth, WA.

After a series of successful shows and some commercial radio airplay over the next few years, the band went on hiatus during 2016 to 2018 due to personal commitments. In early 2018, however, Craig penned a number of new songs and recorded many home studio demos, with a view to releasing a new album as soon as possible. The songs on this new project had a fairly personal theme to them, and so Craig spent a lot of time recording and producing alone, before enlisting the huge musical talents of bass player Duncan MacKintosh and drummer Sam Pettit, who together as a unit, eventually recorded 11 of the songs to form the band's recent release, 'into the great unknown'.

In November 2019, the band decided to employ the mixing expertise of Swedish, Grammy Award winning mix engineer, Thomas Juth. Over the next few months, the songs burst into  life and in May 2020, 46 Brigade uploaded their brand new album to their Bandcamp page  for purchase or streaming.

The first single lifted from the new album is 'Pictures of Better Days', an upbeat song with a kind of late 80's west coast rock production.For fans of a radio friendly, commercial rock sound, 46 Brigade are definitely worth a listen.

Discography[edit]

 * October 2012 - Single release - 'Soldier'
 * April 2013 - Full Length Album release - 'Reverse The Future'
 * May 2020 - Full Length Album release - 'into the great unknown'

Musicians Involved Through The Years[edit]

 * (2011 - present) - Craig Ballantyne (vocals/guitars/keys)
 * (2012) - Bruce Fraser (drums/percussion)
 * (2012 -2013) - Dan Toal (bass guitar/keys)
 * (2012 - present) - Stefan Helbo (drums/percussion)
 * (2012 - present) - Matt Milford (bass guitar/guitar/vocals)
 * (2018 -present) - Duncan MacKintosh (bass guitar/vocals)
 * (2019 - present) - Sam Pettit (drums/percussion)

Incidental musicians featured 'live' or 'studio' - Dave Giuffre (piano), Vincent P-C (drums)