ultra Q

When your dad is one of the most influential figures in punk rock history, it's unlikely that you're going to grow up aspiring to hold down a normal nine-to-five. But, for Jakob Armstrong -youngest son of Green Day's Billie Joe - the moment of realisation that he was destined to follow the family trade didn't arrive until he'd already sampled a more conventional path.

- Ellie Rogers

"I don't think I knew that making music was my vocation until, honestly, I was 18 or 19," says the now 24-year-old Jakob. "I had already graduated high school and I'd been playing with the guys in my band for a long time. I tried going to college, but after about a year I realised that I did not enjoy it. I missed playing music so much." 

Fronted by Armstrong, the principal songwriter and rhythm guitarist, Ultra Q also features brothers Enzo and Chris Malaspina, who handle lead guitar and drums respectively, and bassist Kevin Judd. They're a tight-knit bunch with a chemistry that traces all the way back to when Armstrong and the Malaspina brothers met as five- or six-year-old playmates. Around the same time, Green Day were at the height of their second wave of popularity and Jakob had already begun subconsciously "soaking in all of this stuff," although he describes a childhood surrounded by rock stars as being "just normal" to him at the time. "Looking back on it, I can see that it's absolutely a large part of the reason I wanted to play guitar and be in a band," he reflects.

In their teens, Jakob and the Malaspinas began releasing music under the name of Mt. Eddy, with Judd joining the brotherhood later in high school. The brief dalliance with further education only served to crystallise their ambitions. "When we decided to come back together," Jakob recalls, "that's when we were like, okay, we're Ultra Q. We're a band and we want to do this as a career."