There are only several ways you can get into a band. Maybe you go to their tryouts, you've got skills, something clicks, and they choose you. Maybe you're friends with one or more of the other members, maybe just a friend of a friend. Or maybe you've got such stand-out, raw talent that everyone can recognize it. That is how Nathan 'Knate' Young joined Anberlin at the tender age of sixteen when he was still so young that the band made him hitch a ride on the Reliant K tour bus because they did not trust him behind the wheel!
But touring in support of Anberlin's first album, Blueprints for the Black Market, was hardly Nathan Young's first experience drumming in front of live audiences. Nathan Young began his drumming career when he was ten. Two years later, Nathan Young was already playing in local bands. The band that would become Anberlin was already familiar with his work. Frontman Stephen Christian recalls, 'We used to go watch [Nate's] band when he was twelve, because here's this child prodigy that was just mind-blowing! So we incorporated him in a couple of years later.'
Of his own drumming style, Nathan Young humbly states,'ìI can hit real hard and I have pretty high endurance.' The absurdly simple quip belies the elegantly intense beats that fans and critics have come to praise him for.