What Triad like

Emerging Perth power trio Triad have already accomplished much at a tender age. With two-thirds of the band still in their teens, they’ve played an enviable amount of gigs at a range of venues across Perth and have released their third single, What I Like. They play at Bunbury’s Prince of Wales on Friday, May 30, and the Buffalo Club on Sunday, June 1, along with Stickz and Marceline. Vocalist/guitarist Jade Formica chats with BOB GORDON about the ride so far.

It feels like something they were destined to do. Triad vocalist/guitarist Jade Formica recalls a constant flow of music in the home and in the car. His father, Nick, was a guitar player, and his mother, Katy Lee a vocalist, and he remembers hearing the likes of Howard Jones and Sade in the car, with a heavier soundtrack of KISS and AC/DC in the lounge room.

“I had a guitar when I was about three years old, and I’d just jump up and down and strum away to videos of Kiss and AC/DC on the Blu-ray player,” Jade says. “I always wanted to be like Gene Simmons, especially; he was just shredding and stuff, and it was really intriguing to me.

“I got another guitar for my fifth birthday, with an amplifier, and there I was. I didn’t know how to play, but I used to just strum away to videos. Pretty early on I really knew what I wanted to do, and that was that.”

By the time Jade was nine, he’d sat down with Dad and learned a few things about actually playing guitar. The Foo Fighters were his first love, then the inimitable discovery of Nirvana occurred and rocked his world again. It all became about going down rock’n’roll rabbit holes.

“I was just doing what I liked, looking up YouTube videos on how to play,” he recalls. “I never learned music theory or tabs or anything like that; it was just from eyesight and ear, and then I worked it out.

“I ended up going to classical lessons at school at the same time, but it wasn’t anything like what I wanted to do, and I knew that immediately. I actually used to get told off for playing the songs that I’d learned. So around 10, I properly learned, and then from there I was just learning all the songs that I loved, and that was such a great time. It totally took me over because it’s such a powerful thing.”

After years of wanting a drum kit in the family music room, Jade’s Dad brought one home. He was again fascinated and was forever on the skins while retaining his first love, the electric guitar.

“This is the point where I was like, ‘I want to get in a band,'” Jade recalls. “I already had my mate Jack (Howe, bass) with me, so we just needed to find a drummer.”

To this point, Jade’s older brother Brae, who hadn’t previously shared a passionate interest in playing music, began to experiment on the drums.

“We asked him to hop on and have a jam,” Jades explains. “He did, and for someone who’d never touched a drum, he was straight away onto it. He wasn’t insane or anything, but he was better than 95% of beginners. He was just picking it up super easy. And we knew we had something good here, that we could actually start a band with, and it could progress.”

So with Jade aged 14, Jack 13 and Brae 16, Triad was formed. By this point a mutual love of Silverchair had also entered the picture, and the band was barely ever out of the jam room.

“Jack loves Silverchair as much as me,” says Jade, “and he’s very into the same music and same ideas as me, musically. So that’s what we started to do, Silverchair and Nirvana. We were just learning, and it was really simple. I think it’s easy when you really love what you’re doing.”

Triad made its live debut supporting Nick and Katy Lee’s band Hot Mess at the Milk Bar in Inglewood in January 2022 to a room full of family and friends. They caught the live bug that evening playing about a dozen covers, but Jade had already begun his songwriting journey, and the next step in Triad’s evolution was at play.

“I started writing really early on, not that far off from when we formed the band, because there were only so many songs I was really interested in learning,” he recalls.

“I would play guitar simply to play guitar and not really play specific songs all the time. So I’d just noodle around. And then, you know, one day I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds good,’ and started singing over it. I’d just put chords together, and it just went on from there. Slowly you have about 10 to 20 riffs, and you put some of them together, and that’s a whole song. And then you’re like, ‘Okay, so I’m actually writing songs,’ although you don’t really realise it at the start that that’s what you’re doing.

“Then it just sort of comes naturally. I don’t really say, ‘I’m sitting down and going to write a full song.’ I write whatever comes out on the guitar, really. If I think it’s good, then I’ll record it, and then if I think it’s really good, I’ll add to it.”

Triad’s first single, Field of View, was released in January 2023, followed by Forgotten in November of that year. May, 2025, sees the release of What I Like. Jade’s songwriting journey continues to create new avenues with each release, with more songs in the pipeline for an EP in the near future.

“I think now it’s a case of trying to get my own sound. I think I’m pretty happy that I’m going towards that, and in time that will happen. Of course, I wanted to write songs that sounded like my influences at the start as well, but there’s a whole bunch of things coming up in our songs.”

Triad have played shows at Perth venues such as the Milk Bar, Rosemount Hotel, Night Owl Studio, Indian Ocean Hotel, The Baltimore and more. Quite a lot has happened in a short time for the trio, but in truth it is very much the beginning of their story. And they’re very much in it for the long run…

“I definitely know it’s exactly what I want to do, and nothing makes me feel the same,” says Jade. “You’ve got to love it, first of all, to even think of getting further, but it’s awesome. It’s so good to be able to write songs. It’s just it’s an amazing thing to do. I used to aspire to be everyone who could do that, even if it was just a local band I saw when I was little, going with my parents.

“To now be doing it, though, I’m heading in the right direction. I want to do it for the rest of my life.”