Kill Your Scene

2012 has been a massive year for San Diego’s Pierce The Veil. In past years they have found themselves on tours with some impressive names, like Bring Me The Horizon, A Day The Remember, Of Mice & Men and Thursday, but this year they landed on Main Stage Warped Tour. If that accomplishment isn’t enough, while on Warper, they are also promoting their brand new album that proves to be the most raw and soulful of their releases thus far.

July 17 marked the day “Collide With The Sky” was released and since then, the album has met an impressively warm welcome, leaving fans and critics singing nothing but praises. Even though the album was leaked online weeks before its release, vocalist Vic Fuentes never once doubted that their fans would remain supportive and do the right thing by the band. “Honestly in the long run leaks don’t really matter. People are going to get their hands on it one way or the other. We actually had a lot of fans who held out and promised us not to listen to the album until it was officially released, as well as a ton of fans who downloaded it and bought it the day it came out. We have the best fans in the fucking world, I love them so much.”

“Collide With The Sky” also marks the band’s first release through Fearless Records which has been more than accommodating during their writing and recording process. Fuentes goes on to elaborate that “Fearless has been very supportive and helpful in the creation of this new album since the beginning when we started writing it over a year ago. The owner Bob even let us use his cabin in Big Bear, California to write. Having a place like that to get away from distractions was really nice”. Eliminating distracting factors and deadline stressors can make all the difference in the end-result of a new album. Being completely comfortable during the creation process was one way that Fuentes felt this album had progressed the most as compared to prior releases. “I put a lot of focus on my vocals for this album. I did all of them with a hand held SM7 microphone, which allowed me to walk, run, jump, crawl on the ground, all around the room while I was singing. So what you are hearing is almost like a live performance. I did them all in a room by myself with no producer present. This left me totally free to do what I wanted and to not feel self-conscious or embarrassed by anything I sang”.

As raw and passionate as the album is, Fuentes still admits to exercising some censorship when it comes to writing because he personally pens every word his sings. “I write all of the lyrics. It needs to be personal to me in order to sing it with real emotion. I censor only when it involves the people that I care about. It’s very rare, but I have rewritten a few things that I thought might be too hurtful if the person ever realised it was about them”. This is an understandable consideration if you listen to any of the songs, both on their prior releases and the new album.

When asked about which song was the most meaningful, he opened up about one particular song that is still a very hurtful topic for him to relive. “”100 Sleepless Nights” is probably the most hard-hitting personally for me. It’s about this girl that I really cared about, we had dated on and off for years. She got pregnant by some other guy and moved away, just as we were getting back together. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault but it was, and still is a very difficult situation. The song describes the night that I found out”.

Aside from deeply personal lyrics, Pierce The Veil are known for creating technical yet enchanting and lively music with a bit of Spanish flair as an honour to their heritage. If you’ve ever listened to Pierce The Veil, then you know exactly how unique their music really is. Unfortunately, uniqueness is not something we see too often. “I don’t really know how to make music any other way. I think as long as you take risks and do everything with soul then you are going to get results that no one else in the world can recreate”. If only more artists held the confidence to follow these wise words. In true Pierce The Veil style, they don’t just stop their genius at composing music. They also spread their creativity into their merchandise, giving fans options to collect items most people would never think to offer. “Well one thing that we did is we tried to get as clever as possible with our pre-order bundles. You could buy custom Pierce The Veil rosaries, vinyl, a lyric book, hell…we even made hot sauce!”

While some songs many have very personal meaning, that doesn’t mean there is any lack of passion for the rest. “I love performing our new single “King For A Day” with Kellin Quinn from Sleeping With Sirens. We have been doing that song every day on Warped Tour and it gets a crazy response from the crowd and it’s so much fun to share the stage with a friend”. Indeed, Pierce The Veil are part of the main stage on this year’s Warped Tour in the USA. As if releasing a brilliant album wasn’t enough excitement for the four-piece, touring with some of their friends and idols certainly would be. “I think the most exciting part is being on tour with so many close friends and so many bands that we have looked up to since we were kids. Hanging out with one of my favorite bands, The Used is still very surreal to me. There are some days where we play in between Taking Back Sunday and New Found Glory, and those are the moments where you ask yourself, how did we get here?” Even in the mass of big names bands on main stage, Fuentes has made time to check out all of the bands on this year’s tour, quickly pinpointing Funeral Party to be his favorite, most underrated band that we should all keep our eyes on.

Even at the level of notoriety that Pierce The Veil have worked hard to gain since their start in 2006, they are not exempt from the typical tour stories and embarrassing moments. “We do a lot of dumb stuff in interviews. I guess the worst was when our friend asked us if we could help him with a photo workshop that he was doing. We were all hung over from playing a big hometown show the night before and the students ended up posting a bunch of horribly edited photos of us online, which are forever haunting our Tumblr page”.

As far as keeping himself healthy in less than ideal conditions, Fuentes offers some advice to other vocalists out on the road. “As a singer, there are a few things that I do. Sleep is very important for a singer, so I try to get as much sleep as possible, though it’s hard sometimes on tour. I have a strict warm up schedule that involves a vocal lesson, stretching, and even a little working out. This helps keep the body healthy by sticking to it every day.” When asked about their next visit to Australian shores, Fuentes tells us that they are trying hard to book into Soundwave. Everyone should go spam AJ now so we can all witness them first hand going mental on a festival stage!

With the momentum gained from “Collide With The Sky” and its incredible release, gracing the main stage of Warped, do not expect Pierce The Veil to slow down any time in the near future. These guys have battled their way to the top and that’s where they plan to stay. With constant progression and genuine devotion to their fan base, they will be ruling their world in no time at all.

Links:

https://www.facebook.com/PierceTheVeil
http://piercetheveil.net
http://twitter.com/piercetheveil
http://youtube.com/piercetheveilchannel

NEW ALBUM ‘COLLIDE WITH THE SKY’ IS OUT NOW:http://smarturl.it/CollideWithTheSky | CATCH US ON THE VANS WARPED TOUR ALL SUMMER!

Killing California began in 2004 and are based in the southern Orange County beach town of San Clemente, Ca. This 4-piece band originally set out to shake up the poppy Beach blvd. They’re a hard rock n’ roll band, think of  a cross between Motorhead, Zeke, TSOL, & Black Flag. Recently I got to have a chat with Danny Craig the bands Vocalist…. check it.

Hey guys, how are things going for Killing California?

Right now things are going good, we’ve got a new record out on Basement Records called “No Pentagrams No Crosses” and are looking forward to a few a shows we’ve got and an upcoming tour.

How long have you guys been playing, how did you meet?

We have been a band since 2004, so 8 years…we’ve known each other a long time before the band…San Clemente’s a fairly small town so you kind of know who’s into what, so when the band started to form everyone just sort of came together.

Why Killing California, what does it mean to you?

At the time, when I came up with the name it was me taking a stab at myself being a transplant from the East Coast. As you may have heard its friggin’ crowded here and here I am making it worse…also with Hollywood and everything trend setting sorta being centered here for America culturally I thought it was kinda funny a band from California calling itself that.

Any Albums/EP’s released or coming out in the near future?

We have a new record that just came out on Basement Records “No Pentagrams No Crosses”, so we are pushing that right now. In addition to that we have 2 other full lengths out “Goin’ South” (Basement), “Ropeless Romantics”(self released) and an EP “Bones and Sand” (Basement), although that was a real limited release kind of thing for the diehard fans.

Any video clips online we can check out?

Yes we have a new video out for the song “No Pentagrams No Crosses” and it’s also on our website, Facebook and YouTube…it should be easy to find….and we release a series of random short clips entitled “Trolsen County”, YouTube it! Just funny out take stuff and random crap that we think is funny.

Who is you’re favorite band you’ve shared the stage with, so far?

Zeke, Clutch, and TSOL, all great bands and all really cool people. We hope to maybe tour with one or more of them at some point, who knows maybe a trek to Australia with one of them.

What bands have inspired you when you were younger and did that change over time?

All the early punk bands that I was first turned on to Black Flag, DRI, Suicidal Tendencies to name a few; had a huge impact on me as a kid…and ya it changed almost daily…once you get into it there’s so many bands to grab hold of and you grab a little inspiration from….Over time the bands change put the process remains the same.

What bands have caught your eye recently?

Recently on a hardcore and punk rock level when I’m not listening to country or baseball I’ve been digging on Coliseum, Fucked Up, Hour of the Wolf and Kvelertak to keep the list short….

Got just one good story you care to share from shows, rehearsals or just some random drinking sessions?

Oh jeez, drinking sessions, there are lots of those….but a good one from a show is; we were on tour in Albequerque, New Mexico and our drummer took one for the team, hooked up with this very broad shouldered lady. She took us back to her house to crash and do our drummer, the place was a dump and earlier her roommate got a DUI after the show …so while he’s in doing the deed we raided the kitchen settled in and went to crash in the room mates room cause shes now in jail…like I said the place was gnarly so we go in the room to sleep and there’s dead mice on the floor of the room…we were tripping out at the filth these two chicks were living in thinking we gotta get outta here, so right about than our drummer comes out of the other room and you could tell he was traumatized by his experience with the broad shouldered lady …so we bailed, called the promoter and crashed at his place…funny thing was our drummer left his phone there so we had to go back to this place in the morning.

What about an embarrassing story, every band has at least one?

Ya every band knows what it’s like to have an off night and suck …that’s no fun and is usually embarrassing, … Hard to pin point a specific, gonna have to do a follow up interview and let me figure that one out. haha

So who writes the lyrics, what do you guys mainly sing about and what do you stand for?

I write the lyrics and I don’t have an agenda with my lyrics. I write about things I’m feeling and experiences I’ve had with people.

Is anyone in any other bands, are those bands similar in style?

Not really, this is everyone’s primary focus, a couple of the other guys jam with other people once in awhile but I wouldn’t call it a band nor is that jamming similar to what were playing.

Got any shout outs you want to give?

Shout outs to anyone who supports this band, Kill Your Scene for taking interest and helping spread the word about us and Chuck D from Basement Records…….stay lean mean and unclean….and support your local shaper! Hope to get down under soon!

Links:

www.facebook.com/killingcalifornia

www.killingcalifornia.com

www.facebook.com/basementrecords

www.basementrecords.com

Have you been looking for something slightly different? Something raw? Something that will make your ginie tingle? Then check out this Regge/Rock band from Islip, NY. These guys have a type of Chili Peppers feel to their music and no wonder, the band was founded in ’07 because of their love for the Peppers. They recently got the chance to play at Bamboozle Festival in Jersey and recently I got to speak to Chris who is the drummer and backup vocalist. Check these guys and throw them some love.

The band is Chris Wurglics (drummer/backup vocals), Mike McGarry (guitarist/singer) and Tom DeCillis (bass player/ backup vocals) and they hail from Islip, Long Island, New York.

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