Bearden senior Kukura putting finishing touches on his band’s first EP

Though many teenagers dream of having their own band and an audience to admire them, few have taken the difficult and necessary steps to complete that project and advance their hobby to something more significant.

Bearden senior Joey Kukura and his band Kardia stand out among many by successfully using technology and social media to enact that dream. Next month, Kukura’s band releases their first EP online, called Symbiotic.

Symbiotic will be released for free on Bandcamp.com and Youtube at about four songs in length. Kardia has used Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites to generate a fan base.

“I guess our goal is to increase our fan base as much as possible, and then in the future put out a full length album,” Kukura said. “Our starting point right now is just the EP.

“We’re going to do what we can with marketing that.”

Kukura was invited to join the band as a bass guitarist by Catholic senior Matt Harnett who plays guitar. Other members include drummer Aaron Srdoc, currently attending Berklee School of Music at Boston and their fill-in bass player University of Tennessee student Colin Mann.

Kardia is part of a rock genre called “experiment metal”. Kardia explores many different styles within the genre to compose pieces.

“Our music has a certain degree of silliness to it that goes along with its more heavy aspects,” Kukura said. “Our music isn’t dark really; it’s kind of light despite the fact that it’s considered progressive metal.

“A lot of it is upbeat and we also have some slower sections, but overall, our music isn’t supposed to sound too serious or too dark. It’s almost cartoon-like feel to it in a lot of parts.

“Even though we still take our music seriously, it has a goofy element to it that almost gives it a cartoonish sound.”

Their inspiration includes bands such as Periphery and Between the Buried and Me.

Kardia utilized many different programs in their projects. One of the more interesting aspects is how they take advantage of Facebook and other media sites by writing their music away from each other and being able to access it online. They don’t have to be in the same room to experiment with ideas and work together.

“The fact that we can record our own music at home, and not do any of it in the studio is extremely beneficial because back in the day, some of those bands had to be in a professional studio to record music because they didn’t have this portable, digital technology that we have today,” Kukura said.

Though their efforts have been successful, the process of constructing music is definitely a strenuous task. Maintaining a band takes serious effort.

“[The most difficult part is] just managing schoolwork and actually having time to write, practice, and record music,” Kukura said. “That’s the main issue, [it’s] just finding the time to work on it because it’s very time consuming and you spend hours working on it.

“The recording process can be frustrating because it takes multiple takes sometimes and you can’t [get the whole thing sometimes] but it’s always a rewarding experience.”