Interview by Tanner Fisher - October, 2010

Tanner Fisher: I’d like to start off by having you guys say your name and what you play.

SL: My name is Steven Lovas, and I play bass.

JM: I’m Jeff Morgan, and I play guitar.

MP: I’m Mike Powell, and I’m the vocalist.

TF: Sweet. So how’s the tour been going so far?

SL: It’s been awesome. Definitely the best tour I’ve been on. We actually have catering and the hospitality has been great.

JM: There have literally been only two venues without showers, which is a huge luxury for a touring band at our level. Also, Suicide Silence as a headliner is just amazing. The guys in the band are all really down to earth, they don’t have any rock start attitudes at all. It’s really great to share the stage with them.

MP: Really, all the bands on this tour are awesome. It’s more a tour of brother, a tour of friends just having fun. I’m still pretty new to the whole touring experience, so this is really awesome for me.

TF: Are you guys playing any new songs live?

JM: We’re only playing one old song live, actually, because we are trying to push the new album.

SL: Every show, we play to a completely different fanbase than we’re used to, so we just decided to put out all our new material.

MP: For the other tours we have coming up with Arsis and Powerglove, and the new one we just announced with All Shall Perish, we’ll definitely play some of the older material, along with the new stuff.

TF: Are you also playing a lot of newer material, because some of the songs were really old on your first CD?

SL: Yeah, like “Eternally Gutted”. We get kids who ask for it, but we’ve played that song for like four or five years now.

JM: We’ve easily played that song 1,000 times, and we’re just sick of it. Another reason we are playing a bunch of new songs is because they are a lot shorter, so we’re able to fit more material into our sets. It makes our set seem longer, even if it’s the same amount of time.

MP: The new stuff flows better, so it’s just better. I’ve played a lot of the new stuff, obviously not as much as these guys, but the new stuff just goes together better.

TF: I’ll let you guys name drop. What’s the name of the record, and when does it come out?

MP: It’s called Revenants, and it comes out October 26th.

TF: Talk about the recording process. How is it different this time around?

SL: The tones are definitely way better. That’s the first thing that I noticed. For the guitars, we switched from EMGs to Seymour Duncans…it’s just a lot more dynamic.

JM: We put a really subtle delay on the leads which made a noticeable difference. Otherwise, the overall recording process was the same. For the last album, we just got a new vocalist, so he did his stuff after we already recorded the instruments, and this time, we had the same exact thing.

MP: I actually recorded my vocals in an apartment complex, but it was right next to my friends’ studio, which is going to be called Trash Rocket. It ended up being really cool because it was more of a friends recording friends type of thing. The whole vocal process only took about two weeks, and it was just really awesome. It was the best experience I’ve had recording vocals.

JM: As far as recording instruments, we recorded with Zach Ohren at Castle Ultimate Studios was great. He’s the same guys we worked with on the first album. He’s amazing in the studio. He picks out the tiniest mistakes or tones differences that we wouldn’t be able to pick up, but he’s just amazing. It was a great experience.

TF: You guys used to have an old vocalist, and now you have Mike. Can you explain what happened to Lou [Tanius, ex-vocalist]?

SL: Basically, he had gotten in to some custody issues with his son, and he was going to be able to tour, so we needed someone full-time, and he couldn’t do it. There are no hard feelings, in fact, we just played a show in Hartford, Connecticut two days ago, and he did vocals with us for a song.

TF: Mike, thematically, what would you say the lyrics for the new record are about?

MP: The whole album has a basic theme of humanity, and basically how we’re turning into shit, like worrying about religion, and things like that. It has to do a lot with human emotion as well; the album title is Revenants, and it’s basically a ghost of our past kind of thing. A lot of the songs are about humanity making mistakes, and repeating history. There’s a bunch of little things, but overall, the record is basically just about how humanity sucks right now.

TF: What are your personal influences, and do they influence the style of the band at all?

JM: One of my biggest influences, and I doubt anyone knows who this is, but it’s Dead Blue Sky. They came out around 2000-2001, and they’ve always stuck with me. Currently, the bands that I’d say we share stylistic traits with are bands like Between the Buried and Me, Darkest Hour, and The Black Dahlia Murder.

MP: Definitely a huge influence on me is The Black Dahlia Murder. I love Trevor [Strnad’s] vocal style. I don’t try to replicate it, but I think that I take a lot of what he does, and I make it my own. Randy Blythe [Pantera vocalist] is another huge influence of mine. Those are the two main influences, but I also grew up listening to As I Lay Dying, and stuff like that.

SL: I was obsessed with At the Gates for a long time, but on my own time, I’d be listening to jazz or classical music, but it doesn’t really filter in to our writing style.

TF: So what are the immediate plans for the band after this tour?

MP: Just some more touring. We’re going out with Arsis and Powerglove in December. That will be a semi-U.S. tour.

JM: Yeah it’s 18 days, and we circle the entire U.S. It’s going to be insane. We just announced a tour with Kataklysm, All Shall Perish, and Decrepit Birth, so it’s going to be a good time.

TF: That’s all I have for you guys. Good luck tonight, and good luck on the new record.

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