“We just got back from Detroit, we were recording with Joey Sturgis, and we’re waiting to hear the mixes to see how it all turned out. Hopefully it turned out awesomely,” Anderson says. “This album’s super important for us, it’s either gonna make or break us, so we’re being really careful with all of those choices. We’re all happy with how we’re going and the success we’ve had so far but it’s just… I dunno, it’s hard to word it. This album can put us on a level where we can tour the world, we are touring the world now, but we’re just getting by, and I don’t think anyone can handle just getting by for another two years. There’s not another album after this in us unless there’s some sort of payoff; not even monetary just something more. We’ve put every last bit of ourselves into this record and we really want it to do well to keep going.”
With the past two albums recorded at the band’s musical second home of Sweden, they decided to embrace the change that was coming at them from every angle with a change in producer and studio. “We wanted to work with someone different and I think we’d become too comfortable in the studio in Sweden,” he says. “We’d become such good friends with those guys and we didn’t want to lose any part of the music by being too relaxed. We were looking around for a new producer and Joey’s the man of the moment and he’s got an amazing sound. Although if we had’ve gone to Sweden the album would’ve turned out similar, we just needed to keep on our toes and not rely on stuff we had in the past. We wanted this album to be new. We needed to make ourselves a bit edgier and push ourselves outside of our comfort zone.”
The band began making changes from the moment they started demoing the songs. “Our main idea was to have as many ideas as we could have as opposed to having all of these fully formed songs and to allow Joey to be a producer and produce the music not just add the sounds to complete songs,” he says. “In the demoing period we didn’t dismiss something just because it was different or it wasn’t as heavy as other stuff we’ve done. If the writing was good it made it to the demo.”
With this album the first recording with new drummer, Conor Ward after Shane O’Brien left to join I Killed The Prom Queen, the transition was apparently smooth. Musically though, Anderson is promising even greater changes than on Notorious and he’s confident that their audience will continue to enjoy the band’s musical growth. “I think for the most part the fans have handled it all really well,” he says. “I guess the saving grace has been that we were always planning on Notorious being different. We’d grown out of metalcore and I think the fans really came along with us for the change. We’ve still kept that heaviness but there’s more emotion in what we’re writing instead of each song just being the fastest blast beat we can write or the lowest scream I can do.”
Anderson is obviously focused on the completion of the new album and how it will reach the world but it’s not taking anything away from his genuine excitement about playing this year’s Vans Warped Tour. “We’re hoping to release a single before Warped and if we do then we’ll be pretty excited to get to play some new stuff to be honest,” he says going on to talk about the Warped line up. “We really enjoy the bills that aren’t just four or five heavy bands. For the audience it’s more of a journey for them. If you’re the heaviest band on a bill it’s a good thing because people are waiting for that moment all day. To me, a line up like this one for Warped works really well. We do so much touring and when you’re at a gig where there’s just heavy band after heavy band, even when we have to watch it, it’s like ‘Fuck I’d be for even an acoustic band right now just to change things up.’ I’m pretty excited to be playing Warped not just for the gig but also ‘cause I get to check out the awesome bands outside of my genre and enjoy a great gig.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
