You Either Dig or You Don’t
‘This album is about being the best Of Mice and Men that we can be,
Howard Benson pulled that out of us, he said ‘Who’s going to write a better Of
Mice and Men song than Of Mice and Men?’ A lot of the time nowadays it’s about radio play, but he said ‘F*** that! You need to be
writing the best Of Mice and Men songs that have ever been written’
In your short film you describe yourselves as
‘speaking the same musical language’ is this as a result of playing together
for so many years or your shared common interest?
“it’s absolutely the years we spent together, we kind of
finish each other’s musical sentences. It becomes almost second nature, knowing
what we like musically; we use each other for musical excitement, we know that
if we show someone else in the band, they will get excited and then we’ll all
get excited and it shows we’re on the right track. When we were making this
record it was those things which excited us that we decided were important to
chase up”
I’ve noticed quite a bit of change and
experimentation with the new record, so what’s your writing process been like
for ‘Defy’ in comparison to the other
albums?
“These songs came about after the documentary was filmed, a
lot of excitement came from how we felt playing our older material and the
excitement we saw in the audience engagement. It was really just realising that
the fans are the ones who are going to be rocking out to these songs, and
really the most important thing that could have happened at that time was being
on the road while writing a bunch and be able to use that excitement and move
it into the music”
What’s your favourite song to play live off the
new album?
“’Warzone’ is one
of the thrashier songs on the set and so I love to play that because I like to
play faster, so it’s got a good circle pit vibe to it. We’re also playing ‘Unbreakable’ on this tour too which is a
good pummelling song as well. I think this album was written to be played live,
a lot of times in the past when we’re writing we’re trying a lot of new things
sonically, not knowing how they’d work out in a live setting. But for this
album in particular, we really focused on having an album full of pillars to
implement into our live sets to keep the excitement and the aggression and
interaction with an audience in a live setting. Because really Of Mice and Men
have prided themselves in their live shows, we’ve won awards for it, it’s part
of who we are, we really rehearse and work hard to make sure that we sound
better than the album, I like to think. If no better than the album then give
another way to digest the music in a more live atmosphere. A lot of people say
we sound a lot heavier live too which is hard to capture sonically in an album,
and then try and put that into a live show. It’s kind of like, the live shows
should take the songs to the next level and I feel like so far it’s been hugely
receptive with the audience here on the Five Finger Death Punch and In Flames tour,
these are some of the best shows we’ve played as a band with an audience who
may or may not have heard us before, circle pitting and crowd surfing and
banging their heads and putting their ones up, it’s just so cool to see that on
such a massive scale and that’s kind of what lets us know we’re doing something
right. It’s that live show, it’s that live audience, it’s the real interaction;
its not hypothetical its almost tangible, when you feel that in a concert.”
“Man, there’s a lot, I think Howard Benson [producer] challenged
us to write a ballad, and for us to be predominantly rock and metal influenced band
it’s not necessarily the easiest thing for us to do. To write a more sombre
song, is kind of in a different step to what comes more naturally, and we
definitely as musicians, love having a producer that can challenge us and say
‘try something like this’ and the song I’m speaking of is called: ‘If We Were Ghosts’ and it’s the last track
on the album and true to Of Mice and Men form we saved the ballad or the very
beautiful song for the end of the album and I think we really wanted to do that
again with this. The way that ‘If We Were
Ghosts’ finally came out, for us being predominantly metal band, had me
pretty floored. It’s exciting to get to transcend musical boundaries a little
bit within an album and so that’s definitely personally, one of my favourites
because it’s a little more outside of our real house, different from me just
double kick drumming every symbol like all crazy. It was a cool concept for us to
be able to do and lyrically it is a very important song too, I think it’s a
song that anybody who has dealt with loss can relate to, it’s about a way of
speaking to our fans about what we go through in a different sonical landscape’
What the song do you think will surprise people
and why?
“‘If We Were Ghosts’ definitely, I think it’s cool that
we can create lots of different types of music but still make it true to Of Mice
and Men because it’s still the same musicians who created all the music over
all the years, to still take those challenges and feel like we really can be
excited about a song like that is really cool. And like I said before, keeping
the ballad to the end of the album in true Of Mice form to close it out, and close
out the whole entire thought process behind ‘Defy’
I think is really powerful; every song on this album has its own very much
important place in the story of ‘Defy’
and what we were going through to create the album. It’s always about honesty
and digging deep to create something meaningful, we would be doing ourselves a
disservice if we didn’t push ourselves to create something meaningful”
The new album seems to have changed themes,
feeling far more empowering. Was this change in subject and emotion an
intentional one or did it just happen naturally?
“I think it’s a little bit of both, we had to take a
subjective look at Of Mice and Men and our whole discography and really have a
look at the basics, our fans listen to Of Mice and Men to be empowered, and
obviously as musicians we are going to evolve over the years but something that
really felt like it needed to be touched
on was empowerment, and at this moment we needed it for ourselves as much as
everyone who listens to our music utilises it to help their life too. It was
definitely an active decision, but also at the same time we kind of wanted to
get back to basics and get back to what Of Mice and Men has done really well,
which is sharing our stories and seeing if somebody can learn from that and see
if somebody can hear our songs and really dive into the lyrics and really make
them their own. Lyrically, this album is so strong and there’s so many different
layers, and there’s so much depth to it that I think it’s going to be enjoyable
for our fans to dive in. One of my favourite things about buying albums is
reading the lyrics and seeing where the musicians were at that point, what are
they writing about, I’ve always been an intuitive music listener and I think
our fans are too, sometimes they hang on every word and I think it’s very
important that those words are very strong and come from a place of honesty. If
you want empty lyrics and flash in the pan type stuff, you know where to find
that kind of music. But I think metal music and rock music have always held a
sort of importance to its audience and to anybody who wants to feel something
that is real. For some of those audiences it is life, you see so many die hard
metal heads and so many fans supporting these bands for decades, it’s because
they make music anybody can relate to. But with mainstream music and pop music
that stuff all comes and goes, but real rock and real metal stays forever,
because we can offer up something that’s different, real and honest, and in
this age that’s more important than ever.”
I know you have a very close bond with your
fans, are you ever lyrically inspired by your fans?
“Yeah of course, a lot of what Of Mice and Men is about is taking
the our experience as humans and showing we’re not any different from those
music lovers at concerts; we are at the front rocking out, we’ve been there
before. And I think for us it is important to keep that in mind, especially as
Of Mice and Men has become something larger than what we ever expected and
anticipated, it was important for us to really capture that and make an album
that shows us as humans, going through the same situations as our fans, especially
when were out there talking to fans who are going through life changes, it is
important for us to put that into our music. We are all fans of music that have
come from that audience, we have been inspired from our favourite bands to
create something that is real and honest and makes you feel something. For us
it is kind of paying it forward, as much as we have this amazing opportunity to
be able to create music for a living it is important that we listen to our
audience, that we share our story and even some of theirs, that’s just how
music can relate to the grander spheres. As humans, we all go through these
feelings of helplessness, and fear, and needing to be able to find strength
within yourself because nobody is going to be able to give that to you, you have
to find that on your own. Our fans are the most important thing to us and
that’s why this album is very fan driven, because we just came off a stage and
wrote the record”
‘It’s basically looking at each other and throwing riffs
around and being like ‘Yo! that’s sick’ let’s follow that and we chase that up,
a lot of that comes very organically like I said we speak the same musical
language, we’ve been able to write so much music together which allows us to
get excited about the same stuff, and this record is no different, we knew we
had to push the bar for metal core and metal rock, or whatever you want to call
it, for us it’s just Of Mice and Men, we just needed to push ourselves, the
breakdowns needed to be heavier, the thrashier bits needed to be thrashier, the
guitar solos need to be slicker, like everything about it needed to be more
exciting to us, not that our music is not exciting because we love a lot of our
old music and still very much enjoy playing it. I guess what we sought out to
do was to write songs which excited us, and it’s all of our involvement, and
coming to the table with ideas across the board, because we’re all very well
versed musicians. Not just speaking each others musical language, but speaking
the language of each other’s instruments, like Alan [Ashby (guitar)] is very in-tune
with drum stuff which is really cool because I’ll have a ton of ideas, but then
he’ll have some ideas that don’t come from a drummer that are really exciting,
and the same with Aaron [Pauley (vocals and bass)], and I think a lot of it is
being able to work together push ourselves and push our excitement factor, and
it was a huge point and will continue to be a huge point moving forward in Of
Mice and Men because it really has to excite us and we know when that happens
because it happens with all of us and we’ll get excited with the music. I don’t
know if many other bands have that dynamic, I just know I’m very lucky and grateful
to have that, and have musicians on the same musical wavelength. And it takes
time it doesn’t happen overnight, like even with this album, we’ve been a band
10 years now and we’re still finding out more about ourselves, what’s important
to us, and what should be important to of mice and men and its cool.’
I’ve noticed on your track listing for ‘Defy’ a re-emergence of ‘YDG’, in ‘Forever YDG’, with this being the third reference is the
significance to assert yourself as OM&M 2.0 or simply a nod to the hard core
fans? If so why this particular song?
‘Ya Dig’ was a lot of
what we had in the beginning era of the band, where quite honestly we didn’t
really know what we were doing, we were just jamming and rehearsing, it felt very
full circle from those feelings. It is an empowerment, ‘YDG’ is what we use to
as our empowerment, you either ‘dig’ or you don’t, you’re either down with it
or you’re not, and as musicians over the years when you’re looking for
inspiration you need to take a back seat and focus on the fans; like this album
does, and that’s why it’s called ‘Forever
YDG’, the first one was ‘YDG’,
the second ‘Still YDG’n’
and this one being ‘Forever YDG’,
with the lyrics especially in this one tying in through every album, there’s a
lyric from a previous album about facing that adversity and coming out on top
and believing in yourself and knowing you have that strength within you, and
really that’s what the motto of YDG is. Its something you say to get pumped up,
it’s something you say which is a positive thing. And Aaron [Pauley (vocals and
bass)] was able to find that and make this song so important lyrically for the
fans of all the other albums. Like I said before, the lyrics are some of my
favourite parts of this album because they’re so masterfully crafted to speak
this language with the fans, and we’re not afraid to bring back these old
concepts because it’s fun for us, and at the end of the day if it can connect
on a wider scale then absolutely we’d love to do it. We knew with this song our
O.G. YDG’ers would get excited about this song and we get excited about it too,
because sonically and lyrically it encapsulated that feeling of ‘YDG’ing.”
‘We’ve worked with Max Moore [video director] before, I
think this was our fifth music video we’ve done together, so much like anybody
else who’s worked with us a couple times, we managed to speak the same language
lyrically and we talked about the message. Max came up with this awesome and
very empowering story about the love of a mother and her child and really going
through all odds for them. For us, I guess, family is so important and to be
able to turn that into something that’s kind of like a music video with a
strong female lead, facing adversity and facing fear with inevitable
hopelessness but still feeling empowered by the memory and her inner strength,
is awesome. It was so cool to watch those actresses work because they were great
actresses who have been in a lot of things and getting to see them in their
profession to thematically represent what ‘Unbreakable’
means to us was really really cool.
We’re really happy with the way that music video came out and the
production on it and everybody that worked on it, we felt that we created
something special together, and sure enough it resounded with the fan base as a
unanimous ‘YES’ and so for us it was pretty cool to be able to debut that after
so long being quiet. And truth be told, that song was only going to exist as a
YouTube video, we were just going to put it out there, and having seen the
reception be so well we thought ‘hey we’re really onto something here guys,
lets keep it rolling’ and yeah we’re really pumped on that music video.”
What
has the album ‘Defy’ taught you?
“Patience, passion, honesty, reflection, self worth… so
much. Every album is a snapshot of what we were going through when we created
it and with this album it was very much what we were trying to capture; all
these feelings we were feeling being out of the public eye for a long time and
really needing to create music that resounds not only with us but our audience.
And I think ‘Defy’ really
encapsulates that feeling of it doesn’t matter what anyone’s going to tell you,
YOU have to defy the norm, defy the expectations and the only way you can do
that is by digging deep within YOURSELF and find a way out, and for us being
able to create that musically makes this the record I’m most proud of”
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