A Note From Vitne about Harder Than You:

When I was in my final year of college at the College of Charleston, as a Theatre major I took a film class during my last semester in the Spring of 2009. At that time I was also active in Gölden Palace, my ska/punk/rock band that I co-founded back in 2004 with some of my closest friends Alex Goss, Johnny Emmel, and Graham Spees. In my film class mid-semester, I was assigned my final project: A 5-minute film that I film and edit myself or with some classmates.

 

Almost immediately I knew what I wanted to do. I remembered Sum 41 and their funny mockumentary about their alter-ego band Pain For Pleasure. I decided that's what I was going to do. I was going to give my band Gölden Palace an alter-ego!

 

I fired up my PC and Pro Tools and started writing. I wanted it to be cool, but over-the-top and slightly cheesy. That day I wrote "I Wanna Be Your Bitch" and it was awesome. I showed it to Johnny and Alex and they were on-board to film. Graham was busy unfortunately, so he didn't get to be in it.

 

So one Saturday when all three of us were available, we set up shop with my cheap HD camcorder, an on-set mic (the internal camcorder mic was awful), put on our wigs, made up names, and basically just filmed 100% improv. The filming was tons of fun, and during one of the scenes, Johnny said our next song was going to be called "Charlemagne" which led to me writing a verse and chorus to "Charlemagne" simply as a cut for the video credits. 

 

The final result was a Trailer Park Boys-meets-Behind The Music 15-minute long short film called "SEKS - The Music Industry's Favorite Trainwreck" which to this day is one of my favorite things I've made. It really captures us being us. We are a bunch of goofy guys that have a lot of fun hanging out.

 

The response to that video was amazing. Friends loved it and classmates kept coming up to me saying things like "dude, that was you with SEKS right? That was awesome!" I thought it would be fun, and funny, to make SEKS into a live band. We put GP on hold while I moved to LA to pursue some acting, so I considered making a band there. Funnily enough, we had 3 bassists who were "in" the band who never made any appearances before the 4th bassist, Even Fuglestad made his debut.

 

In 2010 I ended up moving to Norway, further putting GP on hold, but introducing me to the amazing underground music scene of Scandinavia and Europe. They love glam metal! So I decided to start writing a record. I then ended up meeting three guys in December of 2010, and over a few pitchers of beer, we decided to make SEKS into a real thing. We already had a record, after all!

 

As a half-mockumentary/half-serious band, we ended up getting some great feedback. We toured Norway and played some amazing concerts. Most of all, we had a ton of fun. Both the GP version and the Norwegian version of the band were tons of fun. When Steen quit though, we had a lot of trouble finding a worthy replacement, so I decided to put SEKS on hiatus.

 

 - Vitne (January 2016)