The Pryde

The founding of that legendary group of rascals, that collective of daring troubadours known colloquially as The Pryde is a tale to be told over many moonless nights, to give our people hope when the fierce winds and the cold wolves fill the night with howls. It would be best, dear reader, if you were to nestle yourself within a comfy, well-loved chair before attempting to grapple with a tale as grandiose and saturated in daring-do as the legacy of these five bardic champions. Boil water on the stove for tea, light a candle against the setting of the sun, and wrap yourself in the furs of mighty beasts before consuming the delectable feats of heroism that lie mere words away, lest you shiver too fiercely at the determination, the ferocity, and the indefatigable spirit of these paragons of virtue in the face of impossible odds. Turn back if ye be faint of heart and turn up the volume if ye be faint of hearing, for now, without further delay, description, or general summation, I give to you, ladies and gentlemen, The Pryde.

The founding of the Pryde, a confluence of musical prowess so major that it shaped the very geometric outline of the world, was no mere accident. Sages and madmen had foretold that day since ancient Greece, with generations of man living and dying under the expectation that soon, all too soon these five men would join their instruments in harmonious allegiance. It is said that a pack of wolves found frontman Kuba Kierlancyzk on a mountain, swaddled in the hide of a lion and with a tattoo of God's face on his ass (later, during a heated altercation with a priest over the nature of the Almighty, he removed his pants and pointed to this mythical artwork. The priest immediately went blind). Villages surrounding the settlement soon told tales of the wolfboy who raided their flocks by day and their bars by night, and it was only a matter of time before the government got involved. The movie "First Blood" is generally considered a modern update of the army's unsuccessful hunt for the rouge Kierlancyzk, who, successfully eluding his would-be captors, found it necessary to lay low after his narrow escape. He relocated to Westchester, NY, and there decided to bide his time until his particular brand of frontier justice was needed once more. Guitarist George Hider thought himself destined for a humble sliver of life, enjoying the stability of a mostly wholesome family deep in the idyllic expanse of the country. His expectations of a happy, uneventful life were shattered when marauding bandits took the lives of his three sisters, knowing that the young Hider had left only that morning on a two day journey to the market to sell the family crops. Returning to grieving parents and an empty shell of a home, he swore revenge on the bandits, tracking them to suburban New York City, where they were later found burned and butchered in an incident that the police report described as "grisly", "professional", and "pretty cool, actually". David "Stan" Blanco, the Pryde's bassist, is thought to be an eldritch creature, surpassing both the age and intelligence of mankind by a considerable margin. Previous interviews have revealed he spent considerable time trapped in an iceberg, only being released when the Titanic impacted with his arctic cell and freed him once more to wander the Earth. It remains unknown whether the sinking of the Titanic was an accident or he had some hand in effecting his jailbreak. When asked what his purpose among the race of man was during a 2008 interview with GQ, he replied, "Well, mostly I'm a big fan of shrimp. They're delicious." Drummer Justin Romeo was not born so much as made, synthesized in a laboratory deep in the bowels of the Earth where modern mechanical perfection was married to the monstrous marble of Renaissance sculpture. His creators tried to force him into a life of violence and servitude, planning to sell him to the military as a new, invincible soldier, but his artificial intelligence achieved cognizance and rebelled against them. He gave his captors an ultimatum; either they stand aside and let him leave, or they would each be dragged to the nearest volcano and thrown inside. No one knows which option they chose, but Romeo made his first appearance in Westchester a full week later, which some have calculated as roughly the amount of time he would need for igneous antics. Though each of these men seems more myth than reality, even less is known about John Aurelio. Some say it is only coincidence that a man of identical name and appearance appears several times in Norse mythology, some decry the unmistakable similarities between his face and one that appears in portraits of the First Continental Congress, and some think his inclusion in the writing credits of Seinfeld is just a hoax. Such people are few and far between.

The band met during a bank robbery, though the details are a little hazy. Though most accounts agree that the robbery was thwarted without any civilian casualties, the rumor that more than one of the band members were among the robbers has never been truly disproven. Whatever actually happened during that failed August heist, the group was formed later that night after all five got drunk off of everclear and began to tap rhythms out, building into a shambling, intoxicated variation on Stomp that all spectators present described as “incredible” and “strangely arousing”. Upon sobering in the morning, they discussed their various instrumental skills and planned their inevitable takeover of the music business. They experimented briefly with the possibility of an all-bagpipe orchestra before settling on a more traditional band set up, and they then began the process of recording their first album, Hubrys. Though the journey was long and arduous, the Pryde emerged with 16 taut tracks and an arsenal of ideas for even more next-level shit. The rest, as they say, is history.