MEB staffer Ridge Briel and friend Anthony Matthews (who helped write part of the interview) recently caught up with Rou Reynolds and Rory Clewlow of Enter Shikari to discuss the overall message that their music consists of, what people should be doing to make the world a better place, the meanings behind their symbols, and about their newest album A Flash Flood of Colour more in depth.

MEB: You guys are still relatively new in comparison to other bands that remotely sound like you. What has it been like constantly touring and headlining all over the world for the past five years?

Rou and Rory: Well, it’s tiring to say the least. [laughs] We’ve had some amazing experiences, been to places we wouldn’t normally go to, and played for more people than we ever thought we would be able to play for.

Compared to your other albums, A Flash Flood of Colour isn’t, as you’ve stated in previous interviews, as politically motivated as the others. Can you elaborate more on this technological stance you guys have mentioned before?

After our other albums were released, we were labeled as a political band. It kind of makes us angry because we feel that they’ve really missed the point we’re trying to make. With Flash Flood of Colour, we’re trying to push forth a psychological and scientific sort of agenda. Just basically trying to concentrate on giving people a new sort of perspective and thinking of things more objectively. In terms of technology, we’re just trying to make people realize the possibilities we have at our fingertips in the marvels of science to make a completely sustainable world where equality and peace can be a very real and obtainable thing. I saw this video the other day on a Canadian news channel about this guy who has found the cure for cancer. This simple and inexpensive medicine that has been around for decades basically kills the very cancer cells.

Yes I just saw that recently as well. It’s been making the rounds on Facebook  and Tumblr a lot.

It’s a really cheap and easy to make substance. His small-scale testing on rodents has been proven successful and he needs millions to put it to more broad-scale testing, but because the substance is so cheap and easy to make, the pharmaceutical companies don’t want to touch it because they feel they won’t make any money on saving millions of lives. It’s a big example of how technology and science can be held back by the greed of others.

You can view the video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ifXxbxhZc).

Because these days, people are in it just for the money and their own personal gain and not for the greater good of the people who are suffering. What is it that you want people to do and what message do you want them to take when they listen to your music?

The people’s perspectives is what about sums it up really. They can either listen to the lyrics or read the booklet and do their own research if they’re interested. The real first preliminary thing we want people to take from our music is a sense of unity that we are a biosphere planet and that this is the only planet we have. Everywhere, like in media, the first rule of governance is that they like to divide people to not realize that we are just one species. We all kind of want the same things in life but we really need to get back to progressing as a whole sense that manifests everyone in a positive way.

Is that what Common Dreads is about?

Yeah. That’s always been our main concern, of others trying to fight back against the device of nature and getting people to realize the strength we can have when united as one species.

So what made you guys kind of change from Take to the Skies to Common Dreads like that? The lyrics in Take to the Skies aren’t as political compared to Common Dreads.

Just the time in which they were written I guess. We were playing most of them for two or three years by the time we recorded that album as those lyrics were written when we were 16, 17 years old. We were still kind of forming our view of the world. Listening back, you can hear the embryonic stages of our band and our social views in songs like “No Sssweat.” Once we realized we had this pedestal that we were sort of pushed onto when the album came out, it kind of exploded, especially in Europe. We really felt this sort of responsibility of speaking about stuff that are quite urgent and important.

What do you feel, if there is one, is the difference between the fan base in Europe as compared to the fan base of the U.S.A.?

When in Europe, it’s a lot bigger as compared to over here, but it’s still getting there to that size. The way people act and the energy is quite similar. Japan is slightly different because, well, everything is slightly different in Japan.

So what exactly is the meaning behind the title A Flash Flood of Colour and the cover art that adorns it?

A flash flood of colour is what we want to inject into the world. Just a sense of positivity, variety, and diversity through our music. The upside-down triangle represents the opposite of society’s pyramid depiction of the classes. You have the lower class, which makes the majority of the world and therefore the biggest part of the triangle at the bottom, and the very few and rich who control what everyone else sees and does in their day-to-day life at the top. The power should belong to the majority of the people as they are the ones who hold up the triangle.

It’s too bad it didn’t have to do with the Triforce.

Ah yes, Zelda! [laughs]

So how did you guys all meet up together to form this band with such a powerful and meaningful message?

When we first started, that wasn’t really what we had in mind. We didn’t have any goals or aspirations, we just wanted to get together and play music. You could say it was a hobby that really got out of hand. Even now, that’s how it feels to us. As I was saying before, after we started getting that initial success, we started thinking “Wow, people are really starting to listen to us now.” So it kind of felt, not pressured, but just kind of moved into that form of using the music to shout and sing and talk about things that we feel need to be talked about instead of singing about breaking up with your girlfriend or having “tough” lyrics that are full of that faux revolutionism. To us, coming from a punk/hardcore scene, that type of music is built on absolute sincerity and honesty. You’re running around, you’re giving it everything you’ve got, and that’s what punk is all about. Passion and fighting against the oppressions. I guess it just felt kind of normal for us to do.

So is that what the song “Warm Smiles Do Not Make You Welcome Here” is about?

I guess that’s more specifically about… well yeah, more like the music scene and what people are listening to nowadays. How, especially recently, when you’re in a band that’s constantly touring like we have over the last few years, I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t really listen to metal or metalcore. I still like hardcore, but we get exposed to so many bands that sound exactly the same. It’s like there’s this willing to make a band and pick your favorite band and attempt to sound just like them and this mediocrity is just spreading through music and it’s like most bands that become successful don’t really push their music forward and certainly don’t excite us. But that could also be because we play music every day and that we have short attention spans and that we’ve become “elitists.” [laughs] It’s a stab at the media who don’t really help in any way and at the music channels that just play whatever they feel is popular and will keep their listeners happy. So you get this vicious circle of homogenized music and stations where that music just goes around and nothing progresses.

Because these days, especially on American radio stations, you can go to any channel and hear ten songs that sound exactly the same, even more so with contemporary hip-hop. It does get ridiculous about hearing some guy going to a club to pick up a girl to have sex and drinking Bacardi or something. It’s really refreshing to hear music from you guys with lyrics that have so much meaning behind them and actually have it mean something.

That’s the thing, I think if the media did actually support the more underground [bands] and evolve in music genres, not just from the punk side of things but also the electronica and classical stuff, that every single aspect of music would be accepted to a certain degree. But because we all grow up with a narrow view of music, it will seem strange when you hear a piece of music that doesn’t go with the whole “stick with what you know” sort of thinking. It goes back to that saying that it’s easier to sell something that people understand.

Do you think people are more receptive and open to new things over in the UK compared to America?

It’s certainly hard to get a proper gauge of that from album sales alone. The record company that released our first two albums signed us and literally did nothing with us. They hardly released the albums. We’ve sold more albums within the first week of Flash Flood than we have with our last two albums the whole time. Certainly, American radio seems a bit bleaker.

That I can definitely agree with.

Daytime radio in the UK is shit, but there are specialized shows in the evenings and some smaller radio stations as well that are pretty good. I hope to see this bleak sort of radio obsolete.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of SiKth. What was it like working with Dan Weller at the producing helm of your last two albums?

It was amazing. He actually did some of the guitars on Common Dreads. I remember when he first called me up, he was like “Hi, it’s Dan from SiKth.” I was a little bit starstruck to say the least. He grew up in the next town from us actually and we would go see his band and his friends’ bands all the time. He’s very much a part of our lives as an inspiration before Enter Shikari. He really has a great ear for good music. He’s essentially a fifth member of the band.

So tell me a little bit about Step It Up Clothing.

Step It Up Clothing can be described as ethical clothing. Using clothes to spread a message instead of just warmth or a random design. Each shirt actually means something. A percentage from the profits of a shirt goes toward whatever cause it supports. It’s fun, just some friends that do designs really. The online shop is down at the moment but it should be back up within a month or so.

So I know you guys are into the whole Zeitgeist movement. What message do you really want people to take from this and instill into their everyday lives?

It’s really hard to summarize that. The whole movement for us is just such a huge inspiration. It’s more education than I ever really received in the schooling system. There’s so many lectures and videos today that are all parts of what the movement stands for. It really steps outside of everything for people to look in and see what’s really going on.

Any last words for your fans and what people who haven’t seen you live yet can expect from your shows?

A lot of sweat, a lot of blood, ringing ears afterwards; people are really missing out. All of your senses will be destroyed. This tour’s been going great, I can’t really complain. Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far.

MEB: So as of right now, you and The Swellers have got a ton of different things going on. You’re currently doing a tour of the United Kingdom with Deaf Havana, you’re preparing for a two-week stint with The Early November, The Wonder Years and Young Statues, your album’s been extremely well received, etc. What’s been your reaction to this overwhelming response with the band?

Nick Diener: It’s definitely not overwhelming for us. We worked hard and we really like our product, so we knew we were going to have to tour hard to get it out there. Last year we toured nine months out of the year! Very grateful to have these opportunities, though. Sometimes we have to sit back and think about how not many bands get to do what we do.

How do your family, friends back home and Taylor take everything that’s happened so far?

Everyone is behind us 100%. Great to have support coming from all of those angles. It’s funny, though, we’ll run into people when we’re back home who think we’re absolutely famous and making loads of money. It’s pretty funny.

Once you have a little free time, how do you plan on spending it?

Hanging out at home and relaxing as much as possible. Also, recording bands in my studio and writing/recording music for The Swellers.

A little while back on your Facebook, at about the time you were on your co-headliner with You Me At Six, you posted some photos of you and the rest of the guys at what looked like a WWE match. Are you and the guys big fans?

75% of the band is pretty into pro wrestling. Going to see RAW in San Diego was pretty incredible. World Champion CM Punk got us front row tickets.

Do you have a favorite wrestler in particular?

Bret Hart. Hands down.

Now, last summer, you guys released your second album Good For Me on Fueled by Ramen. First off, where’d you guys come up with the title?

It appears in a couple of the songs’ lyrics in different ways. We felt it summed up the different sentiments of the record.

The whole album has a vibe to it that feels like it’d be perfect for summer. Was that what you guys were going for?

Nope, just wrote songs. I guess it just so happened that we were in pretty good moods for a lot of the writing process! That is pretty rare; we usually write when we’re feeling bummed out.

In the lead single “The Best I Ever Had,” there’s a line that says, “I remember April of ’94, September of ’96 and every day of ’99.” What’s the significance behind those dates?

Might take away some of the magic to reveal all of that. Maybe look around at some of the records/things that happened in music around those times. As far as ’99 goes.. just LOTS of great albums!

What records did you and the guys tend to take influence from when creating Good For Me?

Lots of Foo Fighters and Descendents. Two completely different bands, but that’s what I was going for sonically.

What song on the record would you say you’re most proud of?

We all really like playing “Warming Up” live. It’s a groover. Big solo in it, too. Pretty emotional.

The reaction to Good For Me has been fantastic so far, receiving positive response from both critics and fans. Do you have any idea how you guys are going to follow the album up?

We have a 7″ coming out in a month or so, we’re going to record and self-release an EP later this year, and then hopefully a new full-length in early 2013. So yeah, lots of music!

Recently, you’ve decided to part ways with record label Fueled by Ramen, under which you produced both Ups & Downsizing and Good For Me. What fueled this decision to leave? Was it a long time coming or was it just time to switch things up?

It just wasn’t the right fit. We didn’t have a lot of freedom to do what we wanted to do in some aspects and didn’t get the attention we deserved after Good For Me came out. The label changed, we changed, it was time to go.

Have you been in talks with other labels lately, or is that looking too far ahead at the moment?

Not really looking that far ahead, though SideOneDummy is putting out the 7″. They’re awesome people. We have a few labels that are interested in doing our next record, but we’re not actively talking about it.

When do you guys anticipate you’ll be signed with a new label and producing a new album?

I’m hoping to have the full-length out by summer of next year.. hoping the EP will be out in the fall of this year.

About a week ago you put out a new music video for the track “Inside My Head,” where you volunteer at a Big Brothers-type organization as a PR stunt. Where exactly did the idea for this premise come about?

We were just sitting around and decided it’d be fun to do a video where we were getting bullied by little kids, and in return giving THEM a hard time. We just wanted to have fun making a video with our friends and a bunch of kids. Ended up being pretty fun!

Also, something very cool, I saw that you did some guest vocals for the latest MxPx album Plans Within Plans. How’d you guys come in contact with the band? Are you a big fan of the group?

Huge fans of MxPx. Been listening to them for almost fifteen years. We met at a show. We just stayed in touch a little bit and it was a big surprise when Mike (Herrera) wanted us to sing on their new record. Very cool.

I’m sure MxPx was definitely up there on your list, but who else have you dreamed of collaborating with?

Never really had any desire to collaborate with anyone, though I would love Matthew Caws from Nada Surf to sing on one of our new records. Best voice.

Now, you’re currently on a tour in the United Kingdom with Deaf Havana and what was supposed to include The Dangerous Summer. How is that going over for you guys?

It’s going alright! Getting the crowds moving and pumped up. We’re the only punk band on the bill. If the crowd is boring, we’re bored. If not, we have a good time. Seems to be going fine.

And after that, you’re doing a two-week stint with The Early November, The Wonder Years and Young Statues? Are you guys looking forward to that?

Yeahhh!

Are you and the rest of the band big fans of The Early November?

No. I just heard them a few days ago. But I really like their guitar player, Joe. I met him when we toured with Hellogoodbye.

How are you hoping to spend your time with the guys on tour?

Playing shows and eating. Some sleeping.

If you had the choice of touring with any band, larger or smaller than yourselves, who would you choose?

I’d love to do a tour with Propagandhi. Maybe Weezer, Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World, and this new band I really love called Diamond.

Your brother Jonathan plays drums for The Swellers, and you guys remain the two founding members since you started making music in 2002. Have you guys had any kind of sibling rivalries at all, be it on the road or when recording, or is it pretty relaxed?

Any arguments we have are usually about the music, and it ends up making us come to great agreements and the songs get even better. Nothing too intense, just usual brother stuff!

So as you look toward the future of the band, where do you guys see yourselves in five years?

Hopefully doing much better, but getting to stay home more often!

Final question: For all of the bands out there hoping to achieve what you guys have accomplished, what would you give as advice for succeeding in the music industry?

Just write great songs and sound good live. If you don’t have that, you won’t even get to first base.

MEB staffer Ridge Briel recently caught up with Cameron Argon AKA Big Chocolate about the new Disfiguring the Goddess album and the story behind it. He also touches on his past history with the numerous bands his name has been associated with over the years and how he rocks a flower guitar.

MEB: As a man of many projects, how is it that you’re able to concentrate on one at a time enough to release it instead of going all over the place?

Cameron Argon: I get in the ZONE and once my flow is flowing well, I can just keep working till one is done. I do switch back and forth sometimes though if I’ll get a random Big Chocolate idea while writing metal. Haha! Everything is music in the end and I use it all to influence each other.

Concerning Disfiguring the Goddess, what sort of artistic differences are there between Circle of Nine and the Sleeper EP?

Vocal maturity for sure. I tried not to cover everything with GURGLING GUTTURAL MADNESS. Stronger song structuring. Better production. Better use of electronics. Just better in general.

It seems that with every release your voice is honed and perfected more and more. Is there a secret to belting out your world-renowned vocals? Do you use any sort of distortion or is it au’ natural?

All natural. Definitely like any mic’ed vocal there is a bit of EQ and compression. I use a bit of small room reverb in the post production process as well, but for the most part, that’s what I sound like. Each release I try and get a bit more tasteful with my vocals so I’m not covering an entire track with the deepest vocal I can do like in the old days.

Why is it that you continue the Disfiguring the Goddess project as a one-man thing since Circle of Nine instead of allowing others in your band? Would you ever consider bringing this to life and touring with it?

Circle of Nine was all me as well, just not that well promoted as such. Nope, 99.9% chance for DTG ever hitting the road. I like metal just enough to listen and make, but not enough to drop everything and hit the road for extensive tours.

What are the lyrical aspects of the Sleeper EP?

Most of the concepts in the album are all about ancient underwater stuff, such as huge monsters, kingdoms, and other weird stuff I can just go with while typing out lyrics.

I’ve noticed that you’re representing a lot of different programs now. What sort of gear and programs did you use for the EP? And I have to ask, how did you get sponsored by Daisy Guitars?

HAHA YES! Daisy Rock rules. I’m using Logic Pro as my DAW, Toontrack for drums and for some mixing plugins as well (ezmix). Line 6 x3 Pod Pro for guitars. Sm7b for vocal recording. Sadly, I didn’t use the Daisy Rock on the record. With Daisy Rock, I pretty much just asked them and told them I was doing Warped Tour and wanted to play guitar in my BC stuff. And BOOM. Pink flower guitar on my doorstep. Daisy Rock rules as a company too!

What is it that makes you want to write slam metal instead of the more popular and arguably accessible deathcore or death metal?

Well, the new record is just sort of what I wanted to hear. It’s not 100% any type of sub metal. I don’t want to confiscate for creativity to fit a guild line to genre better. I love brutal DM and I love groove so there is definitely a TON of slam influence on the songs, but also a lot of out of the box ideas like electronics and odd time signatures.

Are there any other slam bands you would like to recommend to people who are largely unfamiliar with the genre?

Japanese and Texas slam bands take the cake 100%.

Back when you first started blowing up, you were covering bands like Sleep Terror and Abominable Putridity. Have you ever thought about playing with Luke Jaeger of Sleep Terror? 

Haha no, all that stuff was mainly for fun. Sleep Terror had no vocals so I decided to do some vocals over it! I dug Sleep terror but I never thought the actual band should have vocals in it. Same with that Faceless audition thingy, never intended on actually joining the band. I wasn’t even done with high school when I did that. haha.

One question that many people want to know is: Whatever happened with Abominable Putridity? Did you ever record anything with them other than “Entrails Full Of Vermin”?

No I didn’t. I did like six of the songs on their new album, but there was some huge miscommunication stuff going on and it was just decided that I wouldn’t the one doing it anymore.

Are there any other bands that you are working directly with like you did with Burning the Masses? What about individual artists, such as the “I Declare Goddess” track?

Nope. Right now I’m only doing DTG as far as metal goes and I really intend to keep it that way. Simple and fun.

What is the news on Commissioner? Have you ever thought about writing more metal-oriented songs with Mitch Lucker? Will you two ever tour or play one-off shows together?

Yes! Planning on doing another Commissioner release this year. Shows have always been talked about but never acted on.

What about the Big Chocolate persona? Do you have any releases and/or tours coming up?

Just got done with about three months’ worth of touring on the weekends. I have a month off before I go back to weekends and such. I’m doing Bamboozle in NJ in May. That should be awesome.

Your early solo stuff (CMA-era) was more experimental and broader than the EDM of your more recent stuff. Have you ever thought about going back to that stage of your career or will you continue to advance with your songwriting centering around EDM?

I was really into acts like Moby and Paul Van Dyke so I really didn’t have much direction as far as where to take it, so I just did everything. Well with Big Chocolate stuff, it has definitely been the center of my career. I’ve done more with BC in a year than I ever have with metal. BC solo has more fans and a larger network/reach/pull than DTG does. I do metal for fun and as a kickback where with BC I take it a lot more seriously as far as choices and how things play out. I never thought that I would be doing music let alone dance music as a main vessel. I remember back in high school though when I was having a heart to heart with a friend. I told him that I would way rather be known for electronic music and doing that rather than doing metal. I’ve always felt that electronic music is more my style. Frank Mullen from Suffocation said that himself in a SYWH podcast very recently.

What are your favorite remix(es) you’ve done so far? Are there any that you’re working on right now?

I don’t think I have a favorite one. The Whitechapel one slams hard, the Breathe Carolina ones have been played on the radio and have been a big vessel for me to tap out of the straight heavy/metal EDM.

Very few people know how many bands you were actually a part of and did/didn’t record with, such as Malodorous, Misericordium, and Dissever the Tyrant. Would you be able to give a full list of the bands you’ve been with? 

I don’t have a single piece of Malodorous material out. I was in it for a while and wrote a song or two that never made it out on a release. So I was never really ‘a part’ of it. I was also 16 haha. Misericordium I was going to be a part of but then that fell through, nothing was actually done about that. Dissever the Tyrant I did some studio vocals for their first demo. Never really was a part of any of those acts in a way to be mentioned as groups I’ve ‘been’ in. I’ve always done DTG. I did vocals for a Burning the Masses album and tour. Aside from that, everything has either been talk or something I did when I was like 16.

Have you heard that there is a grind band called Big Chocolate? They’re based in Chile or Colombia or something like that.

Yeah haha! So dumb. So so so dumb. They haven’t really crossed any lines that have caused me to shut it down.

Any last words for your fans and followers?

Thanks for all the mad support you’ve given over the years from all aspects of my music. Mad respect for anyone who has ever bought something off iTunes, a shirt, or been a long-time subscriber to cam every day.

MEB: So let’s start this off with the obligatory “How’s the tour going” question. How has the turnout been?

Lights: It’s been crazy, and I can see it growing over the course of just the past few weeks. It’s kind of amazing to see happen, and really exciting! I think it’s got to do with the new record, more people latching onto it, or more people hearing it. They say you can only be a new artist once, but I think that when people keep hearing it and keep finding it, as long as you keep re-inventing yourself and making sure that you’re keeping yourself challenged and keeping your fans challenged, then more people are gonna find it. It’s been amazing, it’s really coming across well; especially the new stuff. The shows have been so much fun for us, and I think people come and have a good time, and they tell their friends about it.

What has been your favorite stop so far this tour? 

Oh, that’s hard. There’s been a couple great ones. New Orleans was really fun because we had never played there, it was a small one but it was sold out and it was gnarly and hot! We went out that night and it was crazy, we went to Bourbon Street. It was a fun night for all of us. And then nights like Orlando and (Washington) DC where there are so many people coming out, well your mind equals blown all the time.

Oh you pulled the plug! I’m so excited. (laughs)

Tell me about your creative process, without trying to get too prod-y. Is there a particular niche that you’ve found when developing what has become your sound? Or do things tend to take off with their own direction?

Each song has its own way that it comes together. The best thing that you can do as a writer, musician, and producer is go with that. Learn how to chameleon into all of the different ways you can possibly do it. I mean, especially with the new record where there are so many different collaborations involved with it, not everyone’s going to have the same writing style. Learning to adapt to suit different environments is really important. A song like “Cactus In The Valley” on Siberia was written just with me and my acoustic guitar, and then later re-worked to fit the rest of the record. A song like “Everybody Breaks a Glass,” I was sitting down with Brian and Graham of Holy Fuck jamming in his dining room, and then we took parts of that jam session and patched it together. Suddenly it started to form, we started playing melodies over it and it becomes this imperfect, raw, live electronic track that you start to lay a top-line over. Songs like “Flux & Flow” start with the beat, and then you just kinda build it from there. So whatever inspires it or whatever sparks it, that’s the way that it kinda dictates that it’s gonna go.

Is there a song in your catalogue that you feel might be mis-understood? Maybe it’s been interpreted the wrong way? 

I think the last song on the record, which is one of the most exciting songs I’ve released because it’s so different; it’s called “Day One.” It’s basically nine minutes of noise, but there’s order in the chaos, there’s purpose in the chaos as well. That is the last nine minutes of the first jam session I had with Holy Fuck. Now, this was a really special turning point in my career because it was the first time I had made music in a live setting and kept it that way. You know, you can write in a live setting but when you go to record it you start from the bottom up and make it perfect. This is real, raw, being recorded live off of the floor and you never make the same thing over again. It’s a track of its own, it can’t be replicated. That’s pretty special in the electronic world, where people can sometimes dismiss the genre as “soulless” or without life.

Because everything’s programmed, you know it’s like there’s not a lot of feeling to it? 

Yeah, there’s some elements that can be like that but this is a perfect example of a track that is completely live electronic. I thought it was really ironic for the genre, and really cool. When I put it on, it was like this is driving music, this is beautiful, this is background music. You know, life isn’t perfect, and our days aren’t perfect, so why does music have to be?

That’s probably why you named it “Day One” right?

It’s actually the name of the session, because it’s the first day we worked together. Their influence on the record helped get a really cool sound on a lot of the tracks.

Wow, that’s awesome.

In nature, The Listening and Siberia seem to show a metamorphosis in not only your sound but also your perspective on life. Tell me about what influenced the overall concept of the new record?

It’s hard to say. I didn’t go into it with this mind-frame of what I wanted to say. It was more-so the music I wanted to make, the sound, and the energy that the songs conveyed. I wanted to bring a grittiness and a heaviness to my work which was previously very soft and lush. I wanted to turn that on instead and show the underbelly. It was my manager’s suggestion to collaborate with Holy Fuck, and it ended up being amazing and the collaboration of the year. It was one of those steps in taking that direction. It just so happens that over time you get comfortable with yourself, you get better at what you do, you understand your sound more and your place in the world and in music more. So, I think that walking into the record with that mind-frame gives you that much more freedom, and that much more ability to make your mark on the record and say what you want to say. I think it’s a reflection of me being confident and me being happy, being able to delve into other worlds when I was writing lyrics, and just have fun. A song like “Fourth Dimension,” I remember sitting there and we had written a lot of the track and fixed it up a bit. I went and sat in my hotel room and just wrote lyrics. Before I knew it, it was 4 A.M. and I had a set of lyrics, and I was like where did these come from? You just go to another place, it’s like an out-of-body experience, like an adventure. It was just fun and a good experience, as opposed to The Listening which was amazing in its own way; it was a lot to get off of my chest. It was very personal and close to me, and very few people were involved in the project. So, it came from a different place.

Yeah, I’m an artist as well so I totally understand everything that you’re saying, it makes sense to me. It’s great whenever you hear someone who’s on that same page, you know?

Yeah!

I totally know that feeling, what they were going through right when they were writing that, it makes sense.

You’ve mentioned that you want your music to feel special like “apple pie,” which I find to be a very relatable thought. Expanding on that feeling, is there a particular mood you were trying to hit with Siberia? Maybe another fruit?….Pie?

(laughs). Man, the apple pie slogan I put on my first MySpace page in 2006! I think it’s still there isn’t it? I just remember the way I felt when my Grandma used to make apple pie and it was the best. It was this good kind of happy that was like this right now is awesome, and that’s all that matters. There could be a crazy night ahead of you, but right now you’re really enjoying the apple pie. That’s the way a song should be. You don’t wanna write something that’s gonna piss someone off, or make someone more frustrated or stressed. I’ve heard music like that and it just frustrates me so I just have to turn it off. I just wanna make stuff that takes you away for 3 1/2 minutes, you know?

Right!

Is there anyone who you want to collaborate with that you haven’t yet?

Um, who knows? There’s so many people out there. The best collaborations are the ones you least expect to be great, like the one with Holy Fuck and Shad. You know, some of the collaborations I’ve done I wouldn’t have thought two years ago would be great. You just don’t anticipate what’s really gonna work out. But yeah, there’s people I would love to work with. There’s a million! Like Kanye West, or 50 Cent! Let’s do something with 50 Cent!

Oh man. That’d be awesome, I’d kill to see that! (laughs)

I’ll be in his video game, isn’t it Crystal Skull or Glass Head or something?

I know what you’re talking about, but I can’t remember the name for the life of me. But that’d be really cool.

If you had to give me your best interpretation of what’s next for the music industry in terms of its future, what might that be?

I don’t know, it’s going in a weird direction in a really cool way. But, I think that rock and grunge is gonna come back. Rock has kinda disappeared from radio, you know? I think the same sort of thing happened in the ’90s. Everything was getting electronic, everything was getting really dance-y. Then, everyone was like I don’t wanna hear all this sounding so perfect so let’s get some grunge in here. Then all of the grunge bands came in like Nirvana, and then everyone was like “yeah! this is real again!”, you know? Not that I’m dismissing electronic at all, I just think that people are gonna find ways to make things sound like there’s human in them, there’s soul in them. There’s only as much soul as you put in, and I think that electronic music is no different. I mean, that’s what I tried to do on Siberia. People are getting a bit exhausted of hearing so much perfection and tuning and all of this stuff. It’s nice to hear some mistakes, hear some human in it.

Too much melodyne, too much auto-tune.

Yeah, that’s what we did on Siberia, there’s ugly parts, and there’s messy bits, and there’s grittiness. That’s what makes it special.

It adds character!

It adds character and you can hear that there’s people there, and that’s what makes it cool.

Give me your opinion on the ideology of the “larger than life” figure (the example being a famous musician). Basically, what I’m asking is in relevance to our society and the importance of this person’s work, or music: is it right for us to “worship” them and idealize their music and their persona? Does a person ever stop being just like us, and if so when does their music transcend their persona?

It’s something that I’ve always kind of thought about. You hear these stories about some of these huge rock stars who have lost touch with reality, you wonder how that happens, at what point that happens. I know I haven’t. I don’t know if it’s due to my family, or my connection with my fans. I’m always making sure I try to meet people when I can, or keeping myself on a ground level and having good friends around – your team around you! They’re important. If you have people around you who are telling you “yes” all of the time, you’re never going to know reality. Right? The world’s not like that. It only goes as far as you let yourself. If you’re the kind of person who’s insecure enough that you need someone to tell you that, then you’re probably going to lose touch with reality. That’s where it changes, when you think that you’re not susceptible to “real life.” I honestly don’t know when that point comes. It’s something I’ve thought about too. It’s like is there some kind of threshold you cross, suddenly you’ve sold “this” amount of records and you’re a different person? Then you hear about people who aren’t like that at all. So, I really don’t know. All I do know that I’ve never looked at an artist and worshiped them. When I really respect someone’s work I look beyond it and what it’s doing, and where it’s coming from. For me, when people are really into my music and are really moved by it, I hope they don’t think that I’m the one -

That you’re a different person?

I hope they don’t think that I’m the one who’s affecting them. I’m not. It’s who gave me my music, and I think that’s a force much greater than me. I hope people can look through me and see that, and not -

Put you on some sort of pedestal?

It’s not me, I’m just like a medium for it, you know? I believe it’s coming from somewhere else. I hope it’s all that big place in the sky that it comes from.

Yeah.

Tell me about the concept of the music video for “Banner.” Who came up with it?

“Banner” was the one that took me a little while to get the video for. Some of them come right away, and some of them don’t. It’s usually me who comes up with the main idea. I watched “The Book of Eli” and I was really excited by the concept of this lone wanderer who has something that everybody wants. People can sense that in him – he’s strong, he’s a fighter. It’s in this post-apocalyptic world where there is no purity, or values left. So the video is kinda like that. Essentially the concept for the video for “Banner” is longer than 3 1/2 minutes, so it’s hard to jam in there.

The song is about being in a world where everything can be burned down. I always look at it as, what’s valuable is what can’t be burned down. It’s like your friendships and love, and relationships – things that if we lose everything, they are still there. That’s what “Banner” is all about. For the video I wanted to convey something like that – a world where there’s no white material left, that at it’s most basic there’s nothing pure left, yet somebody has something and everyone recognizes it. It can stop conflict and it can bring people together. I thought that was a really neat little concept. We found a really wicked spot out of L.A. in this desert, it was actually very, very cold, freezing that day. It was this old compound for disturbed children that had been abandoned since the ’60s. We used that spot, it was kinda eerie and really cool. It ended up being really great.

So taking a look back at where you’ve come from, you’ve gone so far. You avoided the sophomore slump with such a game changer like Siberia. From where you’re at now, what do you anticipate for the future?

We want to stay on this trajectory that we’re on. Nothing is blowing up, but nothing is going down. It’s a slow build; you put in hard work and make decisions for the right reasons. I don’t ever take endorsements or those kinds of things if they don’t stand alongside the integrity of the music. Everything is about that. You don’t try to sell anything other than what you believe in, which is the songs, the live show and bringing people to the show. Seeing it really happen like the way that we always hoped it would, myself and my manager, we kinda built it from 2006. It’s like this slow, steady build; I hope that it continues on this road so that in 5-10 years my fans are still with me, and they’re growing with me and I’m growing with them. Nothing is left and forgotten; we can make each other proud, you know?

Right. I think that’s exactly what anybody would want.

Yeah! It takes tact though. A lot of people are swayed by getting lots of money to do an ad, or those kinds of things. Those things are great, but you have to really be like, what am I getting out of this in the long run? Is this helping the music, you know? That can cut out some success in the short term, but yeah.

That’s what you need to keep doing!

Any last words for all of your fans out there who are listening to or reading this?

Definitely come to a show, they’re fun!

I can agree with that.

We have a good time, and my band’s amazing. I have a four-piece band, and these guys all make the parts their own. You’re going to get something even different from the record, and the light show is amazing! Jeremy our lighting guy is part of the band, so yeah. Come to a show!

Thank you very much for sitting down with me and having this interview! 

Of course!

MEB staffer Austin Gordon recently caught up with the guys of Denton TX indie-rock outfit Valise to discuss their experiences recording their Dreamcatcher EP, their upcoming new full-length record, brotherly love, and more.

MEB: How did the line-up of you guys assimilate together?

Vince: It actually started off in the studio, we didn’t think we were going to be a band until we recorded these songs. Then afterwards, we were like “we have to do something with this”, and so from then on we decided to be Valise.

Tell me about your practice sessions, how do things usually come together when a new song is being formed? Is there a usual sort of “schedule” or is it relatively freeform?

Jared: Usually what will happen is Vince will come up with the bare bones of a song, or he’ll have a riff or an idea. He’ll show it to us at practice, we’ll start fleshing stuff out. Over the course of a few practices we’ll get the basics of a song written. As far as practicing goes, we either go to Casey’s house or my house, just set up in a room, and go for it.

Casey: Make some noises.

Pretty much throw down, right?

Casey: Basically.

Tell me about recording with Matt Wilbur of The Vanguard Room and the whole process itself.

Ricky: He’s the worst (laughs). It was awesome. We went down to Lakeland to do this, several of us were really excited because Matt’s partner is Aaron Marsh and we were big fans of Copeland, and we had heard of Woodale, which was Matt’s old band. They had some success in the southeast. We got down there, and none of us really knew Matt. I feel like from the first 10 minutes we were there, it was just like we had been friends for a long time, over some biscuits and gravy (laughs). It was fun. We all went in there with specific ideas with what we wanted on certain parts, things here and there. We had this idea that these songs were set, we had figured we had thought about everything. He brought so much to the table, like “what about this”? Really quality stuff that helped shape these songs up. It was a really good experience, it was really fun.

Do you plan on recording with him again or is there someone else in mind for the full-length? 

Casey: We definitely plan on working with Matt again, for at least the next full-length. We’re just so pleased with how the EP came out, I feel like it’d be silly to stop what we have now. In the future for future albums, we’re all open to working with different producers and getting different sounds. For right now, definitely Matt, definitely Vanguard Room.

I can definitely agree with that. Was there a general theme underlying the Dreamcatcher EP?

Vince: I can’t say that there was a general theme, there was just a few songs that I had written and once we got them all together they just cohesively matched up.

Casey: I feel like that’s where Matt came in, we blended them all together and gave them a theme.

An identity?

Casey: Yeah, yeah.

When thinking about the next record, what sort of elements are you working towards? Maybe more experimentalism or just further developing your sound?

Vince: In one of our newer songs, it’s called “Monster”, we’ve already experimented with some trumpet in it. As far as the full-length goes, I think we’re just trying to better what we did on the EP, and we’re just trying to get a little more dynamic with the songs. At least for me.

Casey: I definitely feel like the 4 of us are just growing as people, and we’re getting a lot closer to each other, and becoming better friends. And because of that naturally, we feel more comfortable with each other and we feel more comfortable with trying new things.

Ricky: I think naturally as artists, we want to progress and constantly be doing something better than what we were doing before. Constantly just growing musically, bigger than the last record, softer than the last record, faster and slower, everything in between. Continue growing as a unit.

That’s exactly what you’re wanting to do. Stay cohesive, stay tight, and further move. Keep exploring. What sort of topics do you guys plan to cover on the record?

Vince: I don’t really just choose a topic, usually it’s kinda just whatever hits me.

Casey: The topics choose us (laughs).

Vince: Yeah, I never thought Dreamcatcher would be what it was beforehand and it just came out. I definitely think the Dreamcatcher EP has a little bit of a different feel for each song lyrically, and I think I’ll continue that on the full-length.

Can we expect a possible release time later this year, maybe next year? 

Casey: December 21st, 2012 (laughs).

Vince: There’s no way we can know.

Jared: We have no idea. We haven’t even set any date for recording a full-length yet.   So there’s not really any way to tell.

Casey: As soon as we finish it.

Probably more or so next year?

Ricky: It’ll definitely be a 2013 release date.

Where do you draw your music and style of songwriting influences from? Any major, particular people?

Vince: I think it’s fair to say that each of us have a completely different taste in music. We all have the same appreciation for similar bands. For me, I’ve listed As Tall as Lions, and some Death Cab for Cutie, as a bit of an influence for me.

Ricky: I grew up listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn, and a lot of blues; Robert Cray, stuff like that. I was always a big Copeland fan. Just, so many different areas of music.

Casey: God, I like a lot of stuff. Radiohead, Bjork, Portishead, Tool, I love what Puscifer is doing; I love everything that Maynard does. The Flaming Lips.

Ricky: Casey can go all day (laughs).

I knew Radiohead was coming! 

Casey: They’re just the greatest (laughs).

Jared: I’ll listen to anything that can catch my attention, really. Favorite bands have to be Thrice and The Dear Hunter. I listen to them a lot.

The Dear Hunter, yes finally! I was waiting for that. Oh my god, amazing. You guys have a very varied style, but it all comes together in a way in the root. All the music just blends, and that’s what makes your music blend so well. So looking at the future, what is definitely next for Valise? Give me a large goal collectively.

Vince: We’re just gonna try to tour as much as possible. I think we owe it to ourselves to get this EP in as many hands as we can, and from there it’s pretty much just taking over the world (laughs).

Just going all out on the planet.

Ricky: We just wanna keep making music, because we love hanging out with each other and the music we write with each other. We love what we do.

Casey: And we love each other, as long as we stay true to that.

(Group awwww)

Ah man, he’s splurging right now (laughs). Any last words for the fans?

Vince: Come see us at a show.

Ricky: Buy our record.

Casey: Give us all of your money.

Ricky: Tell your friends (laughs).

Jared: On a serious note, we all just want to say a big collective thank you to everyone that’s supporting us though, because you can’t do anything without people supporting you.

————-

Thanks so much guys! Make sure to go check them out!

Fresh off of a US tour and on the eve of worldwide touring (including a huge Wembley Arena show in London) Frank Turner took a minute to talk with MEB about tour life, his next album and his upcoming hardcore side project.

MEB: First off, it looks like you are booked through August as far as touring goes. You’re hitting everywhere from Australia to Canada to various countries in Europe. How does it feel to know you’ll be spending the next four months on the road seeing the world?

Well, it won’t be too much different from the last few years, haha. Actually my tour schedule runs through to the end of the year and beyond, we just haven’t announced all of it yet. I love being on tour, and I’m very lucky to do what I love for a living. I also don’t have a home to go back to in the UK right now so tour is better for me. All in all, I feel good about it!

I have yet to see you play a show, but I have heard that you can provide more entertainment with just your voice and a guitar than some of the bigger artists with light shows and fog machines. For those who haven’t seen you, what would you say to expect from a Frank Turner performance?

Well, I consider myself to be an entertainer first and foremost. Aside from throwing everything I’ve got into it, well, I like to think of my shows as celebrations, an event where it’s more a case of me leading the congregation than just a performer with an audience. It’s a participatory event.

You are fairly popular here in the states, but I’m sure you are much more of a celebrity across the pond. What is the main difference between playing shows in the UK and playing shows in the states?

Well, I play bigger shows in the UK; I guess I’m more associated with the punk scene in the USA than at home (not that I’m bothered either way – I’ll play for anyone). And people in the states travel much further for shows. But on the whole I find western audiences (if you see what I mean) to be much of a muchness. Playing in places like China and Israel was very different, very wild.

It is clear that you are gaining more and more recognition worldwide and becoming much more recognizable among the general public. With that sort of “fame” there comes positives and negatives. How has this recognition positively affected you and how has it negatively affected you?

Well, I was paying for a ticket at the cinema the other day and the guy at the counter was a fan so he let me in free. And sometimes people I don’t know can get a little over-familiar with me, which can be a little odd. For the most part though it’s not something that impacts on my life much; it’s probably because I spend the vast majority of my life on tour, so I’m around my shows every day, which have a standard level of hecticness to them.

Are there any plans on touring in the US following these international shows or are you going to spend more time writing/recording?

Both actually. I’m recording a new album over the summer, and then I’ll be in the USA for more headline shows in September and October.

Last year you released England Keep My Bones, an album that received loads of praise and was even deemed your best album yet by many. Knowing that your last album was so universally loved, does that put any pressure on your songwriting for your next album?

Not particularly – I’ve been doing this for a while now. I guess I felt a bit of pressure around albums two and three, but now the only real pressure I have is from myself. That’s pretty considerable, however – I try to push myself as hard as I can creatively each time I come to write and record. I want to improve every time.

You stated in an earlier interview that you should have a new album slated for 2013 and you’ve also been playing a couple new songs live. Does this mean we should be expecting some sort of recorded material before the year is up?

Yeah, I guess we will probably release a song or two before the end of the year.

What exactly is the songwriting process of Frank Turner? You have been universally praised for your songwriting which tends to lean toward the more personal side of your own life. Should the same introspective anecdotes be expected for your next record?

I’m not taking any hard left-hand turns for the next record, stylistically. I don’t really have a process. When I started doing this I sat down with a guitar and tried to write good songs, nothing more than that. It ain’t broke as of yet, so I don’t feel the need to tinker with it.

You hinted a few months back about starting up a hardcore side project. Can you give us more details about that? When we should expect material, what it should sound like, who you are working with etc.?

I’ve actually started working on it now. It’s me, Ben Dawson (from my old band Million Dead) and Matt Nasir (from my current backing band, The Sleeping Souls). We’re somewhere between Jesus Lizard and Hot Snakes. In-your-face twisted hardcore rock, basically. We wrote a bunch of the songs at the start of the year and we are hoping to be able to record something in the summer. It’s a side project so it’s a low priority for me, but I am excited about it. As far as it goes, it’s refreshing for me, musically.

You were actually selected 29th overall in the annual Fantasy Band Draft on AbsolutePunk.net for a punk/hardcore band along with Frank Carter of ex-Gallows and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. What do you think about making music with those guys?

I’m sure it’d be fun. Frank is a lovely chap. Josh I suppose I’d find a little intimidating at first, haha. I’m up for making music with anyone though.

If you could start up your own “Fantasy Band” (which means any musician who has recorded or played live in the past year) who would you recruit and what kind of band would it be?

I’d make a drunk country band with members of Lucero and Drag the River.

Wrapping this up, is there anything else you would like to say to our readers?

Come see a show and say hi.

I recently talked to Whitechapel drummer Ben Harclerode on the band’s headlining tour, the Recorruptour, with support from Miss May I, After The Burial, The Plot In You, and Structures. We talked about his journey to becoming a member in Whitechapel and the band’s upcoming record, his first since joining the band.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So I hear you guys just finished recording a new album. How did that go?
BH: It was good. I mean, it was a pretty fast process; it kind of all took place in the course of about a month at our guitar player’s house. I flew down to Florida to do drums in Jason Suecof’s studio with Mark Lewis. And Mark drove up to Tennessee and did the rest of the guitars and vocals and everything else at Alex’s house. Everything came together pretty quickly. I mean, for me, I was kind of still making sense of all the songs and digesting them all as I was putting them all down. I’m pretty excited about it. For everybody else in the band, I think it’s some of the best stuff that they’ve written. That’s encouraging, at least for me. I can’t compare this record to This Is Exile or A New Era of Corruption as those guys can, because I didn’t help them write those records. Again, what they’ve said there is they’re all really stoked about what they’ve written. It’s encouraging to know that they’re also excited about everything even more than I am.

Can you give us a little bit of insight about what we should expect?
Yeah I mean there’s definitely some stuff that’s a lot slower, like almost sounds like it could be The Acacia Strain. Just something really chunky and groove-based, like a much less complex version of Meshuggah or something. But there’s also some stuff on it that’s crazy fast on the bass; blast beats and the whole thing – so the whole brutal side is definitely still there. It’s just like any other band – they’re never going to put out what they put out their first record. As bad as everybody wants it to happen, it’s never going to happen. For the most part, bands just don’t do that, they just grow and evolve and evolve. I guess, just like I said, expect a further progressed version of what was put out last record – some stuff that’s a little bit faster and some stuff that’s a little bit slower, so I guess both of those extremes.

How did you get into the band?
I just kind of heard by word of mouth that they were looking for a new drummer. I had never met any of the guys before, I just heard they were looking for somebody, and I just wasn’t going to pass the chance up. I played all of that stuff already, so why would I not try? So I just sent out a couple of videos, and the second they ended up really, for one reason or another, liking it. And they decided to fly me out to Tennessee where they’re all from, and I’m from Arizona. So for me, I was playing in a smaller band called Knights of the Abyss, and it was kind of a big deal for me when Whitechapel was like “Yeah, we want to fly you out to the other side of the country to see if we like you or not.” They gave me about like 16 songs or something to learn, maybe 14 songs. I learned them all front-to-back, went out there and played them all, and they were like “Alright, we’re going on tour in February. See you in a couple months.” And so I’ve been with them ever since. I guess now I’m technically a “member” of the band, but the last year since I joined them, which was last December/January, was more of like a trial thing I guess.

How was the overall experience different than your experience in Knights of the Abyss?
I don’t even know where to begin, man. When I joined Knights, they had already pretty much killed their career by dropping a record that sounded absolutely nothing like the first record they put out. I mean, it was basically Job For A Cowboy Doom to Black Dahlia Murder Nocturnal – literally like night and day. A lot of people lost interest and then they lost like four or five of their original members, and then I joined after that. Basically I was riding out a sinking ship and I rode it out until the very end. So I mean in that sense it was basically survival for us. We had literally no money, and we were like “Okay, how do we get to the next show? We’re in the middle of the damn country.” For me, by the time I quit that band, for the time that I was in the band I would like to think that I definitely put a lot of my heart and soul or whatever you want to call it, I put a lot of energy and time and money into this band. Basically by the end of it I was $10,000 in debt and had no drums to play on, and then basically just went and tried out for Whitechapel a couple of months later, and now I have here; I have drumsticks, I have drums.

It’s just totally the opposite side of the spectrum. Like the way that we looked at Whitechapel as being a similar genre I guess would just be like they’re the hugest thing in the world. Like for me, when it all happened, it was a pretty big deal. With all that taken into consideration, it was like “Wow, that’s like the biggest thing in the world.” Now, not to say that I’m unhappy with anything that I have – my life is awesome. I mean with every step of the way, like from a local band to Knights of the Abyss to Whitechapel – a band that’s doing alright – each step of the way I’m gaining a new perspective of things. Being where I am, we’re doing alright, but I mean, looking at other bands that sell like 50-60,000 records in the first week and making huge numbers and going on gigantic tours, Whitechapel isn’t the biggest thing in the world. So, like I said, you just kind of gain a new perspective every step of the way. For me, I mean again, it’s just night and day, from beyond the barrel to somewhere around the upper ranges of the barrel of the whole death metal/deathcore thing, just heavy music – heavy music that you don’t want to show your mom – it’s a very enlightening experience.

Whitechapel says they are influenced by a ton of metal acts such as Metallica and Nile. What kind of stuff were you influenced by?
Well, I’ve listened to all sorts of stuff over the days, but I really got into playing faster music by listening to punk rock and stuff like that back in the day. As far as metal goes, I’ve always been into the more melodic, European, At The Gates, old In Flames, Dark Tranquility-era stuff. Within the last three or four years or whatever, I’ve kind of gotten more influenced by the straight heavy-heavy, but I feel like my preference in heavy music is always going to be the more European-influenced/more melodic stuff.

What do you hope the remainder of the year holds for Whitechapel, with a new album looming and everything?
I just hope that it does well. I hope that people take well to it and like the stuff we put out. I know for me I’m new to the band when it comes to anything I’ve written or recorded or anything like that. So this new stuff sounds kind of different than old Whitechapel. But I mean, again, it’s just part of a band growing and progressing or whatever. Like I said, I hope it does well and I hope people like the direction we’re going in. I mean, the rest of the year as far as I know is pretty well stacked up for us with touring. We’re shooting for a pre-Mayhem release on our new CD, so once that comes out we’ll just be pushing that the rest of the year. We’re going on Mayhem Tour, so in my opinion, at least this year, we probably can’t do a whole lot better than that as far as it goes being on a big metal tour this summer. So we’re all really excited about it. The rest of the year is nothing but good things for us as far as I know. The only thing that would make it bad things is if, like I said, that record totally bombs. I don’t necessarily see that happening. We’re pretty pleased with everything we’ve written. It’s a good sound and a good direction, not that it’s like it’s any crazy, new direction. It still sounds like Whitechapel. No record that is done sounds exactly like the last one.

Awesome, thank you very much.
Thank you.

Older readers might recall Chicago natives August Premier back from their days as a member of the quickly growing Fueled By Ramen roster. Now, recently reunited, August Premier are set to release their new album on Pacific Ridge Records. I recently sat down (behind my computer) with Mickey Molinari and Chris Rogner to discuss the band’s reformation, their future and being in a band with the same guys for over a decade. While you read, look above and check out their new track “Worlds Away,” featuring Tim Rogner from Allister, exclusively on Mind Equals Blown.

MEB: With being in a band comes a million different problems. What was the motivation to get back together and brush the dust off of August Premier?

Mickey Molinari: The timing just felt right. Chris [Rogner, vocalist/guitarist] gave me a call and asked if I would want to do it again. Obviously I said yes. I had been in a bunch of bands since August Premier and nothing to me ever felt right. The guys in August Premier are some of my oldest friends and I can’t say no to playing music with them.

In respect to how you see yourselves as a band, how you go about writing music and how you balance music and “real life,” what’s changed since the early days of August Premier?

Mickey: I think we see ourselves as a rock band, nothing more nothing less. We have never aimed to sound or be like anyone else. Chris and Danny [Halminiak, guitarist/vocalist] do the majority of the writing, one of them will present an idea or an almost finished song to the band and we go from there. The balance between “real life” and music is something everyone in a band deals with. We find if you care enough, you make it work; after all we do play music in “real life” (laughs). Things have and haven’t changed since 2003, Danny and myself had kids and Mark [Halminiak, bassist] got married and other than people working full time, things are pretty much where they left off. We are still the same guys doing what we love to do, making music.

Being on a stacked Fueled By Ramen roster in the label’s mid-’00 heyday and being on a smaller label like Pacific Ridge must be worlds apart. Tell us about a few of the most important differences between the two.

Mickey: It’s not as different as one might think. When we signed with FBR in 2002 they were still a fairly unknown label. The guys who worked there were so good to us. They were truly into our band and got what we wanted to do musically. It was still very much a DIY label. They gave us a budget to record and handled some press for us; booking shows and tours were still on us. We loved having the name behind us because they were a label we really respected and felt it gave us some credibility. It was shortly after we signed that they blew up as a label and we felt kinda buried, which happens to labels – focus shifts to who has all the attention.

With a smaller label like Pac Ridge there is a lot more focus on the label working with bands. I met Wayne [Stadler] (Pac Ridge Owner) after we signed with FBR and have remained in contact with him since. When AP decided to give it another go there was no one else I wanted to work with; his dedication to the bands he works with is almost unheard of. He really wants to make your vision come to life, from the music to the artwork to how you are promoted. There is a lot less pressure coming from Wayne than we had with FBR. Labels always give the feel that at the base of everything it’s all about numbers and money (nothing wrong with that) but with Pac Ridge you always get the feel that it’s music first, business second. We couldn’t be any happier working with them.

Happy Miserable is scheduled to come out on March 27th. How will it sound compared to your older material?

Mickey: Happy Miserable I think is the perfect example of what we see ourselves as a band that I think we could never quite make happen on the previous records. When we first started writing we shared a practice space with another band and nothing seemed to feel right. So we ended up in Chris’ brother’s garage and something just clicked with the writing. It brought this new life to the songs and the feel of the music. I also have to give credit to Matt Allison [producer] for seeing what we needed in a recording and delivering something better than we ever imagined.

How do you guys go about writing an August Premier record? Do the lyrics come first, followed by the rest? Are songs pieced together over long periods of time? Do you guys sit down and decide “today, we’re going to write this record” or does it come naturally?

Chris Rogner: It’s a little of everything I suppose. When we first set a date to get into the studio, that’s when it really sank in that we needed to sit down and write/finish writing this record. There were ideas that we already had and a few full songs we already had done, but that was when we realized we needed to buckle down and finish it. For me personally, I almost always have ideas for songs but I never really finish them on my own. Usually it’s always a melody idea with a few lines that come to me at first and I go from there. I like to bring in my ideas and structure it as a band, and let the lyrics come when they do. I don’t like to force lyrics out. Danny on the other hand will generally work on songs on his own and bring it in to the band when it’s mostly complete. There are other songs where Danny and I will show each other an idea and he’ll help finish mine or vice versa. So I guess there’s not one specific way to do it. Some songs take a while to finish. Others are done in an hour. It just depends on the song.

How did you guys get hooked up with Matt Allison? His resume reads like a who’s who of ’00-era punk; how was the experience?

Chris: My brother Tim and I had this birthday idea for our dad to take him to a studio and re-record a few songs that his band wrote and recorded when he was our age. We ended up going to Atlas cause Tim had worked with Matt a few times before and I had always wanted to. We brought Mickey in to play drums on it. We were only in there for two days, but Mickey and I ended up talking to Matt about AP and how we had always wanted to work with him. He seemed really into the idea of recording our band (which we were really fucking stoked about), and as soon as we got word from Wayne that he’d put out our album, we called Matt and set the dates. It was awesome recording with him. He’s recorded some of my all-time favorite albums, so it was a real privilege to get the opportunity. I could probably go on for hours about how great an experience it was and how good he is, but his records speak for themselves. Just an overall good guy. Oh, and Justin [Yates] is a rad dude too.

Pop punk and pop rock are the in-things right now. How do you guys see yourselves in the grand scheme of things? What sets you apart from other similar bands?

Mickey: I’m not really sure how we fit in with things these days. I feel maybe we are the old guys. We aren’t into gimmicks, we aren’t big on fashion, we don’t have backing tracks or stage props. We have always been the same – writing music we love to play, and [let] what happens happen. Hell we recorded most of this record live (bass, drums and guitar) without a click track. When we first started the band we never even thought we would get to record anything let alone sign to a label like FBR and we never thought we would be doing this now.

After the album drops, what are you guys going to be up to for the remainder of the year?

Mickey: We plan to play a bunch of shows around the Midwest, just one step at a time. I can’t say what will happen for the whole year; we just take it as it comes.

What keeps you guys motivated to go out on tour year after year?

Mickey: For me I love to travel, seeing new places, meeting new people, eating different foods. Nothing beats road trips with good friends playing music.

Best tour memory?

Mickey: So many. I will never forget randomly meeting Rikki Rockett at The Warehouse in Lacrosse, WI. He was checking out some clothes in the store beneath the venue, super random.

Cities with the most August Premier love?

Mickey: I think it will always be Chicago.

Best restaurants you’ve visited on tour?

Mickey: Stubb’s in Austin, TX

Any last words for your fans?

Mickey: Thanks for your support even when we weren’t a band. I hope you all enjoy the new record.

MEB: You guys ended 2011 on a bit of a down note. A Lot Like Birds was supposed to tour with Dance Gavin Dance after releasing Conversation Piece, but when that got cancelled you guys kind of lost some stream from the release.

Kurt Travis: Honestly, yes you’re right, it did kind of slow down the momentum because the record came out and then we were supposed to go right out on tour after that. But in terms of internal band stuff, we weren’t really even ready to go on that tour. We didn’t have a van, our Kickstarter wasn’t done yet. Obviously we would have made it happen; we would have had to rent a van and it would have been tough because the guarantees were not good at all for us, which is understandable. We’re a brand new band. This time around, these tours that we’re having now are much better in terms of where we were at when that tour was announced and then got cancelled. We still get to go on tour with Dance Gavin [Dance], and all the DGD fans who wanted to see what was going on with me and the new band, they still get to do that.

Unfortunately it’s not a full U.S. [tour], but I feel like everything worked out for a reason. Of course we were bummed when it was like, ‘Aw shit,’ Jonny [Craig] got in trouble or whatever, got arrested, things couldn’t go. I’m glad we had that time to kind of polish up our act and get everything that we needed to do in order to go out and tour. Yeah, we lost a little bit of momentum, but dude the shows that we’ve been playing… 50 to 70 kids, but those 50 to 70 kids are so excited and so happy that we are there to play for them. And really that goes way farther than bigger guarantees, bigger tours, etc.

Ben Wiacek: As far as internally in the band, there was definitely a period of depression. We were all super bummed. None of us were really working at the time, I had to move back in with my parents, and shit just started hitting the fan. I was in this weird state of limbo all of a sudden. At the same time, it was a blessing in disguise.

How is this headliner with Decoder and Just Like Vinyl going for you guys?

Mikey Franzino: It’s going really well. We’re doing way better in merch than we anticipated. We were expecting to barely be making it to the next venue and worried about what we were going to do for food, but we’re coming out on top. Management is super proud of us. There’s been nights where there’s only thirty kids and we’re thinking this is gonna suck, but those nights are almost the better nights for merch. Those thirty kids were there for us, they knew all the words and were dancing. There’s been one bad night on this tour and it wasn’t even terrible.

Conversation Piece came out just a few months ago. How has the reaction to the record hit you guys?

Ben: What’s really cool is nine out of ten reviews have been nothing but praise, they just love it. It’s been really exciting to see, especially when the music industry has been jaded with the same thing coming out over and over again. It’s cool that people see us as a breath of fresh air and something that kids can listen to and enjoy as opposed to following us because we’re all pretty or something like that.

Kurt: All of our reviews have been really good. MEB has been really cool to pick apart the musicianship as far as dissecting our sound and everything. We didn’t really know what to expect. I thought we put out an amazing record, but who’s to say if people are going to respond the same way? It was a big relief to see that there are kids out there who are getting into our music and making us feel good about the hard fucking work that we put into this. There’s shit on this record that I have never done on any other record. I tried it and it worked and I was very, very happy, you know – constant progression from everybody. And even from Plan B to Conversation Piece, there’s different elements. The old die-hard fans, the old hipster, indie kids, they’re like ‘You guys sold out!’ and it’s like no man, we’re still playing the music that we wanna write and there’s nothing that is influencing us to sacrifice this or that to be more successful. We did exactly what we wanted to for this record.

How important would you say the chemistry of the members in A Lot Like Birds is to the output of Conversation Piece?

Ben: What I really like is that all of us came from different bands; every one of us has a different background. Mikey and I have a really cohesive guitar style. He’ll come up with a majority of the guitar parts and I’ll write stuff as well but it’s always easy for me to adapt to. It makes it that much more enjoyable to be in a band; while I might just be playing stuff that I don’t like, instead I’m getting to play things that Mikey wrote and I really like and I get to play stuff that I wrote and really like. It works out really well.

Mikey: It’s awesome playing with musicians who get me and I get them. Like with Joe [Arrington, drummer], we’ll sit down and jam, and it’s really easy to make music with him. We’ll sit down and make music for hours to a projector screen and riff off each other. He’ll even write guitar parts himself and just hum something and I’ll mimic it on guitar. Everything Ben’s ever written is the perfect icing to any cake that’s ever going on.

Kurt: The relationship between me and Corey [Lockwood, vocals] is the closest relationship that I’ve had to anything. We pretty much do the same thing -we’re both lead vocalists- and with that comes a certain ‘I’m the frontman, no I’m the frontman,’ and that’s what I’ve seen in past bands that I’ve been with. But when it comes to this, Corey is confident in what he does; he’s a fucking genius. He’s the smartest kid ever, I mean it goes for the whole band. This band is very smart at what they do, but between me and Corey – there was no snag, you know what I mean? There was no wall that we hit. Everything, even the recording process, I was there when he was recording vocals and I would tell him ‘Think this or do it like that’ and vice versa. Corey would be like, ‘I really like that take, but I want you to have more passion in this part.’ We’re both coaches, we give and take and give and take the whole time. I couldn’t be happier with another singer right there with me, because he’s confident in what he does, he’s not insecure. He has no, ‘Oh shit, it’s Kurt’ or whatever. It’s the same thing with both of us. We’re one person, we scream and we sing and it’s like we’re one entity. And I’ve never felt that in another band, and I’ve been in bands with two singers and what not and it’s almost like you’re battling against the other guy and it shouldn’t feel like that. It feels like me and Corey have a great chemistry.

When I have this idea, like I have this line and I can’t finish it, it takes him like two seconds to come up with something. I could not have thought of anything better for that. I try to help him out sometimes, but Corey is just a lyrical genius. He’s above and beyond the literature side of the music that we play. There’s a lot of spoken word on our record, I wrote some spoken word shit, and he did as well. Just, everything he says is so deep and relatable, I feel like that has a big to do with the success that we’re having. You can relate to Corey’s lyrics. I have a bit of a different style, I like to go a little bit more heart on my sleeve; this is how I’m feeling. There’s no ego in the way, there’s no insecurity between us.

Ben: It’s cool to see how much inspiration they receive from each other. I’ve been in a band with Corey prior to this band I’ve known him the longest. Corey’s always wanted to sing and seeing him branch out and sing and do backup vocals live is cool to me because I’ve watched this guy grow a lot. It’s all been a lot of help because of Kurt. And Kurt’s been around a lot of the time but you can tell the inspiration is rubbing off on him too with lyrical writing and the spoken word stuff and just feeding off of Corey.

Kurt: I am being influenced by Corey and it’s beautiful. His style of writing and my style of writing are similar but different, but as much as I give to Corey he gives back to me and we’re both learning from each other.

As far as writing and recording is concerned, what would you say were some of the bigger challenges you tackled with an album as dense as Conversation Piece? 

Mikey: The hardest was at the point we got a date to record the record – it was a month and a half away from where we were. We only had five of the songs completely written. We had ideas for everything else but they were just ideas. We had to crunch down super hard. I was working at Thrift Town and there would be nights I would get off of work and go home and stay up all night on my computer and just try to work something out and bring it to the guys, like ‘I hope this sounds good.’ And then even in the studio, we had a month to do it.

Kurt: It was like three weeks to write the record that was going to be there forever.

Mikey: Especially for me, because I like adding lots of layers. I like making lots of little artistic additions to a record. It was really hard trying to fit all of those little ideas, like adding strings, adding horns. I love having orchestral elements and alternative percussion. There’s a lot of stuff we wanted to do and I think we really accomplished it for everything that really needed to be there. So we were satisfied with that.

Kurt: There were a lot of vocal techniques that I tried to do on previous records, with Dance Gavin Dance, where I tried them in the studio and they weren’t coming out the way that I wanted to so I had to say ‘fuck it, let’s do something else.’ I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I’m very comfortable with Kris Crummett [producer] now; this is like the third record I’ve recorded with Kris. We work very well together, and efficiently with the amount of time that we have.

When I say that there is shit on this record that I have not been able to do, I would try a lot of projected falsetto stuff that I couldn’t pull off on any Dance Gavin Dance records and I was able to do it beautifully on this record. I would do a lot of layering techniques, like a full voice of something, put a layer of regular falsetto on it but then a projected falsetto on top of that. I did a lot of octave melodies to where I would do the high and the low and then a projected full voice of the high again, and the mix of those three tracks, it just makes it sound huge. I’ve been trying to do that for a long time and I couldn’t do it. On this record, that’s exactly what I did – I accomplished it. I was also tapping into different vocal styles, like I love Cedric [Bixler-Zavala] from Mars Volta, I love Chris [de Cinque] from Closure in Moscow. I really wanted to do some of his vocal style. A lot of people say, ‘Is that you? It doesn’t sound like you,’ but it’s totally me. I was trying to channel somebody else’s voice through my voice, and I feel that I accomplished that. Progression baby, we’re always trying to progress. Every record is supposed to be an improvement over the last record. Conversation Piece is an improvement over any other record I’ve done. I want to continue to do that.

Mikey: It was very different writing with two vocalists in mind. I had been used to for a couple of years writing instrumental music with the instruments being the main driving force and all the main melodies not being written on guitar. They would be handed to the saxophone. There was one guitar solo on Plan B; I handed all those solos to sax. Writing verses was something new to me; typically it was just one flow idea. This record was much more structured to bring back melodies and incorporate them so that the song was cohesive. There was much more effort to make the guitar tasteful and subtle as opposed to flashy and in your face, it was more just an avenue for the vocalists.

Ben: There was one part in particular that Mikey wrote that I was supposed to play in the studio that I had never done before until I was sitting in front of Kris Crummett and it was kind of nerve-wracking. It was this part where I had an e-bow and a slide, and I had used each of them before separately, but this part I had learned the notes and I put it together in my head but it took me a few tries to make sure it sounded nice.

Kurt: You guys have recorded before, but I just want to reiterate how meticulous Kris Crummett is with takes. You could do it perfectly and he’ll be like, ‘Um…….. I want you to do it again,’ and you’re like what?

Ben: You were fast on that one little fraction.

Kurt: His ear is so good and so in tune. And that’s what you want when it comes to a producer or a sound engineer or whatever. You want that shit to be absolutely perfect. To the musicians, it’s like, ‘C’mon man, can’t you just doctor that shit up?’ and he totally could have bent one of your notes. He totally could have auto-tuned one of my high notes so I didn’t have to do it twenty fucking times. He’d rather have it bam, raw.

Shifting a little bit over to your solo stuff Kurt, you’re releasing an EP through Doghouse Records. How did the whole solo thing come about?

Kurt: It’s kind of a funny story. I got kicked out of DGD, and then I went on tour with the guy who replaced me in DGD, Jonny Craig. I was really bummed out; I was having fun because I was still on tour but it wasn’t the same. One of the bands, I think they were called The Divine, they were supposed to be on that tour and they dropped off and Jonny said, ‘Dude, you’ve got some solo stuff, right? Why don’t you just open up for the tour. Well, I can’t pay you but you can play if you wanted to.’ And I jumped at the opportunity. It just so happened one night, David Conway, our label exec, saw me play solo and pretty much is the reason why we’re doing all of this shit right now. He signed A Lot Like Birds without any music. He sent us a contract without a demo. And then when we gave him a demo, it was an eight-minute fucking song. Extremely unmarketable (laughs). Still he said, ‘I love it, let’s do it.’ I feel like David had a vision of what he wanted to do with me and A Lot Like Birds, and it was really cool.

I’ve been sitting on this solo music… for years dude. The shit that I’m putting out now, I wrote five years ago. With the exception of a couple songs. I’ve been sitting on music for a long time and I’ve shown it to plenty of influential people and nobody wanted to back me but David. He gave me a shot and because of all of this, everything kind of snowballed. Artery is involved now, and I have a solo tour coming up right after this tour. All of this shit happened because I took a Jonny Craig tour doing backup vocals, guitar and piano and it just puts things in perspective for me. Like if I hadn’t done that, who knows what I’d be doing right now? After the ALLB record was out, my day-to-day manager Aaron Poletti from Artery said ‘David Conway is doing this cassette series, putting out 200 copies of cassettes. It’s not just going to be you, it’s gonna be La Dispute, Young Statues.’ I think even The Get Up Kids are doing one. He wants to do Hot Water Music, like some new shit or some b-sides stuff or whatever. Obviously as soon as I heard this, I said of course. So Aaron asked if I had songs and I said ‘Fuck yeah, I got songs. They’re all pretty much written on my Macbook.’ Doghouse loved the songs; they said they were going to remaster them and put it out on cassette. I think I might be able to record two songs before all of this comes out, songs I’ve had written but haven’t gotten around to recording. So my buddy Dominic Bicetti, he recorded the two songs that I did – one of them was the title track “Wha Happen?” and the other was “How Are Things?” He did a great job, we recorded it in his room and they sound awesome. I couldn’t be happier about the things that are going on with A Lot Like Birds and the solo stuff as well. I’ve been trying to get this music out for a very long time, years and years. It’s just hard for a singer-songwriter or solo artist to get somebody behind you and push your music, and David is behind it and I’m just so thankful that it’s all going down.

How does your music separate itself not only from what you’re doing with A Lot Like Birds, but the whole singer-songwriter, frontman-going-solo thing in general? 

Kurt: For one, I didn’t write this music for anybody else but myself. It’s the same thing with A Lot Like Birds, but let’s face it, I joined A Lot Like Birds because for one, they’re an amazing fucking band, very talented. The drummer, Joseph Arrington, is a hell of a drummer, one of the best drummers I’ve played with. But in the back of my head, I knew this music was cohesive enough that if my fans from Dance Gavin Dance were wondering what I’m doing, I don’t want them to come listen to my shit and it’s like Yoko Ono way out in left field, being hella weird. With A Lot Like Birds, this is the band I wanted to be in – for that energy, that loud sound that I really like, and the fans who want to hear me sing like that – at the top of my range, balls to the wall. So I wanted that aspect of my career, but for me my solo stuff is just self-therapy. I throw everything down and I have no walls up at all. It’s just me pouring myself out through music. That’s the difference. I love my solo stuff and I love A Lot Like Birds. I do like a lot of softer music and vocal harmonies and stuff like that. And I wanted to have those aspects in my career. So I’ve always been recording and writing without any real knowledge of how I was going to make a career out of it.

What is the plan as far as splitting time between your solo stuff and A Lot Like Birds? 

Kurt: A Lot Like Birds is our main band. Corey has a side-project, called First Place Science Project, and it’s awesome. It’s like a hip-hop thing. He’s just screaming his lungs out on cool-ass hip-hop beats. And it’s awesome because he can pronunciate so well, but strain that voice and give it that edge. I’m sure there’s gonna be other projects in the band.

Ben: Joe and Butter [Michael Littlefield, bass] have been doing projects together with other artists in Sacramento for a couple years now. They record with everybody. People you wouldn’t expect, like Autumn Sky, they’re recording currently with Damien of The Speed of Sound in Seawater for some really epic project that I’m really excited to hear. But me and Mikey aren’t doing anything. We should do a project man (laughs).

Kurt: What I’m trying to say is A Lot Like Birds is the main squeeze. It’s the priority that takes over all of our lives. But I feel like if there’s any sort of downtime, I still wanna be active and be creating, writing and playing shows and this is the avenue that I get to do this. This is our band. Everybody works so hard to do this, and I have a lot of faith in this, the product that we’re selling, the creativity we’re bringing to people. Like yeah my solo stuff is exciting and it’s poppin’ off and that’s great, but I want to give A Lot Like Birds priority.

Not too long ago you posted the winning video for your lyric video contest. How stoked are you to see something that crazy get made for this band? 

Mikey: It took him six hours for six seconds.

Ben: His name is John Howe. He’s from the U.K., and he’s just an awesome fan. He actually did a video for us as a joke a long time ago for a song called “How I Parted the Red Sea,” it had these cats running around. He blew us out of the water.

Kurt: He poured his heart and soul into that video. He deserves what goes along with that contest and more. To dedicate yourself to doing something like that is awesome. He blew everybody out of the water. There was no other person who came even close.

Ben: That kid’s gonna have a career for sure.

Kurt: The fact that some kid is going to work that hard, I want to try and put that video out wherever we can. We went to a venue and there was a projector on the back and we were like, ‘Dude, let’s sync up the music to the video,’ like that’s going to fucking work (laughs). You know? We definitely don’t take that shit lightly, it’s amazing that that kid did that. You do something like that, you’re going to turn some heads. I hope he gets as much exposure as we do for it.

You guys also are holding a remix contest through Mind Equals Blown. What have you heard so far from what people have made for that contest?

Kurt: You know, we’re extremely critical (laughs) just because it’s our stuff. There’s been some cool remixes.

Mikey: The thing is, and maybe this will reach some kids, is that I feel like we need to release our time signatures as well (laughs). A lot of kids are remixing our songs that are in 9/8 or 9/4 and they’re doing it in 4/4. Some kid did a little ditty of Sesame Street using Kurt’s voice that was cool. We also have some friends who are going to be working on it, and we’re super stoked to hear what they have.

Kurt: My girlfriend’s dad teaches at this ProSound engineering school called Pinnacle, and he said he’s gonna do a remix too just for the hell of it. I’m excited to hear it because he is as legit as it gets. He teaches that shit. I’m really excited to hear what he can actually do with it.

What are you hoping people will take away from Conversation Piece? 

Kurt: I just want them to know how much work and passion we put into it. I want them to feel the energy that we’re feeling. A lot of people are getting it which is awesome. I want people to listen to our record and when it’s done, I want them to say, ‘These guys are really passionate about what they are doing.’

Mikey: I’ve said this before, but I hope people are half as moved listening to it as we were making it.

Ben: I’ve always kind of gone with this mindset that I want to be inspirational to people through music or through my actions. I really believe that if you lead by example then people can follow that, adapt and work. Since people are really as fascinated as they are, it’s really something they are taking to heart. We’ve been getting a lot of praise at shows, like they’ll say this is the only thing they’ve been listening to for the past two months. That really reaches me.

Kurt: It keeps us going.

Ben: Like if we got up on stage and played our hearts out for a half hour, forty-five minutes and kids were just crossing their arms we would just be so depleted. But fortunately every experience we’ve had on this tour, leading up to this tour and recording has been positive.

Kurt: Kids are singing lyrics, going nuts. They hear the trumpets starting in “Vanity’s Fair” and they go fucking apeshit. It’s like three or four kids who know everything. That’s the whole reason why I’m doing this shit.

Ben: I remember watching a documentary where Henry Rollins was touring with Black Flag and they played a show at a bar in some bum-fuck town and one dude showed up and he was throwing a fit like, ‘I’m not going to play this show, there’s one dude,’ and the guitar player said, ‘You know what, this one kid came out here to see you, so you fucking perform your ass off,’ and he said ‘You’re right.’ It’s not about all the fans you’re getting or all the fame, it’s about doing what you wanna do and being passionate about it.

Kurt: We know that this tour isn’t going to be a humongous tour. But we’re doing a great job sowing the seeds. I know that that shit is going to pay off.

With all the attention A Skylit Drive has been getting since the release of their phenomenal debut album Wires… and the Concept Of Breathing, few people realize that the lead singer, Michael “Jag” Jagmin, actually has some goodies up his sleeve for fans all over. Read on to learn more about his solo project and some behind-the-scenes of their latest album Identity On Fire.

MEB: Many people know that you’re the singer for A Skylit Drive, but are not aware that you have other projects. Care to tell the people about them?

Jag: I’m sure most ASD fans aren’t aware of any side projects I’m involved in. Well, my solo project is the only one, but I hope in time they all do know about it.

With your old project Of An Era, how many songs did you write under that name? Do you plan on releasing them under your solo name?

I have tons of demos for my solo project. I’ve completed more songs after switching the name to Michael Jagmin. I plan to release a single very soon, and once I give myself time to see what kind of response it gets, that will decide what move I make next.

What differences will there be between your solo material and ASD? When can fans expect some sort of release from your solo project?

I’ve always been a huge fan of pop/rock and pop punk, so those are easily big influences in my music. It’s very energetic, emotional and thoughtful. As stated before I plan to release a single very soon.

Do you play all the instruments on your solo project? If so, how did you learn to play them? If not, who else do you have playing them?

I write everything and perform everything myself. For the first single the producer I chose is helping a lot with making things the best they can be though. I played guitar and drums religiously all through high school. I played guitar in my first handful of bands.

What sort of life experiences did you go through that compelled you to write the lyrics to Identity On Fire? What other sort of topics did you cover? Do you ever see A Skylit Drive becoming as heavy as Odd Project was?

Everyday tour life with ASD is what mainly inspired the topics on Identity On Fire. I’ve always been big on helping people find themselves, and being happy with who they are. I’d rather send a positive message to our followers instead of a mixed one that could be misconceived as something else. I never know where ASD is going to end up. I don’t think any of us do. We just kinda go with what feels right.

What are some key differences between what you did in Odd Project and A Skylit Drive?

Odd Project was nowhere near the professionalism of ASD. OP was a much more laid back situation. I think that’s primarily because it took us so long to release the album I sang on. The long wait sucked a lot of the life out of the band as a whole, whereas with ASD we tend to keep busy practically all the time.

Are you and Jordan Blake (ex lead singer for A Skylit Drive) on good terms? Would you ever consider working with him on some music?

I’ve met the guy numerous times, and he’s always been very pleasant towards me. As for working with him on music I feel we’re on two different wavelengths. I don’t see much of a chemistry there.

Have you guys already started the writing/recording process for an upcoming album from ASD?

We actually haven’t started any new material yet. That’s one main reason I’ve been so diligent about my solo project since being home from tour. I’m definitely not the kind of guy who can just sit around and do absolutely nothing. I go crazy after a few days, so I guided all of that towards my own music.

Fans have noticed that the screaming has been toned down much more now compared to She Watched The Sky. Even though you were not the singer on that EP, will you consider bringing more screaming back or continue doing more singing?

I think after doing things a certain way since Wires we’ve gotten comfortable and happy with the vocal style we’ve chosen. The popularity of Wires along with the most popular songs since gives us a good enough thumbs up that the singing/screaming ratio we’ve stuck to is what works for us.

What made you decide on covering Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love The Way You Lie”? If Fearless Records came to you guys to do a Punk Goes Crunk 2, what song would you cover?

It was 100% our choice to cover that song. The label wasn’t pumped on our choice, ha! But they changed their minds when they heard the finished product. I don’t think I’d want to do a Punk Goes Crunk 2 after doing the Eminem song.

What have been some of your personal favorite shows you’ve played so far?

Standout cities for me would have to be: San Diego, Sacramento, Anaheim, Pomona, Dallas, San Antonio, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, NYC, anywhere in New Jersey, and Seattle.

Is there someone you would like to collaborate with and maybe share the stage with?

I would love to do a song with Aaron Marsh of Copeland. That band is easily my favorite band.

What are your biggest inspirations to go out and sing?

Even though I have favorite artists and all, I do my best to not find inspiration in their styles. I like searching myself for what seems natural and right to me.

What songs do you like to play the most live?

“The Cali Buds” and “Wires….”

Any last words for your die-hard fans?

Thank you guys so much! Please continue to support me and the guys. We appreciate everything you do for us!