This New Year’s Eve, local indie rock band LaBianca will be among the first to perform at Cabo Fish Taco in Blacksburg.

Formerly Bailey’s and before that South Main Cafe, Cabo is housed on the site of what was for years the premier live music venue in the area, but one that is only now returning to life after Baylee’s closed down and Cabo opened in its place, sans stage.

CHRISTINA O’CONNOR | Special to The Roanoke Times Violinist Camellia Delk plays her five-string electric violin

In the interim, the absence of music on the corner of South Main and Lee streets has proved to be a key thread in an overall death-shroud that has descended on the Blacksburg music scene in the past few years.

No kidding — it’s been a graveyard. However, things do seem to be looking up, and as live music in town begins to slowly rise from the grave, LaBianca has certainly proven itself to be one of the freshest corpses. Since its first show in September, the band has had no problem filling clubs with eager fans.

Since then the band has recorded an EP entitled “Horses and Corpses” (no symbolic relation to reporter’s previous jaded comments) and is poised to record its first full-length album.

Made up of singer and guitarist Slade Mankins, drummer Kenny Sanders, bassist Ian Robbins and violinist Camellia Delk, the band continues to develop its loyal local fan base and hopes to take its act on the road in the near future.

On the eve of their upcoming New Year’s performance, Mankins, Sanders and Robbins take a few minutes to talk about the road so far and what they hope is the road to come for LaBianca.

What’s the songwriting process for the band?

Kenny Sanders: A lot of the ideas originate from Slade, some of them originate from Ian, some of them just come out in practice while we’re jamming on parts. We don’t have a formulated songwriting technique.

CHRISTINA O’CONNOR | Special to The Roanoke Times Bassist Ian Robbins of the band La Bianca performs during a recent show at Champs in Blacksburg.

Slade Mankins: Everybody does write their own parts, though.

You’ve played a fair amount of gigs and cut an EP in a pretty short amount of time being a band. How did the EP come together?

Ian Robbins: We recorded it at my dad’s studio in South Boston, Imagine DAT Studios — for “digital audio tape,” which is funny because nobody uses DAT anymore.

It should be called Imagine Hard Disk Studios now.

Most of the songs have above 20 tracks. We recorded about 10 songs.

How many studio sessions?

KS: There were three weekends for tracking and then overdubs. All together it was about three months to record and about two weeks in studio time.

IR: For 10 to 15 hours a day, probably.

KS: We’d go up for two or three days and work 24 hours a day, basically.

IR: Most of the songs in their present form were written in the studio.

KS: And then it was mixed by Tim Kirk at Q Studios in Floyd, which is where we’re gonna do everything for the next record. And also, the studio is named after his cat.

IR: By the time we’re ready to record the next one we’ll probably have enough material to do two albums.

So if we can get two done at once, we’ll release one, go on tour and then not have to go back in the studio for a while and release the other one eventually.

KS: And Slade is writing an electronic EP that we’re working on.

SM: Not necessarily something we’d use for live situations.

And as for the tour, are you working on putting that together now?

KS: We’re waiting to get the new record out because our new stuff sounds so much different than the EP.

How are you booking the tour?

KS: I have some connections up and down the East Coast from touring with my old band.

SM: And we’ll utilize MySpace and the Internet a lot, too, because that actually is helpful.

How has the band’s sound changed since the EP?

SM: Uh, distortion.

KS: Heavier, bigger. Our live shows have become so powerful that we want to represent that in the new record.

SM: Yes, it’s very epic, like “Lord of the Rings” [laughing].

Who are some of your favorite bands?

1. 31 Knots

2. Bright Eyes

3. Pavement

4. Built to Spill

5. Modest Mouse

6. Coheed and Cambria

La Bianca performs at 10:30 p.m. New Year’s Eve at Cabo Fish Taco in Blacksburg. You can read up on the band or purchase the EP “Horses and Corpses” at www.myspace.com or contact the band directly at labiancamusic@yahoo.com.