#1023 - I Prevail - The Trades You Make to Live Your Dreams | Modern Wisdom

Why did you get deep throated by confetti?

That is up to date research right there.

Yeah.

I respect that.

Yeah.

So um yeah, Gabe uh really crushes it with our content and comes up with some awesome ideas and we kind of pitch them and throw it into a pot and yeah.

And we came in for a content day and wrote this whole script up.

And it was for this giveaway we were doing.

And he had written in the script that he was going to get pied in the face.

And then Dylan shows up.

And I don't know.

He just changed his mind on the spot.

I was like, yeah, Dylan's going to get pied.

I got to be the guy behind the camera.

So someone else has got to take the pie.

So we pied Dylan in the face quite a bit.

And from that night, Dylan plotted his revenge for Dylan. pie and confetti in Eric's face.

Yeah.

And I got a, you know, shout out.

We came as Romans cause they went along with it.

We get into their trailer and I get a text and they have this ritual for their show.

It's whiskey time.

And they go, you know, have this little ritual and like get to the trailer now, whiskey time.

So I'm walking in going whiskey time, whiskey time, pie, pie it again.

And now I can't see.

And my mouth's open.

I'm just like whiskey time.

And as soon as I said time, I couldn't see anything.

I just got a mouthful of, I didn't know what.

And then, uh, yeah, I couldn't breathe for a little bit.

And the uvula in the back of my throat turned into a disco ball.

It was like, it was pretty cool.

Your, uh, autobiography mouthful of, I don't know what I trademarked that.

I'm taking that.

Yeah.

Uh, well, I don't know.

I feel like having a confetti Bukkake is a good way to start a show.

Yeah.

I think it might have to be a ritual.

Just not on me this time.

Dylan, Dylan, you, you're old one.

There's going to be some, Behind the scenes warfare, for sure.

This will start a two-year war.

Okay, this is the beginning of a vicious retributive cycle.

Yes, definitely.

I want to know what you guys make of what's happening with the rock and metal scene at the moment.

Because a lot of artists are rethinking touring.

There's some reports that have come out recently that I've read.

Pop, hip-hop, country.

A little touch and go.

Some in decline.

And certainly if you aggregate it a lot in decline, but rock touring seems to be bigger than ever.

So give me your thoughts.

Like you guys been around for a minute.

Yeah.

What do you make of the arc of alternative and heavy music and stuff like that?

Yeah, I think um, I think you know rock and metal called modern metal is just in such a um it feels like a boom right now, a resurgence.

Um, having chats with friends and it's like, you know, i'm 34, but back when i was like 15 16 17, i didn't have the funds to go out and see my favorite bands come through detroit or or whatever it may be.

And and now that we're of the age and have some disposable income um, when these bands do these 20-year anniversary shows and, and you know, come back around and they have this lineup of all these other bands that you may have grew up listening to, on top of having some of these new bands, and it kind of just appeals to our generation.

And then you know, I don't have any kids, but I can imagine my kids, the next generation.

You know, it's like a family affair.

So they're going out and seeing bands.

Like I mean we just played when we were young and blink one 82 and panic at the disco or headlining.

And then back Sunday, brand new, the used, um, man, that, that lineup is just stacked.

But now you go out there and you see kids that are like, 15 to 18.

And then you see dudes our age and older that are out there all in the crowd.

And I don't know.

I think there's a bit of nostalgia.

I think there's, um, yeah, I don't know.

It's not just throwback, right?

No, no.

Old new bands with new albums, new music coming out all the time too.

I think people are pretty, I don't, I don't know if desperate is the right word, but I'll use it desperate for experiences.

And I think like, pop concerts and all that stuff is like sick.

You get to see your favorite pop artists, but the reality is how that music is produced is very tracks heavy.

Like a lot of these artists go on stage.

It's just them.

They have no band playing instruments.

And I think it's like a combination of like you want to see a little bit of that risk factor of like a band really playing and you might see them mess up.

And that's kind of interesting.

But also, like in the rock and the metal community scene in particular, like I think audience engagement is actually key to the experience, whether that's crowd surfing, mosh pits, whatever that is, as opposed to if you're going to go see a pop artist or whoever, you're kind of just sitting there and it's fun.

It's cool.

Like I've been to pop pop shows and it's fun, but metal and rock, it's a little bit more visceral.

And with everyone behind computers all day, it's fun to get punched in the face and to like scream your favorite songs at the same time.

Uh, makes you feel alive a little bit, i think, and i think to to your point too, with the pop and everything is like it.

Just, it sounds just like the record, which is, which is great.

But you know, there's something about that like push and pull of the live experience of the band all playing together and and uh, i think there's a little bit of that on top of that too.

Yeah, especially if you love a track, you love a band and they play your favorite track, but there's a twist on it.

Oh, maybe there's a longer solo.

Maybe they've added an additional chorus at the end.

Maybe just the way that the singer that night decides to interpret a way to say the vocals sticks in your mind.

I remember going and seeing bands like Bring Me in Newcastle when they first started doing moderate-sized theaters.

And they played a Halloween show.

It was just after Jordan had joined the band.

And I'd... seen an opportunity kind of like a, uh, an ex ugly girl.

Who's just had a glow up.

I saw the opportunity to like befriend uh Jordan, cause he was brand new to the band and he was having some problem with Ableton.

I messaged him about it on Twitter.

We became friends and he said, yeah, why don't you come to the show?

That's happening at the O2.

It was on Halloween and they came out fully face painted up as skeletons.

They played the whole show as skeletons.

I remember like watching that show from the back and thinking so many of the songs that I knew really well just had little twists and adaptations that had been made, yeah and uh, that was great because it is a unique experience and i guess well actually, if you were to say that from the pop side who, who nearly fucking killed that?

Was it beyonce that nearly got killed by a car that was over the top of a uh, flying over the top of the i swear it was beyonce was doing a show and she's one of those like floating stage things that you know goes right over the crowd and everyone gets to look up.

I'm pretty sure that some shit snapped and like, imagine if you were the guy that killed beyonce um, you put the carabiner on wrong or something like that.

Um, my point being, you do get to see some stuff at pop shows.

Yeah um, i guess sometimes people go upside down when they drum, but that's really kind of pinnacle of it from like a show experience.

Yeah, there's a catwalk, maybe there's some cool blocking, maybe there's not, whatever.

Yeah, it suggests that there's something about rock and heavy music that you get out of that show that you can't recreate, with pink flying around a stadium or the jonas brothers with 20 people on stage or whatever it might be.

Yeah yeah, i think you're right.

I think like You're able to do the spectacle a little bit more.

You can have Pink doing trapeze over the audience.

It's sick.

I would love if Eric did the trapeze.

I don't know about that.

You're built for the trapeze.

Am I?

You have the exact body shape of a trapeze artist.

I also think from a songwriting perspective, at least when I was growing up, metal was all about how heavy can you make it?

I still think that's part of it, but I think, now more than ever, metal and top are fusing in a lot of ways, and fusing in a way that's done very well.

I think people have tried it a lot where it's like they'll have these heavy breakdowns and they'll go into a very melodic chorus, but it just never really meshes.

But you've got bands who are taking these sounds and putting them all together like Sleep Token, Bad Omens, all those bands who are really exploding.

My theory is that they're exploding because they've mastered melody so much.

At the end of the day, people want to listen to a song that maybe makes them feel a certain way, gives them energy at the gym or whatever.

But without a melodic chorus not all the time but a lot of the time it's not going to get stuck in their head.

They're not going to come back to it.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm at the gym sometimes listening to ass beaters and I just want to like... Job for a cowboy.

Yeah, yeah.

I just want to go like super hard and that's really fun too.

And even those bands are growing too.

So it's almost like...

I don't know if these bands all the way at the top are just kind of bringing the whole thing up with them.

Yeah, definitely the verse-chorus kind of pop structure of a song with some melody.

I mean, say what you want about Sleep Token, dude.

Caramel is one of the catchiest fucking hooks, maybe of all time, of that genre.

It is so sticky.

That's fun.

I like that.

It's just, it really, you can't get out of your head the first time that you hear that.

So yeah, I think you're right.

And it makes it radio friendly.

It makes it like sort of a chart friendly.

Yeah.

And it's almost like you know.

I just talked about how so many bands are getting better at blending, but sometimes, when you are like I don't actually care about blending it.

Like.

That's a perfect example of a song where the first three fourths of that song is a pop song.

Really done well.

And then they're just like and now we're just going to go into like the heaviest shit we've ever done, ever.

Right.

And it's like sicker because it didn't even try to like meld them.

It's just like, here's this.

And then here's this.

And what a fun journey for everyone to be on.

Yeah.

It's like, you're, you're really trying something, I think more than, I don't know.

I don't want to be like metal versus other genres, but it's something about to like, uh, you, you, blows your expectations out like what what you were you got three-fourths of the way through the song you're like okay i kind of get where it's going and then oh man there's this switch up at the end and you know i think when bands do that very well it's like you have the listener on the edge of the seat you know you don't know what to expect you get halfway through the song and you're like okay this is cool and then all of a sudden the bridge comes or the breakdown comes or the outro whatever it is there's i you know i don't see that much and you see that in hip-hop a bit but i don't really see that in in pop i feel like pop and country it's just like you get 30 seconds of the song, you kind of know what you're going to get.

Yeah, you're very rightly surprised.

Right, right.

The final theory is that maybe we're all just getting a little more fucked up and into these things that just make us feel viscerally.

I feel like horror movies, I don't watch horror movies, but I feel like those are on the rise also.

And almost the more messed up they are, the more popular they get.

Do you think the messaging of metal is uh, tapping into an emotion that's difficult for people to find catharsis with elsewhere?

Yeah i i yeah, i think so.

Um, some of these like very heavy metal bands and like, just you know, you look at the lyrics, listen lyrics.

It's just like very fucked up and aggressive.

And I think it's just a healthy way to, you know, it's, it's human emotion.

It's, it's, it's, you know, you're feeling that, uh, it's just a healthy way.

I feel like to get that out, especially when you're in a small club with 200 people listening and just ask Peter breakdowns over and over and over, just screaming about the most like dark, dark message dark, dark stuff you know like.

Uh, the Acacia strain is one band that had some like hateful lyrics back in the day.

And it's just, you know, I don't feel that way, i don't feel like, you know, chopping people up or whatever cannibal corpse or anything like that.

But to feel, to feel that health in a healthy way, i guess is um, something i think especially, certainly elevated if you look at like a sleep token or bad omens.

Now uh, the message is just like poetic emo right it's, ohio is for lovers right, 2025?

Yeah, you know, like i'm outside of your window, like that.

It's that sad, nicky fme type thing that we all grew up listening to.

Yes, but just like significantly elevated, with much more sophisticated production.

Yeah um, but it still speaks to ha, i have challenges and sometimes they're hard and nobody understands me and this is difficult and i don't know what i'm doing and there is pressure and i'm growing up and things are changing.

It's like these timeless modern problems.

Yeah yeah, i feel like i had the gift of reconnecting with the emotion of metal this year in particular, because i'll be honest, like i've been in this band for eight years and this point, I'm 33 years old and I'm like yeah, you know, like the, the emotions that I had when I was 14 are, are different now.

Right.

And I'm kind of like am I going to sing about being really stressed about work and, you know, being married for 11 years or whatever?

Yeah, dude, exactly.

My inbox is a nightmare.

But um man, I think for honestly, most of us in the band we've had one individually, some of the hardest years um, at least that I've ever had in my life of yeah.

I mean, I lost, we, we lost our, our manager, our booking agent.

He died tragically in a, in a plane accident.

Two days later, I lost my grandpa.

One week later, someone broke into my house while I was sleeping.

And I mean many other things that I probably can't really get into, but I, I feel like it took me to low places where I I it was more than just like heavy music is fun at the gym.

And it's like, I viscerally, my, my emotions are viscerally connecting with this music.

And it was a gift in a lot of ways, because it it allowed me to see through, like the fans eyes of what they're experiencing when they're hearing this music.

Cause again, 33, I'm like, yeah, I'm just, Hey, I like the song.

Song's cool, but I'm, I'm a drummer.

I'm not always listening to, to lyrics and like connecting, but yeah, I feel like I got to do that this year more so and i i do think, like metal and rock has a little bit more of that, those themes to connect with, especially if you're getting kicked in the nuts by life, which you know, if everything's going great and grammy nominations and we're on the road and ticket sales are going up, you know how much are you connecting with the.

It's kind of the like um, golden prison uh, like velvet fucking handcuffs thing that podcasters or comedians get accused of.

Yeah.

You know if you're a comedian.

Whitney Cummings got this great line where she says uh, in order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life.

And this is why you can tell when comedians are getting too successful because all they talk about are airports, dinners and shows, because that's all they know.

You know, if you're, if you're touring 200 days out of the year, what life have you got to inject into the art?

And, um, I guess, for you guys as well.

Uh, if this is my problem with fucking Luke Combs, man, like I love that guy's music so much.

He was the person that got me into.

He was the soundtrack to 2019, which was the year I decided I wanted to move to America.

But his music to me has got less resonant linearly as his life's got better.

Yeah.

I'm like, I fuck it.

I do some cocaine or like get in a fight or like lose a leg or something.

Like I need some.

You know, I just want a little bit of sort of great.

It's like, you know, everything's going great and i'm getting a bit older and my dad's older than me, but he's really lovely and my wife loves me and my kid loves me.

I'm like fuck luke, come on, man.

Yeah, and that's not to say that you can't make music from a happy place, but that i don't know, there's something about the friction.

I think that causes people to dig a little bit deeper, like when you're going against the grain of life.

It seems like um, people tap into emotion a little bit more acutely.

100 yeah um, I think on this record there's a few songs that I had to go back and look at these events or these situations or these difficult times I had in the past and pick open some scabs that didn't really fully heal.

And that also is finding inspiration and looking back on some difficult times and hard times that I really haven't had, you know, any therapy to get through and just kind of just let it go for three or four years.

So that's, you know it's not.

It doesn't always have to be about what's going on in your life right now, but to look back and really you know someone put it once I can't remember how they worded it, but it takes some time to look back and fully have a full thought or, you know, fully grasp what you went through.

And that's something too, if I'm not, you know we're trying to draw from the well of inspiration and looking back on a past, failed relationship, or you know past, you know you want to call it trauma, um to to dig at those and and really it's very important for us to write music and every song have come from something that has some real emotion and can be relatable to someone.

And yeah, I think I think that is a big challenge for artists when they start getting bigger and you know they're playing arenas and and you know ticket sales are going through the roof.

And like you said, Grammy, I was all this stuff and it's hard to be relatable.

And that's what you know.

Growing up, I took a lot out of music and I found you know a lot of things to relate to.

And when I was a teenager going through like, Oh, the world hates me and no one loves me.

And and uh, you know, once you get to that level like how, how do you?

How do you still write music to relate to your fans?

And and uh yeah, for me it's specifically it was like going back and like digging through some things that just didn't work out.

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What is the process of writing records which deal with deeply emotional personal topics like that as a group?

Because it's like, well...

I'm the guy that sings the words, but I'm the guy that makes the melody.

But I'm like, I feel sad, but I feel ambivalent, but I'm uncertain.

I've got, you know, I'm excited or whatever.

And you're trying to, I spoke to the guys from Under Oath.

I think there's an increasing trend of solo acts masquerading as bands or bands that sort of perform publicly as a democracy.

But in terms of production, it's much sort of closer to a dictatorship.

And in some ways I can see, why that is a huge fucking hack.

Cause you don't have to do any of this diplomacy bullshit.

It's like, this is what the song's about.

This is how the song's going to sound.

You want to track on the record and help me cut it.

Brilliant.

If not, I got fucking 50 people that are going to come and do it.

Sweet.

Um, but you often have the opportunity to tap into different people's emotions.

So is that, is that tough?

You got what?

10 tracks on your album.

And you're like it's not a lot of room for 10 guys to get the creative you know like a presentation out there.

Yeah yeah i um, i think being with these guys for the last 10 11, so years it's it's uh, that was a huge plus to sit down in a room and be like well okay, we start working on an instrumental for a song, let's say, and it's kind of pulling out this emotion and you know, pull out some lyric notes and okay this, this line that i wrote a while ago, this kind of feels like it matches the mood of the instrumental.

And okay well, when i was in this headspace and and there's certain songs we sat down, i was like, you know, i i think i can really pull from this and you know, maybe let's say it's a a bad relationship i was going through years ago and you know they were around me when that was going on, so it's not like super foreign to them and sit down and, kind of like, write some lyrics down.

This is kind of what i was feeling, this is kind of what i was, what i was going through and and if you can tap into that and you have something similar like bounce some ideas off each other and kind of like we all kind of feel there's everyone's got, you know, unique stories, but there's some overlap.

And if you can tap into that and and help, you know, generate some lyrics out of that.

You know, I'm sure there's going to be something that overlaps.

So you know, I'm just thinking of one spot song specifically.

But how do you?

Have you ever contributed any lyrics ever?

Um, maybe a single word.

Yeah.

So we, so we joke that we are business metal.

And so that translates to the writing process as well, where it's like we kind of have these different departments right.

So, Um, me and John, I would say we're more in the instrumental department.

Cause I, I'm not trying to play in a sandbox that I don't belong in.

You know, I'm like, Hey, I grew up, like I played in so many bands.

And even then it was like I can write some like cool instrumental parts or like suggest cool things and obviously play drums well and write cool drum parts.

I'm not a poet.

I'm not like I'm happy to talk about my feelings, but if you're like now, make it like artistic.

I'm like uh, I can hit things hard.

That's my art.

Um, And so yeah, and then Steve and Eric are really good at like yeah, like to Eric's point, me and John, really all of us in the room too contribute to the instrumental but might set a vibe, and that vibe might create an emotion in Steve or Eric of something that they've been dealing with in the past or recently.

And the two of them will, like, will almost sometimes separate.

The two of them will, like, go in a different part of the room and just go back and forth.

And sometimes it'll be Eric, like, here's what I'm trying to say.

And the two of them will try to figure out.

How do we get to say that in the most artistic way possible or the most authentic way possible?

And then meanwhile me and John will try to keep laying down like the foundation and come up with parts that we think are cool and then kind of come back together.

And yeah, there are some times where I'm just sitting there like watching them do their thing.

And there are some times where Eric's just sitting there like watching me be like okay, move the snare, drum over one note and then hit this symbol like that.

You know it's like it can get very tedious, but yeah, it's a departmental for sure.

When you or when any band creates something deeply emotional and then performs it a few hundred or thousand times, does it still resonate in the same way?

Does that drop over time?

Does it heal you?

Does it reopen old wounds?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think there's different songs and different points in my life and different performances.

Let's say that you know some of these new songs you just started playing.

I have been like Oh God.

All right.

Don't mess up the lyrics.

Remember this is the first versus second.

Okay.

Here's the note you're hitting.

And and I lose that for a moment.

But um yeah, there's a certain point in the in the tour that you start playing that song that I'm like, I'm reconnecting with it.

And then after you know, a couple of tours, you know, sometimes some of these songs are like emotionally disconnected and I'm going through the performance and there's been some times where I'm look out and I see, you know, someone sob into a song and then I'm like brought back immediately to like the emotion that I was feeling in it.

And, and then all of a sudden then I have a new, a new connection to it again.

And I'd like to think after that the I performed the song a little bit better than for the rest of the tour.

So you feel, this is an interesting one.

I was talking to Johnny Frank about this.

So Bill Murray got that new more than hate track and, um, they have just started performing it live.

I think it only came out maybe six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, something like that.

And, uh, I was talking to him last week in Dallas. and he said uh dude i gotta be honest like when i'm performing the track i'm so focused on the performance because i've done it live like 15 times and that's not a lot that sounds like a lot but that's not a lot yeah um so he is still finding new ways to mess up and he doesn't know all of the potential pitfalls and uh that i never really realized well fuck like even if you've done a bunch of like run-throughs in rehearsals or whatever and even if you added half an hour on soundcheck so that you can like run new bits a few times over and over the difference of okay and where am i going to be on the stage and what's going to go on so yeah i guess when this is something i never considered as a uh an audience member and i hope i don't screw up everybody's ticket sales here um but if a band is touring a new album and you have the choice between being at the start of the tour and being a little bit deeper into it think it's probably a good idea to push your tickets you know you can choose between what are the dallas or houston show but for some reason because of the routing they're coming to houston four weeks later like do you go to the maybe you go to the second one maybe they're a bit tighter by then maybe they know the tracks a little bit more yeah yeah i mean there's also some excitement to being there in the early high wire and seeing us like mess up and try like to do our best yeah yeah um yeah i think man it's like such an interesting balance of like tour life is exhausting um it's like you might start at a hundred percent i mean i'm you know this way more than i do even with all the shit you're dealing with but like you might start at a hundred percent and then okay the shows are very physical and then you're sleeping on a tour bus very poorly and then the shows are more physical and you're sleeping worse and it's like by the end of the tour i might have 30 in the tank and i'm working three times as hard to play the same part so it's it's kind of this thing that you've got to balance the experience with the set, with the level of gas left in the tank.

And also what you have in the earlier parts of the tour is adrenaline which also will just like push you to fatigue and resentment and boredom.

And exactly.

Cause.

Yeah, then not only are you more fatigued, but you also are low on adrenaline because you're like well, I'm kind of bored now.

I know how to play everything.

Yeah.

I almost knew.

Yeah.

I want that like shot of adrenaline.

It would help me get through this physically.

Hmm.

So it's a toss up a little bit there.

Going back to the metal world of sort of rock ascendancy that we're seeing at the moment.

Do you think that you need to be really talented to be a sort of world touring alternative artist now?

Basically, how much of it is talent?

How much can you ride off the back of social media hype and good marketing?

I had no talent when I was starting this thing.

I didn't belong out here, man.

I, I just took like I feel like every room I was in I was, I had this mentality to just be a sponge, just soak up as much as you can.

And I think that got me through the first, you know, years of touring and all that.

But um, I do, I do think it takes.

You know you, you can go in off the hype and off the tick, tocks and off all that.

Um, you have to quickly figure your shit out real fast.

If you're up on stage and and there's so many variables, you're not just posting a video you playing, there's so many variables of of a live set.

And i mean even like the thing where i'm looking out in a crowd and i see up in the front row and someone doesn't know the words to the song.

They're just, you know, fish mouth and like just random lyrics.

I, I fucked up lyrics because I was looking at that guy.

I was like, what is he saying?

Oh shit.

What am I saying?

Oh, what verse am I in?

Where am I?

You know?

But, um, yeah, yeah.

I think there's, man, I think there's a good mix.

You, it's unforgiving then in that regard.

Like the, the, the high thing kind of only carry you so far.

Yeah.

I'd argue that you need a good product, right?

So, like you can, first of all, I'd argue that you need a lot of talent to be good at marketing into cause.

You're not the, the labels and all that.

Like they, they will provide that for you.

But, like i, ultimately think the bands that are doing the best are the ones who understand how to market themselves.

So one, i'd argue, that's a skill.

Two, if the product is shitty right, like chris, if this podcast sucks, but you're really good at marketing, like sure, you're gonna get it in front of a few more people, but at the end of the day, people aren't gonna come back.

And now you're working your ass off to just market a shitty product right, that's not really gonna work.

So, like i, i do think, especially in today's landscape, like How it used to be, is bands would get discovered by a label.

They explode.

It was very gatekept, right?

But if you were through, you were through.

And all you had to do is show up and play music.

And now you could upload a song to Spotify right now, while we're having this conversation, put in a prompt into AI and then upload it to Spotify right.

So the landscape is more competitive than ever, which I think means that bands who are not always like there's plenty of very talented bands who don't get traction, but it's very competitive.

You need to have like very good songs, very good marketing.

Like you have to be more well-rounded than ever.

Um, as opposed to, Hey, I'm just like a good musician that might not really get you noticed much.

What do you make of the advent of AI artists?

Oh man, don't get me started.

I, um, It's, it's, it's a little frightening, man.

Um, you know, just came across.

A friend of mine went on a rant and posted all these bands on Spotify that were, you know, AI bands, and whether it's a band that's feeding prompts and getting it and playing it, or to it's one guy that just use chat GPT grok whatever, to create everything.

And then you go look at the monthly listeners and there's 700,000 monthly listeners.

And it's.

It's not the fear that um, someone's going to go.

I'd rather listen to this AI band over a real human band.

It's the fact that it's just going to get slipped into playlisting and it's just going to be on your playlist and it's just going to just accumulate more and more of all these other fake bands.

And by the time you go and look through your playlist, you're like, oh, who's this?

Who's this?

And there's no real musicians.

But my ultimate worry is that know who's to say that someone who owns a streaming platform um, doesn't just start making music off ai himself or herself and and feeding it into the playlisting.

And now there's even less of the pie.

You know, artists are getting you know fractions of a penny on the dollar for streams.

Well, now that those playlists that these bands are fighting hard for, who's to say the, the ceos of you know, apple music spotify title, whatever aren't just making their own music, feed it into the algorithm, putting in the place that you know into the playlist thing.

And now how are we supposed to fight that?

It'd be like, uh, only fans owning the AI girlfriend generators.

You've got the distribution and you've got the source material as well.

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

It's a tricky balance because in one way I'm like you can't very difficult to stop a train that's already moving.

Right. but then also kind of like what I was talking about with concerts.

I'm like, I think people are craving more physical experiences or people to connect with.

Right.

Like I think.

I think it'll be an interesting balance of like yeah, an AI song could come on and you might not know it's AI and you might not really care that it's AI.

Cause it's like, well, the song's good.

But I wonder like, even if that has like a, a huge boom, that it wouldn't end up going to the other side of like yeah, but I kind of miss connecting with an artist or with a band, or like what they actually had to say, you know, or like if it's AI, there's nothing to really not much to really connect with, you know.

Um, all that said, yeah, I don't know.

We'll see what happens.

Well look I, I saw um what, about two months ago, there was a bunch of screenshots floating around.

Maybe it was the new terms of service that Spotify had that sounded like an adjustment had been made to say that your music can be used in data training sets that can be reproduced in perpetuity, with and without credit, et cetera all of the legalese.

And then I came across this.

Spotify announced a collaboration with major labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group to build an AI-driven features, while protecting artists' rights and ensuring fair compensation.

Proactive move in the face of rising concerns about generative AI tools using artists' voices and sounds without proper licensing.

Streaming giant Spotify states it will involve direct licensing and artist permission frameworks.

The partnership signals industry acknowledgement of AI as both an opportunity and a threat.

I don't know where it goes.

I certainly know that I'm getting delivered more AI bands in my radio.

You press one single.

I think I played, this is exactly what happened.

I played the new Bad Omen song the day it came out.

It was on the day we were filming with McConaughey.

We'd finished up and I put it on through the system at Stray Vista where we film that shit.

And it came on and then the next track came on.

And I was like, this is a really interesting sound.

Funny little track.

Like I'll go over and have a little look.

I was like, oh, it's AI band.

Like the first track, Omens, next track was them.

That is fucking premier position.

Yeah.

Algorithmically.

Yeah.

And it's picking up speed, I would say.

But I mean obviously the other, and you made a great point that if I use AI to enhance my songwriting and then cut the track myself with my bandmates, Who knows?

Yeah.

Like, how does anybody know where the initial inspiration for this track came from?

Like, hey, write me 20 number one hits in the style of Sleep Token and Bad Omens and I Prevail.

And then you go, oh, well, maybe there's our next album.

Yeah, 100%.

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Yeah, it's really interesting that way because there is like I would imagine that music would start to get a bit watered down.

Could be wrong, but that would be my theory on it.

And to your point of what you were reading.

I think there's a lot of opportunity for like, discoverability of like.

I think I saw something that chat, GBT and Spotify are coming together.

So I could just be like, Hey, find me an artist who is really heavy and like good for working out.

Right.

And then they can feed me real artists.

Like that's actually a really cool opportunity where AI can actually support it.

But yeah, it can be snuck into songwriting.

I feel like that's what the whole writer strikes were about a couple of years back in Hollywood is like not using AI for script writing.

Because I would imagine I guess I don't really know if they are using it or not, but that everything would just kind of start to get watered down.

But also AI is getting better and better.

So will it really get watered down?

Yeah, will it enhance everything?

I mean, here's another way to look at it.

Everybody gets inspired by something.

Know the way that you construct your particular uh melodies?

Well, it's because you grew up listening to biffy cliro or billy talent or whoever the like.

Weird, my chemical romance is first out ep or whatever the it is okay.

So do they own the inspiration that came through you?

Obviously not.

I don't think anybody would say that.

But uh, originality is just undetected plagiarism.

Yeah is a kind of way like You play the drums.

Well, you hold the sticks in a particular way.

You didn't invent the way that you hold the sticks.

You didn't invent the way that the drums are put together.

So do you always need to pass it back up?

And I think there's an interesting ethical challenge here of how much assistance is too much.

How much does it sort of feel like it's being perverted by AI, and how much is it just well, it's just another tool.

It's fucking pro tools or decapitator or whatever the fuck.

Yeah.

Yeah. yeah that's that's an interesting slippery slope you get down because you know you like to think that inspiration you hear you know like these bands you mentioned yeah i loved all those bands and i took influence from them you know the style of music we want to play from from lyrics to melody and all that it's it's but it's something it's something that was you know back then there's no ai so it's something that they were inspired by and then that band was inspired by and it just waterfalls down cascades down into our creative process and and then it's it's up to us to put through our filter and use our own words and and and generate the same emotion or feel that we're going for that we were inspired by but it all ultimately is through the human experience and then you have the opposite where it's you just go to a computer and be like i'm sad write a sad song like my couple romance and it's like here's the options and it's like well now i'm just picking and choosing like i'm going down the grocery store and going i'll take that one i like that brand i'll take that one i'll take that one it's it's Yeah, it's like, where does artistry stop when you start using tools?

But then at the same time, you know Melodyne, you know pitch correcting on the track.

Or you know, when you're demoing songs and you program the drums, you know bands done that for the last 20 years and you're programming the drums and man, actually let's track the drums.

Well, the program drums, I think sound better.

Well, you run with it and well, where's that line?

You know, it's, it's, it's, it's very blurred line right now.

It does seem like every time there's been something that's come into the music industry that's like controversial at first, the convenience ends up winning out right.

Like I feel, like you know, 50 years ago, the idea of someone writing a song, this is, We'd have to go back a little further.

But the idea of writing a song for someone else and that pop artist just taking it and then just singing.

What you gave me, I think, was initially like artists aren't even writing their own songs.

Now,

But now, when Justin Bieber's singing a song, no one's like, did he write that?

No one cares.

They probably think that he did.

But most of the time, it's someone, here's a song.

You have a good voice.

Sing it.

Cool.

And I can see that, yeah to your point of then pitch correcting in the studio but then pitch correcting live, or then quantizing to make the timing of every instrument perfect.

And then even samples of oh well, I can just take this sample and I can mess around with it, but now it's mine and I can build a song around it.

We'll play to a click track.

We'll have a click in our ears to ensure that everybody's at least on time, even if it's not quantized after the fact.

100%.

Rick Beato was telling me about how, when digital recording first came in And it meant that you didn't just have to do things in one take

Yeah.

Well, I mean, that wasn't what they recorded.

And I know that there's.

If you are recording something and your finger just brushes the wrong string, you're like Hey dude, like whatever.

Fourth bar in on that second bit there.

I just caught it a little bit wrong.

Let me just go in and then being okay.

There we are slot that one thing in there.

Okay.

So like you could play, and I think you can do this.

You could play an entire track one note at a time.

Just be like, okay, there's that note.

I've got that right.

And then I can go in, and then we'll do it again, and we'll do it again, and we'll do it again.

You've got this Lego brick building block set, and you've constructed a track.

So, yeah, it's an interesting challenge.

I mean, do you guys use AI tools?

Have they assisted at all with anything that you guys do?

No.

Fucking medieval.

Yeah, dude, we're grandpas over here.

No, the most is...

We'll be in the back of the bus and we'll think of a really stupid prompt for AI, and then we'll just be like oh, AI write a song about Eric falling down and his pants coming off and poop goes everywhere.

And we'll see what the AI spits out.

But no, in our actual... Entertainment tool.

Yes, exactly.

Where do you see it?

Do you feel any type of threat about AI in the podcasting space?

Because I know AI podcasts are... Notebook LM does a really good job of it.

Yeah.

I mean, you can now go and say I want I don't know whether you can say it for people, but you can certainly say I want to learn about the final week of the fall of Berlin in Nazi Germany.

Make the podcast 20 minutes long and relatively serious.

And Notebook LM will spit out a very listenable with breath breaks and ums and ahs and laughter and all the rest of it.

And it is, it's very listenable.

My sort of position on this is that ultimately, the market is going to choose what's best for it.

And that's not always great.

Ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods that are calorie-dense.

People will tend to choose those over something else.

It's very difficult to get them to choose the thing which is better for them.

But when it comes to this, what's better for them is just what's most accurate entertaining, educational.

So it is going to be incumbent on whoever it is, whatever industry you're in, to just be better.

If you can be defeated by AI or a robot...

I don't know what the leg is that you have to stand on to be able to compete with that.

Now, there are certain things that you can do.

For instance, you could go live.

If you were responding live to messages and comments and stuff from people, that would be the equivalent my equivalent of doing a show on stage.

Yeah.

But even then AI is just going to get quick enough where it's going to be able to render in real time responses and video and then stream those back to people.

So all you're doing is kicking the can down the road with regards to that.

And I think you guys do have a good moat.

I think all bands have a great moat around the main moneymaker, which is touring and sort of the associated shit that comes along with that.

Because until the robots get as good as you guys on stage...

That's not gonna happen.

I mean, the chuggy cheese band was pretty sick.

Maybe, maybe your fucking demise is closer than you think, but yeah, I think there's, I think there's a motor on that and um, It'll be, it'll be a fascinating few years.

My like unpopular, really unpopular with musicians theory is that musicians believe that they have a, they should have a special kind of protection around them because It's so hard to be able to do the basics of what you guys do.

Anybody can sit down with a microphone in front of them and do a podcast.

I mean, anybody can sit down and try and sing and like make a song, but the barrier to entry is significantly higher.

Like you need to learn so much in practice for a very long time.

And I think that a shortcut to a place which is not very far away doesn't feel like that much of a cheat.

A shortcut to a place that's taken a decade or 15 years to get to feels much more unfair.

And I think that this is one of the reasons that musicians have a particular B in their bonnet around.

Why uh, why AI needs some sort of restriction on it?

It feels particularly unfair that the muggles, who haven't spent all of their time learning to sing or play drums or guitar or whatever,

I just able to type some words in and then do something which is comparable.

Whereas as is being demonstrated right now, any idiot can do a podcast.

Any three idiots can do a podcast.

So it's about how can you sort of stay ahead.

If you think you're going to slow the behemoth leviathan that is AI, it's not going to happen.

So it's a case of how you're going to be able to adapt to it.

Yeah, totally.

And I try not to just sit around thinking well, it's unfair and I hope it doesn't do something bad.

You know, like that's not.

I don't think that's really going to take me to the place that I want to go in life.

Um, but yeah, to your point, it's like, okay, well, what's in my control?

Because I can't control AI.

I can control how well I show up or what I choose to spend my time focusing on.

That, I think like is the biggest needle mover in my project or my skillset, or whatever that is.

But yeah to.

To analyze all of those things like is is difficult right, because at a certain point, what got me in the band is not what's going to get the band bigger.

Right, if i spend all my time, 10 hours a day, just practicing drums, like if i, if i get 10 times better at drums right now, the band will grow zero percent.

You know what i mean.

It's like i got to a certain point where it's like cool, i can do the job and i can do it well and i can be creative and try to stand out my own ways.

But now what's the next thing that I can focus on that will actually take me to where I want to go?

It got me the audition, which is very cool, but yeah it's, it's always.

That's always like.

A thing I'm trying to think about in my head is like yeah, what now?

What?

What is some of the other secrets that the music industry should be talking about?

But isn't, I think, that kind of like what I was saying of how competitive things are?

It's not, for the most part, enough to just be a good band anymore.

I think you need to be very multifaceted in having your departments in the business.

Right.

So like, for example, if we use, I prevail, for example, we all do our music thing.

We all have our own weird skills.

This guy can yell really loud and that's like a cool skill.

Right.

But, for me, okay.

Like my department is cool.

I can play drums but I'm also have a ton of experience uh, growing in organic content media machine or team or whatever that is, and marketing and backend business and growing the merch sales or whatever that is.

Right.

And then we have our guitar player Steve, who's very in like the accounting business management world.

Yeah.

He's a really good lead guitar player, but he's also like a nerd on Excel.

Right.

And it's like you kind of have to have these, like other facets that contribute to the overall project.

And outside of that, I would just say I used to think that being in a band was like showing up and playing drums and like performing and someone just like hands you a check and it's like, oh cool.

Like, thanks.

I played the show.

I got paid.

See you later.

But it's like, oh, actually there are these nine different arms of how you can make money.

But before it comes to you, It's going to go.

10 is going to go over here for the person who booked the tour.

20% is going to go to just the general manager who just handles business stuff.

Then all of your music is going to get split into three different arms of publishing.

And then people who try to put it on like freaking video games and stuff and whatever your Spotify cut is.

And then how much goes to the label as opposed to the people who wrote the songs.

And it's like this ginormous spider web of money going to a million different people.

And then you're here at the bottom and you're just like ah, i'll try to catch as much as i possibly can.

Yeah that, uh is a.

It's just so complex right, like for i'm.

I'm sure it's complex for you too and i oversimplify it.

But i'm like you do a brand deal and they're like cool, here you go, here's your Monthly or yearly whatever.

Significantly more simple.

But that is because I've done the equivalent of remaining independent as an artist.

I'm not signed.

I've never, ever been signed to any network.

I'm not owned by a media agency.

I'm not even signed.

I don't even have an agent.

Wow.

So like everything is just me.

Everything is bootstrapped.

That's crazy.

The tour that we put together, bootstrapped.

Team that we put together, bootstrapped.

Everything.

Like we booked our own tour manager.

Like this is not...

Yeah, so that means that there's a lot more effort that has to go in on the front end, but there's so much more control on the back end.

Something isn't working out.

With whatever partner, this is whatever member of staff.

This is whatever contractor we have.

There's no obligation beyond loyalty, which counts for a lot, but there's less fuckery.

And it is wild to see People just want to go and hear good music from their band that are happy and healthy and playing a show and hopefully well enough remunerated to keep doing it.

And there's just a lot of holes in the Swiss cheese slice that you don't get to see.

And I hope that it doesn't seem at the moment at least the genres I'm interested in, you guys and your cohort doesn't seem like that.

Many people feel like they're eating shit because I think live is going so well for so many people.

Um, but yeah, if I was a big hip hop fan or something, maybe I'd feel differently.

Maybe I'd be worried about the sort of upcoming hip hop artists and whether or not they can make money like they used to back in the day or something.

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And you know then, the tough part about being in a band too, and I don't want to like complain about money.

I'm not trying to complain about money.

I'm just trying to say like I think it's important to understand how the back end of the business works.

And like yes, now you can be independent.

If you want to like, you can like.

There are plenty of Spotify artists who have they made a good product.

Their song, their songs are good.

And they develop the skill of organic content or paid ads or mark.

I mean, probably not paid ads as much, but like, yeah, marketing themselves.

If you have a good product and you can market yourselves and you can push people to the right.

You know whatever you want that to be by by tickets or go stream the song.

Like you can simplify the whole process and just get really good at team building, which is what I assume is the skill that you've had to build to do it all independent.

Yeah.

But it is like it's.

It's this weird like for me.

I look at how my life has gone and it.

I grew up everyone.

Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a drummer.

And everyone's like, what you said as a kid.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Okay.

Um, what was the response when you said I want to be a drummer?

You're stupid.

Like I grew up in, the suburbs of Michigan.

We're still from there, but yeah, there's no professional musicians that I knew of coming out of Michigan.

There are, but you've got Kid Rock, you've got Eminem.

Uncle Cracker.

Yeah, Uncle Cracker.

There's some big players, but yeah, everyone's like, you're stupid.

Go to school.

Go to university for you.

I wouldn't say college, but go to college and get a degree in business.

And I'm like, I don't care about business.

I want to play drums.

The ironic thing is that to be able to play drums professionally, I had to learn a lot about business, but then, you know, by my own accord, really fell in love with a lot of it.

Cause it's like, I think any musician starts to love it because it's very challenging.

It's very challenging to develop a skill in songwriting or singing or drumming or whatever that is.

And then like, at a certain point, you've never arrived.

You can always get better, but I think business has that same thing too, right?

Where it's like, oh, now it's not just drumming that I have to get better at.

Business is an umbrella term.

You know, there's accounting, there's marketing, there's blah, blah, blah, blah.

So there's endless things to.

You have direct input on the lyrics that you write, the melodies that come out.

You don't have the same with how... well the accounts are put together.

And if you negotiate the margin on the merch 10 off.

Like I used to feel bad when I ran nightclubs in my twenties because I had this sense that my success, I could always excuse my successes away.

Uh, I was like a Velcro for criticism, self-criticism and Teflon for self-praise.

Um, because you're contribution to the success of a business anything really within the business operations.

Even if you come up with the best marketing tagline of all time, you're not the one that delivered it, you're not the one that chose how the audience responded to it and you're not the one that said that the sales whatever created the page that had the conversion rate optimization, that did the, and it meant that I always was more easily able to ignore where I'd done well with things like that, and I think one of the great things about you guys do, and what i think everybody needs in their life is something where a direct it's almost one to one input to output ratio of um effort to reward is available.

If you write a slamming song individually or as a group like you, that thing is yours and you made it directly.

There was no molestation in between you and this thing happening.

I think a lot of the time people feel out of control and out of connection with what's going on in their lives because there are so many layers of fuckery between them and the shit that is supposed to be the goal on the other side of it.

100%.

And that's why I think, as much as the business stuff has been enjoyable to really dive into and grow.

That's why I'm still so happy that I'm a musician in a band, because you do have these moments like with this last album we made.

We blocked off eight months.

We're basically Mondays from 10 to 6.

We show up in the studio every day and we just walk in.

We walk in not knowing what we want to create and we walk out with something and that I can't.

I just don't have that in any other area of my life where it feels like pure creativity.

And those short moments are like just so awesome.

Like driving home in your car listening to this 30 second demo that you just wrapped up five minutes ago, and then the next, honestly the next day, on the way to the studio, you listen to it.

You're like, actually it sucks, but the drive home felt so magical, but now we have to improve it.

And you constantly yeah, eric comes in.

It's like yeah, that sucks, but let's do this.

And then you're like, Oh shit, that's awesome.

Now in every, it's just like, it feels like pure creativity and it's.

Yeah.

Crazy to think that you come in with you know, five dudes, come in a room and have, having talked about what we're going to work on today,

And we sit down and you find some central meeting point and you just pull things out of thin air.

And then you leave eight hours later going, we have a 30 second audio file.

There's something that came out of nothing, you know, and that that, that bit of creativity and feeling that reward is, is unlike anything else we have going on in our life.

I feel like you know you come in with nothing and you leave with something that was created by a group of group of friends that you're like there was nothing before this.

And now we have this, this piece of art, and if, and you feel like you got something off your chest or you feel excited with the direction this thing is going, and then it starts shaping the record, and then you're like okay well, we did this what, what should, what should be the counterpart of this song.

You know what?

What we did some little heavier on this, let's uh, just the whole creative process is is so rewarding, you know, in that, in that sense, what have you learned about navigating a career in an industry that's ripe with burnout and crisis and recovery and stuff like that?

Oh man.

Um, for me personally, being on the road specifically uh, when we do, like you know, three and a half weeks in Europe and we have two days at home and then we do a six week tour in the States and then we're home for a month and we go back to Australia for three weeks and then your, your time zones are all fucked up and and being lost on on tour.

Just, you know that that burnout feel, you know.

Um, for me personally, it's like trying to find those days off when we have them uh, to feel like a human again, like i'm.

I'm big into uh, some trading card games, collecting records and, you know, finding bars or coffee shops.

I've been to when we had a day off in that city prior, so to to step away off the bus and go explore a city on my own or go meet up with some friends or other people on tour and play cards or, you know, find a bar record shop, doing something that makes you feel like a person again.

Uh, has definitely helped that that, you know, four weeks into a, you know, seven week tour or whatever it is.

It's like feeling like a human again is very important.

So having those hobbies and having those things to to distract yourself from the the, the mental fatigue has uh, been huge for me.

Yeah.

I mean, I think like being on the road is, uh, a gift in so many ways.

And, you know, like a dream come true and also right.

Like, life happens when you are on the road and you miss it.

Like, people die, right?

We've all lost family members while being on the road and finding out.

I mean friends and family members.

I mean you'll find out a couple hours before you have to go play.

And you're like, okay, I just found out that a huge piece of my life is now gone.

And now I have to go like in front of thousands of people, and not that we played smiley music, so it's not like I have to put on a smile but man, you have to get through some shit.

And that might be in the midst of tension in the band or overall fatigue from tour, where you're physically drained, you're mentally drained, you're in your 30s, living with eight other grown men in a bus the size of this room for months at a time.

You haven't seen your family for months at a time.

Tragedy happens.

It is a lot.

And also, on the road, there have been so many of, I think, collectively our lowest moments.

But it's also coupled with these moments that are so unique that I personally could never... get.

And once it's done, it's done.

Like for example, like the, the creativity of creating a song, I'm just like, I won't, I don't think I'm going to find that somewhere else or performing in front of people and being like part of a collective experience.

Like sorry Eric, I there have been many moments in my time with the band where I'm like is this really what I want to do?

Like I am exhausted from the chaos.

I miss being home.

I love being home.

Uh, is this really what I want to do?

But I think there's these things where it's like but once it's done, it's it's done.

And also yes, like there are times where there's like tension in the band, but also you form, you trauma, bond together as as a group.

You know where, when people really need it, like you are there for each other and like there's never another time in my life where I'm going to be able to have sleepovers with my 30 year old bros.

You know what I mean?

But on tour, like every night it's like after the show, I'll see you in the back lounge.

Silly bus time.

Yeah.

Silly bus time is what we call it.

Uh, it's just kind of coming down from the adrenaline, cracking a ton of jokes and then going right to sleep.

It's a sleepover, you know, but yeah, it's emotional whiplash all the time.

Yeah.

Um, And what you're saying about going up and having some kind of loss or turmoil back home and and trying to navigate that?

And then an hour later, you're going on stage.

It's it's important, especially being the performer or singing the words, putting on the show to remember that, you know, this may be the one concert that that kid is going to all year long or this these people, these fans, these this group is trying to escape. whatever's going on in their life whether it's all the political stuff they're fed up with seeing online whether it's their own family issues whether it's loss whatever it may be this is their moment where they're coming for three four hours to forget all of that and to have a good time drink some beers with their friends shout the lyrics back to to us and and and forget everything so it's also keeping that in mind when we go on stage like this is just as much our moment having fun up here as your moment you know your once this month or once this year getting to to release or or exercising demons in the pit or to just forget about all the the bullshit that they have going on at home and then you know having to remember that when you're going through something yourself to go up there and go all right this is for them you know put the show we call putting getting into our show he's like you're you've got severance it's your innie and your audi it's like our normie and our showy yeah so it's time to zip into our show and get out there and give give everyone the show that they want to they they deserve you know that's what's called being a professional right like you know if you're a a firefighter and you've had a big argument in a sleepless night with the wife last night or arguing or something I'm not equating rock stars and firefighters in terms of importance.

Thank you.

Because you're saying that we're more important, right?

Yeah, okay, good, good.

I just wanted to make sure.

Significantly.

But they have to turn up and do a job.

And I think it's good to think about it in terms of service.

There's certainly at least sort of from my side, looking from the outside in, because any job that's a lot of fun or that has just fun as a part of it, Uh starts to see anything that isn't fun as a bug, not a feature.

And you go Hey yeah, I know that sometimes shit's hard, but for some people's jobs all of it's hard.

Yeah.

And the fact that well, you know I'm tired, or this has been long, or I'm whining to you about how many flights I've got to do this week and tour, tour for me starts this week.

And I'm like, yeah.

I'm going to go and do this thing with my best friends in cities that I love and get to see.

And you go well.

I think this is why people have limited sympathy for traveling musicians that whine about how hard it is, because they're complaining that some of the things are difficult.

Meanwhile, most people's jobs, all of the things are difficult.

They don't get the positive reinforcement in the way.

It's like, you know, I struggle to sleep because the adrenaline is high.

You go, well, Some people don't ever feel adrenaline.

The reason that you've got that is because of how much positive reinforcement you got earlier in the night.

I guess something I'm interested in, you mentioned it's a sleepover with your bros in your 30s.

Everybody's aging.

Everybody's getting older.

At least a bunch of you are married or in relationships, or maybe all of you are.

So I'm interested in how you navigate that as everybody grows up.

Because people have personal lives that aren't going to be as negotiable as they used to be.

You don't choose when your kids born your big band.

Tons of sperm means lots of potential road bumps for people to navigate, so you're gonna have to say hey, darling.

Um, i know that you're really keen on having a, a baby next year.

The marriage, the wedding, was wonderful.

Thank you for allowing us to slot it in in between australia and the, the second run on the us tour.

Um, we're not going to be able to start trying until late july because we've got this new amphitheater run that.

We've got that's lined up.

And you know i like surely this is something that's in the back of your guys's minds as you start to plan your personal future.

And then, how does this work with blending the band?

Yeah,

I mean I'm going through right now planning on a wedding and next spring and just constantly reminding the guys like Hey, check the calendar.

Uh, we got a tour offer and is that tour offer again?

Okay, cool, cool, cool.

All right.

I have a week I can get married, but, uh, yeah, that's, that's, um, I think it's something that we don't talk about, but we all feel and know it's in the back of our mind.

Like our guitar, Steve just had a kid three years ago.

It was during when we were recording our last record and he went off and Melissa had the baby and then they uh, we released the record and went on the road shortly after that.

So, you know, missing the, the, you know, early, early years of, of, uh, his child's child's life.

And it's difficult trying to plan around life events, major life events like that.

But you know we, we try our best between the five of us to plan things uh, the intimate parts of our lives and in our, our little group.

And and And.

Uh, you know, if someone's got to fly home for a weekend, we try to slot some some times.

You know days off where it's okay.

You can fly home this weekend.

All right, cool.

We'll meet up with you in, you know, three stops from now.

And but yeah, it's something that I think I don't know if we have it mastered, but it's, it's something that we honestly struggle with, but it's something that is a difficult thing to.

To have our personal lives and those huge moments and, you know, having a kid or getting married or, you know friends weddings, standing in weddings, whatever it may be, is uh it's, it's a challenge.

It definitely is a challenge.

Yeah.

I think it's like you're, you're trading sacrifices, right?

So in the early days, the sacrifices.

I'm going to go out and tour for nine months of the year and make 12 right.

That's the sacrifice and you make it.

And then that, that stops being the sacrifice.

It's like, oh, we're touring less and making more than $12.

So, okay, cool.

But then, yeah, as you get older, there's more sacrifice in a different way.

Your parents are getting older.

Thinking about having kids, how do you navigate that?

How do you navigate a marriage where it's long distance?

That's pretty uncommon.

But also, in some ways, I think, with any sacrifice it's difficult, but also there are gifts inside all of it.

Right.

Because what a lot of people experience, kind of like to what you were saying earlier, is of like Oh, their jobs suck all the time.

Like you are, you might always be with your spouse and never kind of have that opportunity to truly miss your spouse.

Like some, people just never have the opportunity to actually miss their spouse, which is interesting.

And there is like a gift in that of I'm going to be gone and I'm going to have this opportunity to desperately miss you and to have reconnection time which yes, can sometimes be an adjustment right.

For sure.

I heard you talk to the under oath guys about this very relatable of yeah, you might come home and your spouse is like I was kind of used to living here by myself.

Right.

And now your partner is saying to you I know that you've come back and you immediately want me to drop into this life that you've imagined.

Yeah.

But I've had to create a life where I can cope with the distance of you being away.

Yeah.

Like, so yeah, I've walled myself off a little bit.

Yeah.

Maybe I'm not as as soft or accommodating as you might like me to be, because you've been playing shows for six weeks in front of a few thousand people and I fucking about on the bus with your friend.

Right.

Yeah, totally.

And you, you're both coping in your own ways.

Right.

And, I'm coping by laughing my ass off with my friends.

Right.

And uh and yeah, this weird way where and everything is kind of handed to you on the road, you know.

Um, but then coming home, it's like those coping mechanisms don't work in a marriage where it's like yes, I want time, and I want this, and I want this.

It's like, well, this is not really a marriage.

Like that's not a given take.

That's just a take.

Um, but yeah, I do think like what that opens up then is more conversations, to grow closer and be like Hey, like this isn't actually working when I'm gone or it's actually not working when I come back.

Like how can we navigate this together and use it as an opportunity to grow closer or to create systems in our family or any of my relationships to make this work better?

Uh, without completely overstretching both of ourselves and you know?

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Yeah, I understand what you mean.

The idea of the beauty of being able to miss someone is an interesting one.

Yeah.

How many months do you reckon you've been on the road on average for the last few years?

As we've gotten older, we've tried to bring it down to around four months a year.

Four or five.

Yeah.

Where my first year touring with these guys, I think we were gone for nine.

So you're still talking now about three days out of every week.

So you're only home for maybe four out of seven.

Plus there'll be travel.

Plus there'll be songwriting.

Plus there'll be rehearsals.

Plus there'll be all of the other stuff.

So you're talking about...

If you do a month with five, with everything else on top, it's probably closer to six.

Sure.

So you're talking about three and a half days out of every single week that you're apart from friends family partner kid, et cetera.

It's tough.

Yeah.

It's a fucking... You know, that was the fascinating thing speaking to Aaron and Tim.

Aaron said did he get married and went on tour, or had a kid and went on tour like three days later or something?

And just you know, we got to turn it around, because this is what you've got to do.

And it's an interesting question.

Most people, when they're building a project, what they're looking to do is, over time, do fewer things that they don't want to do.

Almost everybody's goal in life is to say I just don't want to do things.

I don't want to do anymore.

Right?

That's like where people want to arrive at.

But there's an interesting challenge that I've been feeling recently, which is What do you do when you start to get close to being able to actually making that reality?

Now, what does that look like?

Um, and it's difficult because you're used to working at this particular rate and you get reward and reinforcement at that same particular rate.

But what was the point of touring for nine months every year for five?

If you don't then drop it down to doing it at the pace that you want to.

And then how do you know what the pace that you want to is?

Because you're always going to feel a high after you've come off stage.

But then what's accumulating in the background?

How many ruptures without repair have occurred in the relationship.

How many missed weddings and degraded friendships and funerals that you haven't been able to deal with and thoughts that you haven't given yourself time to just sit with because you're in the chaos of the show and someone's bringing you cool new food and we're going to go skiing today.

We're in salt Lake.

It's going to be great.

Like all of these things are these weird hidden costs that you pay kind of out the back here.

And um, I see, especially with the age and this is meant complimentarily the metal scene is not young.

Yeah.

It's not young.

Like you guys are uh, veteran band who are like middle-aged i guess for like metal stars.

Yeah, ollie from bring me must be 38.

Uh, i think he's about my age 36 to like 40 or something like that.

I think it might be my age 37.

Um, you're talking like i don't know what ronnie radke is.

Ronnie's gonna be like you know he's in his 40s.

I think ronnie's in his 40s.

Can you really still cry like 46?

We're still cranking it four months on tour.

You know, the kids are off to fucking like middle school.

You go, oh, if you're not careful, you missed your life.

You missed your life.

You didn't just like do this thing when you were young and had fucking under oath.

Right?

Like the guy, I mean, what was it that Tim said?

He's like, I've got a 14 year old daughter, but I only know her as seven.

I missed half her life.

Yeah.

It's, it's the illusion that, It's the ever growing illusion that one day you'll be done.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm doing as much as I can right now so that I can retire at 40 and have all the time.

I know, I know, but I'm saying that's what the illusion is.

It's that I'm going to work really hard right now.

I'm going to get it while I can, because you never know when it's going to be done.

You never know when it's going to end.

It's done the haymaking season thing.

I get it.

But it's an illusion in a way, right?

It's a horizon.

Every step you take toward it, it gets one step further away.

And it's weird because I'm aware of it and I also play into it.

And I feel like I can't escape it even though I've been told and I see.

And I'm like, I see that it's an illusion.

In your defense, that's the same with junk food.

It's the same with overusing your phone on social media.

It's the same with staying up late every single night you've ever stayed up late.

I know I need to go to bed early, but you don't.

And you know the lesson and you can feel it unfolding in front of you.

And then the next day you forget it and redo it again.

You know what I mean?

Like it's the same thing.

Yeah.

We're just simple creatures, man.

Yeah.

But yeah.

Yeah.

That, that is a man.

That is something that that is a little scary to think about sometimes, where it's like we've been doing this for 11 years.

And I look back and like, man, remember that tour?

That was seven years ago.

That was, I was 23.

I'm 34.

Like, where did my life go?

But then you're able to look around.

You know our house.

Like this house, I paid for by screaming at people.

And I have these awesome little trinkets on the wall.

You know whether they're a gold gold plaque or a photo of us playing at red rocks, or or whatever.

And it's, it's.

It's tough to tough to think that, like you're saying, it's the horizon just keeps going, keeps going.

When, when, when are we going to be content?

I don't, I don't know.

I guess the only thing I can hope for is to build this up as, as, big as possible so we can bring our loved ones out on the road more often we can have these shared experiences more often out on the road or you're then asking a lot of your loved ones right exactly you're saying hey honey you know your life exactly um how do you feel about not having yeah how do you feel about your life being how about my life is your life yeah it's a difficult balance and also like with what you're saying of like you missed your life i'm thinking about that and i'm like maybe i i see that point and i think there's something to consider there for sure of missing the people who you love but i also think if i were to flip it i think if i were sitting in my house in my office or whatever behind my computer all day which i just do on the road but i i think i might have the same thought of you missed your life i'm missing my life i'm wasting it in the same place every single day doing the same thing every single day like I think it's, yeah, this, you just want what you don't have.

Choose your regrets, dude.

Yeah.

So, so true.

You've nailed it.

Um, everybody assumes the thing that's missing in their life is the thing that they want.

Yeah.

And we are like that.

Yeah.

In our ability to be able to wish the grass is greener, despite the fact that we were on the other grass only a week ago.

Yeah.

I know that it's the fact coming back from tour, you've just finished tour.

You're like, thank God. fuck for that.

Oh my God.

I'm so tired.

And I just want to lie in bed and I just want to like cuddle my wife or do whatever.

And then seven days later, you're like, I'm bored.

Yeah.

This sucks.

I'm bored.

I want to be like, I'm not doing enough.

I should be in more case.

You're like, you just did a seven week tour.

And I think this is the same.

Everybody feels it is sort of part of the human system to always feel like you're not doing enough.

And that not doing enough can be not doing enough piece.

And also not doing enough work.

Mark of a good nervous system, I think, is one that can adapt to both without feeling like it's missing the other.

And you're like, oh, I'm okay with this.

I feel like I'm okay with this.

I know I've heard Hermosi say something I'll paraphrase it of like the grass is always greener on the other side because there's a bunch of shit on my side, but there's also a bunch of shit on the other side.

It's just different shit.

Like which shit do you want?

Cause there's shit on both sides.

Right.

And I think we view other people's life through rose colored glasses.

Right.

I'm sure Chris, most of your audience would be like if I could have Chris's life where I'm talking with interesting people all the time doing big shit.

I got this sick drink company called new tonic tasty.

Yeah, it's so good.

I don't know which one.

My camera, is this my camera?

So so good.

Yeah wait sorry, i'll figure it out anyway.

I'm sure a million people would be like i want chris's life.

Yeah sure, he's got health problems.

Yeah sure, like it maybe been a couple, a rough couple years, but they kind of just overlook that part.

You know what i mean.

And they would they still take that trade maybe.

But i think again yeah we, we look at, we look at other people's lives and are like I would take, I would take all of it because the good thing seems so good that all the shit with it is worth it.

And maybe sometimes that that's true, but people find industries that work for them, right?

Like if you're not that much of a touchy feely, affectionate person.

Well, you know I would be at home but I wouldn't like.

The wife's got her thing going on.

We might not be hanging all that much in any case.

So I might as well be away.

Right.

Um, and that's where, you see, I wrote this essay a little while ago about people who have the talent, but not the constitution, to become very successful.

Uh, Lewis Capaldi was my sort of canonical example of this, until he came back and smashed it at Glastonbury this year.

I'm really, really happy for him.

Um Lewis Capaldi, great example of phenomenal voice, phenomenal songwriter, but someone who suffered so badly with performance anxiety that he went out on the main stage at Glastonbury not long ago and couldn't get his words out.

And he's developed this sort of Tourette's-like nervous tick from how much pressure he's applied to himself.

You go, how unfortunate to be someone who's so perfectly constructed.

It's like having a really fast engine put into a Honda Civic.

It's like a V12 engine, so you have all the power to be able to drive real fast and none of the control to be able to direct it.

And that is a...

I have unique kind of pain where you go fuck like the thing that I want to be a world-class recording artist, touring musician or fucking soldier or sports star or whatever.

I have all of the capability.

I just don't have the constitution to be able to handle.

Maybe the pressure that comes along with it, or the work rate or the travel that you could have really sensitive circadian disruption, like in your sleeping pattern.

And that would mean you could not be a touring artist or like you would just take such a toll on your health that your uh expiry date would be would be pretty snap close.

Yeah.

And, um, yeah, you're right.

There will be bits of shit on either side of the fence.

And what is the price that you want to pay in order to have the life that you admire is a fucking, really good question about that.

Yeah.

I've heard you say about life on the road and missing people.

Uh, funerals, missing friends and birthdays.

There's this Keith urban thing, the road on CBS at the moment, first episode came out this week.

So during the premiere episode of the road on CBS, urban opened up about the difficulties of life on the road as a Turing musician.

It's a calling and you're born to do it, or you're not going to make it.

He said when you wake up on a tour bus at three, 30 in the morning and you're sick as a dog, you're in the middle of nowhere.

And you've got to play your fifth show later that night.

You haven't slept and you miss your friends and you're missing your family and you're completely lonely and miserable and sick.

And you say to yourself.

Why am I doing this?

Urban, who recently split from estranged wife Nicole Kidman, continued the only answer could be because this is what I'm born to do.

We're going to find out who's made of that stuff.

And we're going to find out who's made of that stuff is to do with being on the road.

Really interesting that someone who recently split from his estranged wife is sort of being used as the And look, if you too are sufficiently successful, this could be your life also.

Like... really does show how narrow the aperture is that we perceive success through, right?

It really is.

It doesn't sound to me like, well, I mean, it's a public interview.

So how would you know?

It's not quite the place for someone to drop into their emotions.

It doesn't particularly sound to me like Keith Urban would say I would rather give up my touring or have not toured at all, and still have my marriage to Nicole Kidman.

But who knows?

Maybe in retrospect, he'll think something differently.

And uh yeah, the prices that you pay, the things that you miss in order to do the thing that you love.

And it's different with you guys versus um, like some person that works offshore on an oil rig or a soldier.

Right.

Cause it's not too dissimilar.

They do tours, different sorts of venues.

Um, but I think people feel differently about that because that feels like more of a obligation.

Yeah.

There's a nobility attached to that.

There's some, there's a, you guys get less sympathy because you're like fucking about.

Yeah.

Champagne problems, man.

Yeah.

I do have um, I do have some sense of guilt sometimes where I'm like how dare I feel so bad right now?

Like um.

I feel like one of the first times I went through something hard on the road was uh, one of my best friends and uh living living at my place with me um took his own life um right before we uh walked on stage in Pittsburgh.

And that was like the first time that I, I like, allowed myself to like feel, feel bad about missing things.

Like when it was a wedding or something, I was like it's like, oh man, I'm just, is this really I'm?

I'm getting to live my life and my dreams and do these things.

And like, I, don't, you know, shame on me for, for feeling any type of way.

But when, when that happened, that was like the first time that I was like, no, it's okay.

It's okay to feel bad.

And like, it's, you know, man, sorry, I'm getting thinking, thinking about that time.

That was really, really tough, man.

But then on the outside, like I said earlier, you just have to suit up and go out there and play, and and uh, remind yourself how, how lucky and blessed you are to be doing this.

And Um yeah, over over the last few years I've tried to balance that like sense of guilt of uh, living my dreams, let's say, over.

You know, missing the funerals and the friendships and planning.

Oh, okay.

Well, I go back.

I'm just gonna have to rebuild that relationship.

Or they understand my, my family understands that I'm.

I'm out here doing doing big things and and trying to trying to live my dreams.

But it's, it's, it's, it's always a challenge.

It's always a challenge going out on the road and being gone for so long and and And, then looking back at the things you're missing, but then you know reminding yourself like this is what you signed up for.

You know, how lucky are you that a fraction of a percent of people get to do this?

And enjoy it while you can, because tomorrow it could just be gone, you know?

AI could take over, you know?

We're just done.

Yeah, I think it's tricky to balance the responsibility of you have a group of thousands of people who paid.

You know however much to like get a release from whatever they're going on in their, their life.

And we are kind of like pioneering that ship in a lot of ways.

Like Michael Jordan, you know, has that.

I actually don't remember what the quote is, but there's that like infamous game where he's puking on the sidelines but he's still playing.

Cause he's like.

This might be the only time someone gets to see me and this could have been their past two weeks paycheck to be here.

So I'm going to play, I'm going to, to no matter what, like be here.

And so I think it's balancing that responsibility while also not becoming um not uh valuing their validation in an unhealthy way.

So it's like give a responsibility to them.

But I think some people I can't speak for Keith Urban, but like I think some marriages can fall apart because a lot of artists are desperate for validation.

I mean, we're putting ourselves on a stage in front of people screaming our name not my name, cause I'm the drummer, but screaming your band's name.

And it's like yeah, those group of people like probably want a little bit more validation because of X, Y and Z in our childhood.

Right.

But yeah, I think that's when relationships marriages, can fall apart, because you're so desperate for the validation from strangers as opposed to the places that it actually matters from.

I think so much about how sad it is that some people got one-shotted with status games in high school and never grew out of them.

Like they just need to be accepted by the cool kids, even if the cool kids were a bunch of strangers on the internet.

Yeah.

And they just.

You can see, I think they cycle through life ignoring or almost feeling an ick or a kind of allergy to anybody who gives them free and available love.

It's like oh, if you're giving me something you're, you're offering it to me without withholding it, without there being a price attached.

You just, oh, you seem to just like me for me.

What's wrong with you?

No, you're supposed to reject me or not want me.

You're supposed to make me hurt for it or something.

And that's a pattern that is really unfortunate, because it's going to cause you to ignore the very thing that you want.

You're going to disregard the very thing that you're trying to get, which is someone to just see you.

Yeah.

And that can also be a good thing though, because some of those people don't actually really see you.

You know, if you're like dating someone for a long time, yeah, they probably really see you.

But if someone who doesn't know you and is like trying to pour this validation your way and you really receive that which, there's a healthy degree, but there's also the other side where it's like well, you don't actually know me.

You might be a fan of our songs, our music, which is really cool.

But like, if I take all this praise, that's where I think ego can get really dangerous.

And we've seen so many people go down that path um, where you just accept all of this praise from people who don't know you, but then, on the on the same side, that's when, like oftentimes, their downfall is because, with any, almost any rise, there's going to be a time where well okay, you got big enough.

Now the only thing left to do is to turn on you.

You know what i mean.

Um, I feel like it's kind of a tale as old as time.

And then you have your period of time where people turn on you and you weather that storm.

And then people get bored of turning on you and they go, okay, well now they're down.

So like, let's lift them back up.

Now they have somewhere to go again, right?

So I think that's so right.

And you can almost see it in these little cycles up and down.

And I think everybody has, anybody that gets to a size has to have an ascendancy, right?

That's why you get to the size.

Everybody has to have a moment where they Icarus it a little, and it is just whether or not they managed to pick back up on that one.

And after that?

I mean, you can obviously completely like kamikaze yourself, if you do something wrong.

But, um, after that one, typically I see very few people that just keep going up.

Like almost everybody has one dip.

So it's like, okay, get ready for the dip.

Yeah.

Um, I guess, with you guys, how has the, how do you define your guys's identity as a band now that the lineups changed, that the dynamics evolved, that the sounds evolved as well?

Um, the reason i think about that is artists podcasters, comedians um, get they capture attention for doing a thing.

Well yeah, there is a temptation to just do that thing again.

Uh, and there's been a lot of change from you guys last album to this one.

You're stepping up into full vocalist, doing everything mode uh, plus an evolution in terms of sound.

I'm interested in what like how you think about sort of identity of the band and not being trapped by what you did before, but staying true to your roots, but not being beholden.

You know what I mean?

Like, how do you navigate all of this?

Yeah, I think it's a, it's a challenge that we're we're finding out right now um, learning as we go.

But yeah, i i think it's difficult on a personal side because you, you think you haven't changed individually, we haven't changed.

The writing is still, we're still writing, and not from the outside.

A lot's changed on the inside maybe not so much.

So when you hear and see out, you know whether it's fans or fair weather fans or whatever that are, are like Oh that's, it's a whole different band.

It's different.

It's not, it's like, well, we, we don't feel that different.

We know there's a change, but we don't feel that different.

So that that's been a very difficult thing.

For me personally is, like you know, I I've been writing in this band since day day one.

And now, all of a sudden, I I feel like a stranger to my, my own band, just from the perception of of a couple nameless people out there.

You know.

And it's um been, it's been a struggle personally.

But yeah, how do you feel about this?

I think our identity is, it is shifting like, i think, to what you were talking about earlier.

You have this um, you have a a lot of times there are like these bands with certain dynamics, right and like, no doubt the dynamics are now different.

Um, And in a lot of ways, with that change, we've kind of leaned into the different a little bit from the standpoint of how we are trying to interact with each other as a group and trying to nourish our relationship with each other as much as possible.

But in some ways, it's... I keep talking about GIFs.

Um, but like there, like you said, the thing that got us here, we don't even, in some ways our, our sound is naturally now different.

So we don't even have some of like that option to go back to, of like well, we did this thing and it's like well no, no matter what we do now, it's going to be different.

And so we have to, or we get to reanalyze like, what do we want to be moving forward?

What do we want to be each other?

How do we want to be with each other?

What do we want a sound to be?

It kind of um, breaks open your life in a new way.

I i liken it to yeah, a relationship where you have a relationship with someone for for 10 years and after a certain period of time, it's like hey, i actually think you want this and and i want this, and we're going to move in those separate directions and it is a time of self discovery.

You know, the interesting thing about it is that most people in a relationship they go their separate ways and there's pain there, for sure.

But it's kind of up to you to ask yourself, what do you want next in a band situation?

It's interesting.

It's like.

It's almost like you have a big family around you saying well, I actually liked you better when you were with that person.

And I actually want you to do this.

And it's like well okay, I appreciate the feedback understood, but I kind of have to go on this journey.

I hope that you can come on this journey with me, because my family, my fans, the metaphor, you're very important to me and you've been with me this time.

I would love to continue in a relationship with you guys also.

Please have a little bit of trust in me that I'm going to reinvent myself in a way where i'm going to try to grow from this experience and do what is authentic to me and us.

And yeah, that's kind of what the process is has been like and yeah no, no doubt there's been a ton of challenges in it, but damn do i think we've.

We've grown a ton from it, absolutely and really excited for what that, what the path is for us moving forward.

I mean, i'm so stoked on this record Chris, I told you to let me know if it's shit and you didn't let me know.

So I'm just assuming.

It's great.

I'm just insecure.

I need more validation.

Please, strangers on the internet, tell me that I'm good enough.

Fucking millions of people a year are not enough.

What I thought was interesting with what you guys did, and I think I'm not convinced that Sleep Token quite did this

It'll be interesting to see what Omen's third track comes out tomorrow, I think.

Oh, does it really?

Yeah.

Um, what you guys did that was really interesting was you chose three very different tracks from the album.

Um, and I thought that was kind of unique.

Uh, I would say president did a not bad job with releasing ahead of their EP.

I thought that was good in terms of the sequence.

I did find a couple of them a little samey and I might've hot swapped one of them.

I thought conclave was actually maybe a stronger track.

That was like hidden deep in the EP and they could have brought that out.

Um Omens.

Both of their tracks have been a little samey, but fucking, obviously fucking brilliant, which is great, and I thought it was interesting.

I've had this idea in my mind for ages about you as a band decide that you're going to put out two or three or four singles and then you drop an album.

So presumably you have an idea about what your best foot forward in some regard looks like, or at least your best foot forward as a collective, when you take these three.

This is an indication of what the longer record is going to be like.

But then you put it out on Spotify and the fucking audience gets to decide.

And you're like, track eight?

Really?

You motherfuckers, really?

The fucking acoustic track.

Are you kidding me?

Or whatever, right?

They pick the thing.

Well, that's actually the case here, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I checked this one.

Okay, I was going to say, it's way too specific.

Yeah.

No, it's weird.

Dude, it's like we, Like I said, we've been writing this.

I mean man, the writing process was just eight months, but then we recorded it, then we mastered it, then we mixed it, then mastered it and i mean all in yeah, a year and three months or something like that of just pouring our, our souls out to each other.

You know a few guys in a room and it's like i think this is sick, is this sick?

I think it is, i i don't know is it and uh, like getting lost in the sauce.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

And we're like, we're removing tracks where like, this song actually sucks.

Like that song we, we wrote and we're like, it's not going to make the album.

Like it's, it's different.

Like it's just an acoustic song.

Like when are we going to do that?

And Eric was like uh, he didn't say this, but he felt so.

He's like guys, if this song is on the album, I'm going to leave.

Like he wasn't really, but, um, but yeah, so it's weird.

It's just weird.

Like, the insecurity just starts to like build of like, well, let's just, let's move this one out.

I don't know.

And then two months later, you're like, let's bring it back in.

Like, I haven't listened to that one.

And you're like, oh, it's actually really good.

But yeah, then you get this like confidence.

Once you like have written the whole thing, you're like, I see this as a work of art.

I'm really excited to release it.

Then once you've written it, the insecurity starts creeping up again.

I knew we should have put the package.

What?

Um, for a normie like me.

What is the sort of number of tracks that you've cut that didn't make a 10 album record?

A 10 song album?

Yeah, i think we had like three or so.

Maybe that got to a second chorus, am i?

I think?

I think four or five, four or five.

But then don't forget the seven songs we wrote, even before scrapping all of those.

True.

Good point.

Probably another 10 songs.

Right.

That still seems relatively lean to me.

That seems like a pretty good hit rate, right?

To write one in two songs makes the album makes mastered fucking out there.

Yeah.

That seems like, I don't know.

Is that, it might be.

Yeah.

I feel like every band has something a little bit different.

The the interesting with thing with us is that like yes, let's say one and two songs, but the song that you know, it now has also taken six different forms where it's like, oh well, the chorus was actually different and verse two is actually a completely different part.

We rewrote the bridge three times, and so i think, as long as we have a nugget that we think is good enough, mainly building around something yes yes yeah, if we're like oh, this chorus is sick, let's keep going back to it, let's keep going back to it, let's keep going back to it, and the nice thing is like You get to see if it stands the test of time.

That's what I mean about when you put it out there and the audience gets to choose.

Because that's also, in a really hilarious way, kind of going to determine what the live set looks like.

Because if song eight, the acoustic song, Eat Shit and you go wow, I mean there's fucking no chance that we're playing that live.

But if there's the prospect of oh fuck, it's a most played track on Spotify, ranked at the moment, or whatever, we have to do that.

Fuck.

We have to do this.

No, like, Oh yeah.

Whatever.

Right.

But it's cool.

It's cool.

Cause you've had this idea.

Look how clever I am.

I know my, my release in advance.

I'm going to do my little singles.

I'm going to make them come out and leave me in the right order.

And then you put the fucking thing out and then all of your fans just go, fuck you, dude.

I'm going to choose what I want.

Yeah.

I think it's so cool.

Yeah.

And it's uh, it's just honestly challenged.

But it's like when we start writing the record and then you start fantasizing about the future.

Like a year, a year and a half from now, you start.

Okay, when we do the headliner, you know we're going to open with this song.

Imagine this, the set opening like this, and we roll in this song.

We pull this deep cut out from two records ago and that goes third.

And then we've learned quickly.

After the last record, we were like this opening track is going to be the opening track to the show, and then the album's been out for a couple months, and maybe less than that a month, And you go out there and people are excited to see you and they're excited to see some of the new stuff, but they want to see that record that they grew up on or whatever it may be.

And then you go out and you play that first song and you're looking in the crowd and no one's singing it because they don't know the words.

And you're like, oh God, this is going to be a rough four minutes until we get to the next one.

So now it's like you know, we have these little nuggets of ideas like how the set's going to be, you know, when we go out and tour this new record again.

But you know you got to let the fans know, pick the songs you get and then you see the okay, these songs are popping off.

Hell yeah, we get to play these.

Well, where in the set should we play?

We don't want to blow our load early and play all the cool stuff from the first half and everyone's sitting, like you know it's building the sets, like you know, taking that emotional roller coaster.

You know we have so many different sounds and different emotions through through our lyrics and moods and all that.

And you don't want to put all the heavy stuff right up front.

You want to save all the energetic stuff till the end.

You know it's building that dynamic roller journey.

Feel like to go on?

So let me give you this, right?

For just in case you guys thought that you had it hard, the way that I have to put together a live show uh, I come up with ideas in the most sterile environment possible.

Uh, just on my own.

Maybe it gets clipped and put on the internet.

I have an indication that some people think it's cool or maybe not.

Who knows?

Then when I go and test it live, there's no sound. right?

Because the single best thing that can happen at a unless it's standup and there's some bits of standard, but that's not the meat and potatoes of my life show.

If I'm going to go and do this, like the best thing that I can have is pin drop silence.

Ah, yeah.

So I'm inverting what every live artist throughout history has ever tried to go for.

I want the most silent.

I want deathly quiet.

Yeah.

And then, like hanging on what the next bit of the story or the word is going to be, i'm like, was that more quiet than the other bit?

Like i have no fucking idea.

And then people finish up and they go.

I love the bit about the the man that fell over on the on the street, or whatever the fuck it is that someone comes up with.

I'm like i'm trying to aggregate.

That is, uh for me, you know, a a real interesting challenge.

I've loved the live element.

I've loved being able to put together a set not too dissimilar to the way that you guys do.

I've got, like tracks, i've got insights and ideas and i can piece these together in an interesting manner that hopefully takes people on a journey, and i don't want to have all of the funny stuff up front and i don't have all of the sad boy stuff at the end.

Yeah, you know, so on and so forth.

You'll see on sunday in toronto yeah um, but the fucking feedback mechanism dude yeah, is like, i don't know.

I feel like a mi6 hr sherlock holmes trying to reverse engineer what it is that the audience is thinking about.

Yeah, are you enjoying this?

Do you like it more than the last bit?

Who fucking knows?

What does the, uh, what does the silence represent to you?

Tension presence.

Yeah.

Like real, like I, there's bits that happen.

I haven't got enough of them in this one, but the next show, which is Australia New Zealand, in March.

Um, and then Bali uh I, there's a couple of bits where people catch their breath, where you hear like a, like that.

And I'm like, Oh, that's fucking cool.

That's sick.

Like, especially given that the room is fucking pin drop silent.

And then you hear this like collective depressurization of the whole room.

Cause everyone just gasps a little bit.

And I'm like, Oh, that's fucking cool.

Um, and then there's like laughy bits and I've got some new.

Uh, I tested I did the final work in progress show last night and uh tested some new standup bits and they failed, fucking destroyed.

There was so much fun.

They're like there's some of them that are way too spicy for me to feel comfortable saying, and like I tested some Canada stuff and I'm like I can't do that in Canada.

And I tested some America stuff and I can't do that in America either.

So, um, yeah, but it's, it's real interesting.

And I've I've very much appreciated getting to watch.

Uh, you guys and everyone else like how much attention gets paid to constructing a set.

I was with uh, fucking Sam and Dan from architects jesus fucking christ dude, like they pay so much attention to like every little bit transitions, bits in between songs, and uh yeah, you're just some fucking dude in the crowd bopping away having a good time and you don't realize.

Oh, they played, like they played the song from the old album or whatever, and you go.

Yeah, do you realize how many conversations and like tens of hours were had just about that one bit, oh yeah, of that one section of that show that you went to?

It's crazy.

It's so cool.

It's like, it's, it doesn't just effortlessly happen.

You kind of like a comedy set, right?

Like there's all of this work that goes into it to make it seem effortless on the front end.

Yeah.

I mean, we're already talking about, you know this, this winter uh, getting together and you know just, you know doing some creative stuff, whether it's like demo in or whatever it may be, but it's live show.

We're, we're planning our live show and we're planning on.

Okay well, if we're going to play this song uh, What's the kind of cool interlude?

Or how does it go from this song to this song?

OK, there's a guitar change, so we need to eat up some time.

Well, maybe I'll talk over that part.

Is it going to be dead silent?

There's going to be music under it.

Is it going to be, you know, and then start talking like, well, how can we spice up these old songs?

We're going to extend the bridge.

Great jokes about America and Canada if you need to throw something.

But yeah it's yeah, a lot of, a lot of thought goes into that, and i think that's what makes these shows even more special.

I've seen architects a handful of times and if i wasn't in the shoes i am now, i probably wouldn't have realized all the little details.

But yeah, you can.

You can tell if you, if you're looking for it or you're you're paying attention to the whole, the whole set.

You can tell that they put in a lot of work.

Based on your experience, who do you think has got the greatest attention to detail in the world of alternative music?

As a member of a band or a collective?

Overall, bring to the horizon.

I was going to say all these level of attention to detail is like a fucking universe warping thing.

It's insane.

Yeah.

I think that's the game you know.

I think like paying attention to those 1 details and like nailing them.

It's the difference between being Bring Me the Horizon right like one of the biggest rock bands right now and, I guess, anyone else right.

It's like Roger Federer has said.

You know, one of the greatest tennis players ever like has only won like 55 of his points.

Say someone that reads the newsletter.

Fucking knew that I liked you, man.

I fucking knew that I liked you.

I also like tennis.

So, like... Yeah, yeah.

In order to win 80% of his games, he's only won 52% of his points.

Yeah.

And that's... And we... Don't get me wrong.

We try to play that game.

Like, I think... Right?

Like, yeah.

If you're at a, If you're in the audience eating a corn dog being like oh, I'm having a lot of fun with this.

Like, you don't realize that not only, like, we have carefully and painstakingly built the live set.

Like we There have been of the video footage from one of our tours.

I filmed in my basement with these dudes like, and we just like paint because we had someone else doing.

We're like it's just not right, like we're just gonna have to do it ourselves.

What do you mean?

You filmed it, filmed what?

So like video content in the uh in behind us on on stage.

We've uh on the imax yeah well, the imax would be like following right yeah, but it's the screen that it's in between the imax bullshit.

We had like a character, like narrate between every couple songs, and so that character was yeah, yeah.

But then even i mean yeah, going back to the songwriting process, like i was joking about being like hey guys, what do you think if i add this one note where i'm playing at 30 velocity on the snare drum, most people will never even hear it, but i think that they'll feel that it's there and you that might make a difference and it's like paying attention to those little things, or like yeah, and bring these case.

Like What is the thing that builds the lore of this whole?

The outfit, the social posts.

And then you take it a step further, I suppose, with somebody like Sleep Token.

But you also remove things, right?

Which allows you to suck in that speculation.

100%.

That vacuum.

Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking an awful lot recently about attention to detail and obsession.

I have a conflicted relationship with obsession.

Quite an obsessive person, which is good, and the attention to detail also good, but it comes with quite a high price.

And I think you see this with any of my artist friends that are at that kind of a level.

I think it's almost impossible to not have chronic self-doubt and a high attention to detail.

I think that the two things are the same thing.

I think the reason that you're pushing so much And they go paying attention is like can this be better?

Let me give an example, depending on how old the kind of new tonic.

Oh, okay.

This is interesting.

So this is a slightly older batch.

I can tell that this is an older batch from the back here.

Uh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you see the Instagram logo there.

So it's slightly offset outside of the followers.

Yup.

To the left.

It might not be on that one.

That'll be centralized.

That should be centralized.

So mine and yours will be off to one side and yours should be in the middle.

Do you see how mine's offset to the left of the F guess who picked that up?

Yes.

Like, and this is like millions of cans deep, right?

This, this runs been going for ages and I'm like, Oh, somebody left like half a point to the left.

They left aligned it inside of the margin.

They didn't central line it inside of the space.

Yeah.

Great.

We now have a can that's got this 1.

Not even like no point.

No no no no, no 1.

Uh improvement, fantastic when i'm trying to refine the question idea that i've got for matthew mcconaughey, or the way i'm going to word this new oh, the atlas complex i'm going to come up with on a newsletter.

Not so fantastic in my personal life.

Yeah yeah right, and it's like hey obsession, you're great, it would work.

Can i turn you off when, like you know, i want to fucking chill out on a all of you?

And I think this is one of the reasons that artists get conflicted a lot of the time.

And, um, Ollie is a good example of that.

He is a fucking good friend.

I've known him for like over a decade and a lovely, lovely, lovely guy, but you pay a high price.

If you want to be Ollie Sykes, you pay a high price.

If you want to be vessel from sleep token, you pay a high price.

Yeah.

Um, you don't get extraordinary outcomes with ordinary inputs, and these guys have got extraordinary inputs, but they're not all good.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm convinced that you can't achieve anything great without having high levels of obsession.

And it is... I think it's just, yeah, like, what pain do you want?

Do you want the pain of not achieving the big thing that you really want to achieve?

Or do you want the pain of doing that, while knowing that what takes you there also can be an internal struggle every step of the way?

Just which pain do you want?

I had a healthy dash of imposter syndrome over it.

It's great.

Mark Manson has this idea.

He says, what pain do you want in your life?

What are you willing to suffer and struggle for?

Any pursuit, even the most existentially aligned, will regularly feel like work.

So if you're oriented toward the pain, you're more likely going to be aligned with what you can do over the long term, as opposed to if you're just oriented toward the pleasure.

So everybody says find what looks like work to everyone else but feels like play to you as a good piece of advice for a competitive advantage which is unique and N of 1.

But that disregards the fact that even the best pursuits regularly feel like labor.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Like being on the bus and these sleepless nights and chaos and being away from the family and all the rest of this stuff.

Like that is the price that you pay everybody.

If all it was was pleasure, it'd be like I have no real desire to play a musical instrument, but it would be fun to get the pleasure of just like playing on stage.

But I don't want to have to spend a decade learning to play an instrument.

So orienting yourself toward the prices is better than orienting yourself toward the profits.

Because people get kicked out.

It's the exact same with relationships.

The exact same with relationships.

Relationships don't end because of insufficient good times.

They end because of too many sufficient bad times.

It's not that you're connecting at too shallow of a level, typically.

It's that your disconnections are occurring at too deep of a level.

And the way that you handle arguments is the best predictor.

How many people break up because they say, you know...

The exciting times, they just weren't that exciting.

No, it's because we kept arguing all the time.

It's because things were going wrong.

It's because we couldn't connect.

It was like an overabundance of problems, not a scarcity of praises, let's say, if that makes sense.

And I think that you see the same thing with people's pursuits.

And it's like, you want to be fucking Vessel?

You want to be Olly Sykes?

Okay, this is the mindset that you need to have.

And this is the sort of life that you're going to have to lead.

You want to be Lewis Capaldi?

Because you can't separate his anxiety attacks from his songwriting ability.

His anxiety attacks are his songwriting ability.

It's like just this huge fuck.

It's a onesie, right?

It's not an outfit.

It's not something that you get to piece together.

It's this huge big onesie and you just zip the fucker up.

And you're like, okay, I guess I'm just him now.

100%.

Yeah, I mean, I think about like, Bo Burnham comes to mind where I'm like, like a genius.

I'm like, you are a genius comedian.

And also to be that genius, you have panic attacks on stage.

And I mean, I, I have no idea what he's just gone.

He's gone.

Yeah.

It's, I think, you know, or like Michael Jordan, right?

Like you want to be the the greatest basketball player, but to be that you have to.

What a large percentage of people who interact with him would maybe say he's an asshole.

You know what I mean?

And it's still now at the last dance thing seems no, like still conflicted.

Yeah.

And it's interesting.

I find I find it interesting that we are like typically so pain averse as a collective, while also the standard way of life is like I'm going to get in a relationship, which means there's going to be a lot of pain in there.

With what you were saying,

And then I'm going to have children, which is probably one of the I'm not a parent, but one of the greatest challenges.

And you just accept, you're like, oh, I just don't sleep for years.

But the idea it's the same principle that I'm going to sacrifice my life for X period of time for this longer, greater vision, that I think it's going to make my life better in the long run if i'm not again, i'm not a parent.

I think that's what they think.

I don't, i don't know, but it's interesting to me that for a lot of people, that doesn't necessarily apply to other aspects of their life either.

Um, which is yeah.

For me it's kind of like flipped on the reverse though too, where i'm like oh yeah i'm, i'm willing to give the, the sacrifice for the career and all that type of stuff, and then you throw a kid in my face and i'm like I don't know if I'm willing to do that right now.

You know what I mean?

So I don't know.

Maybe it's just one or the other.

I don't know.

I don't have a kid either, dude.

Yeah.

I, uh, the obsession thing, one, one final point on that.

I'd love to get your opinion on.

Um, so people talk about sort of the relationship between discipline, motivation, obsession.

And I think the reason obsession is kind of having a moment right now.

Zach Pogorob is a friend of mine, lives in New York, does a lot of running.

He's like, Mr. Obsession.

And I think he's fantastic at what he does.

I think his new running app is great and everyone should go and download it.

I've always been a little conflicted about the Obsession thing.

Because I'm trying to detox myself at least a little bit from Obsession.

I'm trying to become more of a lifestyle maxi than like a progress maxi, let's say.

And the reason that I think people love Obsession so much is...

It's the freest motivation that you're ever going to get.

Like if you say that sort of motivation is I kind of want to do this thing and discipline is I have to do this thing.

Obsession is I can't not do this thing.

So if you think about sort of uh discipline, is you forcing yourself through something?

And motivation, is you encouraging yourself through something?

Obsession is you getting like ripped, like pulled forward by the thing that makes sense.

It's like, like being pulled by it.

And in some ways, that's great.

But in other ways I think it's really dangerous because at least with motivation and discipline largely, you at least get to tolerate the gas pedal.

But with obsession, you never get to turn it off.

It's like, oh, I have to, like, I am compelled.

I can't not do this thing.

What if there's a time when you do want to not do that thing?

What if you need a weekend off?

What if you have had somebody close in your life pass away and you need to think about that?

You probably could dealing with your emotions for a couple of weeks or something and you go no no no, I must do more tracks.

There's songs to play and shows to do.

I wonder, I worry that the profits that are very obvious from obsession, free motivation, free discipline consistency, without effort, basically because you're being pulled, I wonder how many people will look back and realize that that was um like just chronic imbalance, that um felt easy at the time.

And in retrospect, they're like, Oh, fuck.

I don't know whether that was the best decision.

I didn't really have that much choice.

So like a little bit more scrutiny around obsession, uh, might be worthwhile.

Like this is very wet clay fucking bro science at the moment.

All right.

So, like it might be, it might be largely bullshit, but what's making you rethink, what's making you want to step back from obsession?

I've done basically the same thing for nearly two decades now, which is just completely bury myself at working hard.

And that's great.

Um, but it can cause you to become, uh, myopic and laser focused and blinkered about other things that you could do with your life and that's not even necessarily other things outside of the project it's other things within the project so for instance for me to go and do the live shows it makes my life harder um and financially it's a horrendous decision um it's been there for sure it's i mean even you know we we're gonna do shows between 1500 and 750 ish caps so they are perfectly profitable and and and apart from the fact that i've got a fly fucking ton of people out um uh that it's fine but if i was making a business decision i would just continue to do the show if i was making a platform decision i just continue to do the show i was making a lifestyle decision i just continue like all of the elements of obsession would point me away from variation be like do more of the thing but that doesn't necessarily live lead you to a varied well-lived adventurous life and um yeah i'm thinking much more about what do i sort of want to look back what what are the memory dividends that i want to give myself in future and maybe that means letting go of some modes of validation and and positive reinforcement that i know work and rolling the dice on some i'm like huh i'll see if this i'll see how this makes me feel maybe this would just be different or interesting maybe this will contribute to um longevity consistency like uh stick with itness uh over time so i'm not going to just like continue to grind away and grind away and grind away i've just done i've done business and like hard lots of time in front of a laptop or walking and talking on the phone coming up with ideas or writing or doing whatever i've done that for a long time i'm like i think maybe trying to remove the blinkers a little bit is a bit of a good idea the equivalent of an acoustic track i guess on an album track eight in particular yeah yeah do you um in the back of your head do you think at all of like well like if the obsession is still like chirping at you, like, do you still think like, okay, well yeah, like obviously like I would keep doing the thing, but also knowing that if I'm going to keep doing the thing, like sticking with the main format and repeating what works is really important, but there also has to be room for that 20% experimentation, knowing that 18% of those experiments will flop, but those 2% might be a new format that I can now use and build.

Like, Do you find the obsession kind of sneaking in that way?

Or is it purely like, I just want to do this for me because I think it's like a cool thing?

Yeah, that's a really great question.

I guess this is the same as, you know, the second album, third album syndrome that bands have.

Yeah.

Where they go, we got famous for doing that thing.

Yeah.

We just do it again.

Right.

We just run it back.

Like people want more.

They love that last one.

They just want more of the same.

Right.

Um, yeah, the opportunity to experiment.

One of the slight difficulties that you have with this is that there's no such thing as practicing in private.

Yeah.

Every single, we didn't go through this.

We didn't dry run this in a rehearsal space yesterday.

Oh, when you say that, I'm going to make a dick joke.

And when you do that, you know, we'll do silly bus time.

Like, um, yeah, it's, it's, um, you don't get to do that.

So everybody gets to watch you fail in public.

Um, you sort of learn out loud over and over again.

And that's great.

Cause you get to track the journey and it's like, Oh, how interesting is this?

You know, it would be like if every demo in fact no, it would be like if every practice session on the drums was published on the internet.

Oh my God.

Right.

Because there's no such thing as practicing.

There's no such thing as like you can perform in private.

There's, you can't do that here.

And you can't even practice in private, when I could do a pod with someone that was just a friend that I wouldn't ever publish.

But the stakes aren't there, which means that no one's going to take it as seriously as you need to, because you don't have the scrutiny and the fear of the audience.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's just, it's, it's, it's an interesting one, man.

It's a very unique um position to be in.

And uh, experimentation new studio which is just right now being built a couple of miles away from here.

That'll be exciting, awesome.

Um, trying to do stuff like the mcconaughey thing, running that back uh yeah, just okay.

What what, what's new, what's different?

Um, trying to integrate music into the next live show, like the australia canada australia, new zealand one next year.

That'll be interesting.

Okay what, what?

Are some areas where that 20 exists, where i might be able to find the two and?

Um yeah, it'll be, It'll be exciting.

But, that being said, when I see the degrees of freedom and the amount of experimentation that somebody like an Ollie or a Noah or whatever is is able to play with or you guys like fuck, like it feels I want to embrace more of that.

I think it's very admirable.

I think you guys are very fortunate that you have so much artistic freedom.

I think that's something that you shouldn't take lightly, because there are much more constricted uh modes of putting your ideas and your thoughts and your emotions out there.

And uh, you guys have one of the ones that's the freest, um like, as is shown by the fact that you can release fucking acoustic track uh, and and and it, not just release it, release it and it could be received like unbelievably well.

Um, yeah.

Trying to trying to embrace that, that opportunity to be all right, we can be a bit more experimental, but you were like what?

What do you wish when you sort of think about the next few years for the band?

What would you love to experiment a little bit more with?

Like, have you got ideas for how you want the live show to look?

Ideas for how you want new sounds to come through?

Like, what are you working toward?

Yeah.

All of it.

I mean from you know now, with this sonic change, we have still rediscovering what the next chapter iteration is going to be.

This is just the beginning.

You know what we get into now get to see what, what works and what may not work, and just with the music alone.

But then going to the live shows, and you know we've done practical stage setups with.

We had a tour where there's a wrestling ring and it was rage on the stage.

And then we went and did the thing where it was just video content and as crazy as video content we could to incorporate with the songs, whether it was lyrics or just these crazy scenes that we're standing in front of.

And now how do we incorporate the two to have this massive look?

And how do we, how do we keep making the, the live show better?

How do we uh, transition from this song to the next song and make this memorable moment?

And and uh yeah, it's just like you said, i think we're very lucky to be in this position as as challenging as it is also lucky to have all this open ground.

It's a little daunting and scary to look at the big picture of it and go, okay, what do we do first?

Where do we go from here?

What, what is the best move?

Cause, like you were saying, it's like you're trying things and you're trying them in front of a million people you know, and they're you know failure is going to feel bad, but if you crush it it's going to feel so rewarding.

But we, if you look at all these different things, you know, in, in categories, it's, uh, it's exciting to, to look and see, you know, I'm, I'm ready to get back in the studio and start writing.

I'm ready to get with the guys in this off time and start playing out the live show, which songs are going to be in or what's going to be the encore.

What's going to be the first song.

What, what, what's going to be to the, to the merchandise, to the, the stock, you know, everything.

It's, um, there's a big open road and it's, it's exciting to see.

It's just exciting to think about what's going to come from our creative hive mind here.

Yeah.

I think like, I'm thinking about the obsession piece.

And I think for myself, probably for a lot of artists across music or whatever.

I feel like obsession comes from scarcity.

I have to be obsessed about this because this could end at any time.

We could put out Again.

I don't think this is true, but I think the insecurity on our part is with everything being an experiment or fully creative.

We don't have that format we can keep coming back to, because then people go.

Let me put it this way if you put out the podcast format, you've got the three cameras.

You go back and forth, you can bring in a new guest, ask good questions.

People aren't gonna be like I'm so sick of you sitting in a room asking people good questions and hearing thoughtful responses.

You don't hear that as much.

At least is my assumption.

Right.

But if we come back, the old question.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

But if we yeah, if we keep trying to recreate the same song, people are like well, I just like the original song.

Stop trying to do the same thing.

I want to hear something new.

And so we're constantly in this state of like.

Okay, let's try to balance these people who like our old music.

They might say that they want the same shit, but they don't want the same shit.

But then if we give them the new shit, they're like, I don't like it because it's new.

And so it's like it feels like your whole career is balanced on, like we release one bad song and everyone rejects us and hates us.

It's not true, but that's the insecurity.

And that's like the scarcity of that.

This whole thing could end like that at any time.

And so I'm going to obsess to try to build as strong of a foundation as possible so that if an experiment goes wrong meaning a song is not received well or a tour doesn't sell the way you want it to that we're still okay.

Like we're we got the next thing coming up and we got the next song, and you know.

So it's a bit well.

Yes, I agree.

Like the creativity of it is great as a, as a fellow YouTuber.

I know what it's like to be like this format works.

We're just going to put, swap this word in the title.

Boom.

We got a video.

We're good to go.

Thumbnail.

We know exactly what it's going to be.

But yeah, in the world of like creating a song, it's like What do we think is cool?

I would really struggle, I think, with the pressure of getting it right.

Yeah.

Because, yeah, you're right.

I put an episode out.

You know, some people liked it, but not everybody liked it.

Sure.

Doesn't matter.

It's one of a thousand.

Exactly.

Literally one of a thousand.

You got many more coming that week.

People already... You don't like it on a Thursday?

Wait two days.

Yeah.

There's another one on Saturday.

Wait two more days.

There's another one on Monday.

Yep.

The fucking...

Sphincter-tensing concern of album release morning.

Yeah.

What are people going to say?

What are the reviews going to be like?

What's Reddit going to say about it?

Yeah.

Like, fucking, are people going to download it?

Are people going to stream it?

What are they going to... Like, that's a lot.

And you've spent all of this time and you've poured bits of yourself into it and you've second-guessed it.

And, yeah, that would be... That must be a... That's a real, real challenge.

I think I'd very much struggle with that.

It is.

I think we had...

We had one experience this year I mentioned that I think kind of put that in perspective.

So you know, we've had this whole situation of like okay, we're coming out as a band with a new lineup and releasing our first song as like the new lineup the day before our manager dies in a plane crash.

And it's like perspective just dawns on you so fast of.

I mean, we've been working right, like I said, for 14, 15 months on this one moment of like.

We can't fuck this part up.

This is our coming out party of new song, new lineup.

And for all of that buildup to then have, like the tragic event happen the day before.

It was a perspective shift of like dude, I don't, I don't care.

Like we yes, we put this out, but like we lost one of our guys, like to put it out without him, like just felt wrong in itself.

Um, so I think like, I don't know.

I, it, it's a helpful reshift of man.

We are just so self-centered, I think, as as people, and just like thinking about.

Like, what are people going to think about this?

What are people going to think about this?

But like in that moment, it's just like, Oh dude, none of this, none of this actually matters.

I enjoy doing it.

I want people to connect with it.

That is still my goal.

I still do have the you know with with the following singles like I still had that thought, but it's like.

Oh, but in the grand scheme of things, like this is.

This is a two and a half minute song.

And if people don't like it, okay.

And if people like it, that's super cool.

But yeah, kind of like what what you were talking about earlier man, like I'm not my, I'm not going to miss my life because of this one song, because something just tragic happened in my life.

I'm going to make sure that, like I'm with my people, like seeing how you guys are doing, seeing how everyone affected is doing,

Um, yeah.

Perspective can dawn on you real in a, in a single moment pretty quickly.

Yeah man, that was a very, very tough and conflicting time and emotions you're building up for this.

Like excitement.

Here we go, here we go about to pull the trigger.

Here we go, countdown begins, you know, two weeks away.

A week away, we're getting the video back a couple days before and lining up the artwork, getting the single, all this stuff doing the, the press, the the week of to have it all drop the, you know, days following.

And and then waking up 24 hours before the song comes out i think it was 24 hours, i think it was that that night it was coming out, i believe yeah, technically at midnight.

So you know, waking up to the worst man, waking up to the worst fucking phone call.

And, and then it's all of that, all of that's gone.

All that, that the excitement, all the, the pressure, all the the unanswered, the unknown is it?

It doesn't matter anymore.

It doesn't matter.

And uh yeah, it's been a really, really eyeopening really uh, difficult release, just with all of that happening on top of uh, the change, the lineup change the, the uncertainty, the unknowns, and then um, having that guy that you just call and text anytime, if you know, oh man, i'm sorry, just having that rock that you're like, oh man, i'm gonna call him if you know we're freaking out about this release or the.

You know what are the comments gonna be?

Oh, i got dave, i can just hit up and he'll ease my mind over it and kind of realize uh, what's what's most important in life?

All this, it doesn't matter.

Take a shot on something and it, it flops.

It's not the end of the world, you know it there's, there's gonna be more opportunity to come, you know.

And yeah, it's been a crazy time.

It's been a crazy time in the hyperveil camp.

Yeah yeah, i mean it's weird, because i feel like we were talking about it earlier almost in the opposite sense of like well, i want to like, I want to live life and like doing exciting things.

It's like, that is living life.

But then it does always kind of come back to like, yeah, but who was with you?

Like, who are the relationships?

Like it, I, my perspective is, I don't know that unless they're bad relationships, it's, it's worth losing relationships over, you know, I don't know what Keith Urban thinks.

Um, you know, maybe that's, that, that was a even trade for him.

And I, god no i don't fucking know what his what his situation was i can't even begin to comment on it but like yeah i think what what's what's the sacrifice what's the cost and like i think it's fair to ask like is it worth it or not um a lot of the times i think that answer can be yes but i think starts to get dicey when it's relationships like if that if that's the cost of losing good relationships like i don't know Dude, it is a... It sounds like it's been a series of being kicked in the dick months so far this year.

I'm sorry that you guys have had to go through that.

I'm really sorry.

We appreciate it, man.

It's been tough.

It's honestly, you know, in a point where you're supposed to be like all right, this is the most exciting thing that's going to happen in the next couple of months getting to see what people say and have new music and material.

And then, you know, that happens and we each all have personal things going on at the same time.

And it's been tough, but, um, I think, uh, you find strength through the struggle.

And I think our relationship within each other, within, within the band has only gotten stronger.

I think, um, relationships just outside of, our inner circle have gotten stronger.

Um yeah, I've.

I've always been um someone that's tried to keep that mentality of like positive mental attitude and strength through struggle.

You know you go through something, okay.

Well, what am I going to learn right now from this?

To carry and and learn a lesson from or or whatever, whatever it may be.

But, um, Yeah, it's been tough, but I've learned a lot and I think we've all learned a lot.

And I think uh it it, you know that's all you can really do is is grow from it and and uh, learn life lessons the hard way and and implement them down the road and be, try to be a better person or a better friend or a better you know family member, whatever it may be better bandmate.

And uh yeah yeah, it's it.

You know, try not, try not to dwell on it and just take the lessons as they come.

Well, I mean, you're going to have one hell of an amount of deep emotional well to tap into when it comes to writing the next record.

And what better of a tribute to somebody that's a huge part of the band than to just keep doing the thing that they wanted you to crush at?

I think you see this with Architects.

Oh, absolutely.

That was, oh man, tragic.

Tragic.

And then hearing the record, I've been a fan of them for a while.

So hearing the record's leading up to um his passing and then going back and and really understanding the lyrics in context home they won't play that tribute song live anymore.

They refuse to.

Uh, i think that's track eight as well on their album, interestingly enough, and uh, they'll play.

On this most recent tour they played the sort of like interlude and then they play an intro.

They play like a bridge in the intro thing And then, just as the lyrics are about to start, they just kill it.

And they just go into the next track.

And yeah, they were like, it's just too fucking heavy to play live.

But yeah, man, I'm sure that he's feeling real proud of what you guys have done.

I really think he will be.

Thanks, man.

I appreciate that, man.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's man just grateful, grateful to like have have other people that like we can be open about it with you.

Know, like not, not everyone has that.

Imagine if you were a solo artist.

Oh yeah.

You're just some bloke on a bus.

Yeah.

With a new manager.

Yeah.

With with the same or maybe the lighting guy.

Maybe you've got like maybe, maybe like your fucking yeah, your LD or like your TM or something is like kind of cool.

And you have a bit of a chat with them.

But no one else really knows what you're going through, or the pressure of the performance or anything else.

So yeah, when you say the relationships and the camaraderie that you have in the band, yeah, sure.

Would it be great if you didn't have to split the measly tiny amount of money that the record labels drip feed to you the fucking end of the human centipede.

Um, would it be nice if it didn't have to go like four other ways on top of your way maybe, but then how much harder would it be?

Like it would be more than five times harder.

Yeah oh yeah, you know yeah, uh.

So bandmates are expensive, but when you look at them in terms of like motivation fuel, they're probably pretty cheap.

Yeah, i think, i think like we all are trying to impress each other in a certain way, which like grows all of what we do, because i think a lot of the guys in the band are very impressive individuals and impressive people.

So it's like okay well, if i'm gonna, if i'm gonna stay in this, i gotta really show up, game up.

So that's one.

That's one thing that i've noticed, at least since spending a bit of time around bands.

Um, there is this odd balance between the need to keep morale high, especially on tour, And the understanding that if you suppress your emotions for too long, that it's going to fuck you up.

Yep.

Because if you're moping, like I know for a fact that there are ancillary, maybe not quite central.

In fact no, I know for a fact too.

We all know that there are people that are part of band constructs who are more talented than they need to be, but a sufficiently difficult hang that they actually can't survive in the world of being on the road with the other people that are there.

It's like, love the video girl thought she was brilliant.

Fuck me.

She did my head in.

She can't stay.

Well, we're not going to get someone better at video.

I would happily have someone half as good at video who is like fucking 90% less annoying.

Yeah.

Um, Or whatever it might be, right?

It's just class of personalities, class of culture, whatever.

And one of the things I think that's in the back of the mind of lots of artists that are spending time on the road is must keep morale high.

If I'm struggling and I steam into the fucking back lounge at 11 am and go, today sucks everything's hard, I'm tired, my back hurts, you know.

You just unload all of this.

Well, now everybody else is feeling that way.

And you don't want to be the guy that brings the vibe down.

But also...

If you're in this permanent, like constant, state of denial, what point are you allowed to actually have?

I'm struggling, man.

I miss whoever it is.

I miss this person.

All right.

I've been thinking about this on me and the missus, like made a tough conversation last night.

Uh, you don't have any room for that.

So you've got this weird, I got to perform on stage.

And then I also kind of have to fucking perform to my bandmates to, And I got to sort of tolerate the temper, the fucking dose.

Right.

I'm going to like dilute down, triage this fucking sadness, the realness, or maybe got like I can.

I can talk to the playback tech.

Like he's good.

Like I'm all right to talk to him about how sad I am or whatever, but like I can't unload it on the band.

Cause I want to make sure that like Eric got a big night tonight.

His family's all coming.

He's going to be a bit more nervous than you.

Like whatever the fuck, like it permeates everything.

Yeah yeah, that's something we've we've had i think every band's had like, whether it's crew or band member or something that's that's just going through something and and uh doesn't know the best time to dump and um, over the years uh, the crew that we've, we've had that return for multiple years.

Uh, we have strong relationships with them, the guys in the within the band and the, the crew that are on the bus with us um been doing it for long enough.

I feel like we have our own little uh, i don't say clicks, but you know uh, gabe and steve have a lot of things in common.

Dylan and our other guitarists and i have a lot of things in common.

John and i have in common things.

So there's different types, like days that were, you know, a day off or something us two are going to go hang and and uh, if i'm having one of those days, i really need to talk sometimes, like if i, if i bring it up, it's I just got a, I got a fan about something.

Like, are you emotionally available right now for me to like dump on?

The dump on you real quick?

Oh yeah.

Yeah, sure.

But I think we've been doing this so long that I could just, I don't know.

I feel like um, I feel like I was going through it on this last year up to her pretty heavy, and I didn't say shit.

And I cause I know everyone's going through it with with Dave and everything else going on around the camp.

And I just, you know, bit my tongue and kind of stayed shut in.

And I'm usually one of the guys that's like, well, I'm going to go check out this band.

We're on this fest today.

I'm going to hop from this stage to this stage, go have some beers with them and do this.

And I just didn't do any of it.

And I uh, I'm grateful to have these guys be so in tune with each other that they see something go on.

They, they, they know, they know.

And before I even know sometimes that I'm I'm falling off the wagon emotionally or doing stepped in, they stopped being like Hey, let's do it, come have a beer with me.

We're going to the bar tonight.

Like, come on, come out.

And, and it just gets brought up in conversation.

I talk it out and it's like, damn, I really fucking needed that.

I really needed being in tune.

Yeah.

But again, the fucking solo artist thing, dude.

And I mean this is another, another challenge, like something else that people don't realize with their favorite band.

As soon as you move from mid level to just beyond, where you guys are, as opposed to being on the bus you'll probably be able to get hotels every night.

Yeah.

And wouldn't that be wonderful?

God, so much better sleep.

Oh, I'm on my own.

Yeah.

I'm in a room.

I'm, I'm on my own.

I'm in a room on my own.

Yeah.

And that again, velvet handcuff.

Do you know how few fucking bat you remember being in the fucking transit thing sleeping on the roof?

Whatever the fuck.

Walmart parking lots, man.

Yeah.

And you're like, okay, now we've got a bus.

Wouldn't it be great?

But wouldn't it be great if we had hotels and it, Um, for every level, there's a devil.

Oh, there's a way to look at it.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Do you, is Taylor Swift getting a ton of sympathy?

You know, not really.

Um, but yeah, like someone who's on her own on, on her private jet, but also alone.

Yeah.

Would it be better?

I mean, I, my tour, we get to fly me and the guys, we can pick a row.

Like, Hey, we get to pick our seats.

Yeah.

Like that's kind of nice.

Like, you know, you've got a board together.

You're in the airport.

Maybe you get yourself some fucking like tacos or something.

Yeah.

And there is this weird isolation that comes with not that comes with success, because that sounds like it's like the ethos of being successful or something.

There is a type of isolation that is afforded by luxury, like structurally afforded.

Well, you know, you don't need to get the bus.

You can get an Uber.

But you don't need to get the Uber.

You can get a driver.

So you don't even... It's the same guy and he knows that you don't want to talk or whatever.

Like, you don't need to be in the van.

You can be in the bus.

You don't need to be in the bus.

You can be in the hotel.

You don't need to be in the hotel.

You can be each in your own bus and then on your... You know?

And you become increasingly isolated.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, this can even happen to people at home too, right?

It's like, oh, I just want a cool house with like... I'm sick of going to the gym.

I want a gym in my house.

That'd be cool.

Okay, cool.

You get a gym in your house and then you're like, I... sick of always having to like go out for meals i'm just gonna door dash everything and i'm sick of going out to the pool i just want to pull my own house and before you know it it's like you just build this is not from experience by the way but but like you know for people who are successful at home it's like yeah cool now i have this place where i don't have to go anywhere and that actually kind of sucks yeah i'm sick i'm sick of having to i'm sick of getting complained at by my wife when i want to play video games i just want a video game room yeah you have a video game room and you spend two hours less per day with your wife yeah yeah 100% yeah, it's, I'm grateful for the complexities of living with a bunch of smelly men and we have a system for this.

So yes, there's navigating like our own emotional internal struggle with each other.

And yeah, those I think are done typically through like one-on-ones.

You're like Oh, let's go grab lunch or whatever.

And Hey man, my whole life fucking sucks.

And then you talk about that.

Right.

But then how do we all, work together and not build resentment together.

Um, a lot of testosterone, you know, our artists.

So it's maybe a lot in the lower side, but, um, we've built a system called Sunday Smackdowns.

So every Sunday on the road, we will just kind of group together.

And it's kind of like, Hey, this is the time.

Like how, how's everything gone this past week?

Are we good?

Is there anything brief?

Yeah.

And I mean it can either be personal of like Hey, that thing you said the other day actually like really pissed me off.

Like, can we kind of talk about that a little bit?

Or, Hey dude, I think like what you're saying during this part of the set is not landing.

Like, or Gabe, your timing on this song is actually not great.

Or your wardrobe is like pretty lame actually.

Right.

Like kind of the, just an opportunity for us to come together.

And it's like creating the umbrella of we are open for criticism and we are open or constructive feedback, whatever you want to say.

Fearless feedback.

Yeah.

And also able to give it, and it kind of it disintegrates this awkward thing that I think a lot of us experience in relationships uh where, let's say, your girlfriend thinks like you know Hey, everything's all good.

Uh, then you kind of have to have this awkward moment.

You're like, Hey, I want to bring something up.

And now it's like, Oh, she wasn't expecting you to bring something up.

And now it's kind of like well Hey, I was just kind of like wanting to have a nice little Sunday afternoon.

And now you're coming to me with this thing that I did yesterday.

I don't really feel like talking about it, but it's important to you.

So we'll talk about it, but I'm kind of on it.

Like now I'm on edge, but I think honestly, just literally having, Hey, this is a thing that we do.

And Hey, if we sit down, we're like all good.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

Let's see later.

But it just creates an environment to be able to like open up about it and like not have that like butting of heads and a non-judgmental.

It's really smart.

Yeah, that's really walking off stage if something frustrated you or you bumped into like we don't do like much blocking, but it's like oh dude, i was, i was gonna step up on the riser with the, the spotlight and at that point, or like you know whatever, whatever it may be, it's like don't have to walk off stage.

And it's still burning in my brain.

And it's the other guy doesn't even know he did it.

And now I have to bring this up.

And well, now you just look back on that show that like it sucked, and then it's going to roll into your next show and all that.

So to have that where it's like, yeah, like a week ago, I've been thinking about it.

Honestly, it didn't even really bother me that much.

I'm just going to say right now, but I cooled off over it too.

Like it's, but then you're not ruining someone's show the next time.

Then you're, when you go to perform, you just you're thinking about that and you're not thinking about being in the moment of performing.

And yeah, Yeah, I think it's very helpful we started doing that.

Dale Carnegie wrote a lesser-known second book that's called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

And in it, he advocates for something called worry time.

And that's basically what you guys have got, which is, if your brain knows when it's going to be able to ruminate about something, it's able to release at least a little bit of the need to ruminate right now.

As opposed to you getting just a tiny bit of sand flicked at you every second.

You just pick this big rock up at the end of the week.

And I think that's really smart.

There's this fucking wonderful idea from Neil Strauss.

He says, unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.

Whoa.

Wow.

That's shit.

Yeah.

It's a fucking, it's a real like, oh, that's so true.

Yeah.

That's so true.

I didn't tell you that I wanted you to do this thing and then you didn't do it and I got mad at you.

Or I didn't tell you that this thing pissed me off and I wanted you to stop and then you kept doing it and I got mad at you. um unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments and what you're doing is you're allowing yourselves to have a free non-judgmental forum where people are able to bring up any of the uh spoken expectations right and they're able to get away from those metastasizing into resentments uh i think it's it's fucking it's clever i wonder how many uh bands would have uh improved their longevity if they'd implemented what's it smackdown sundays yeah sunday smackdown sunday smackdown yeah i think we're licensing it right now the silly bus and silly bus time i got it tattooed on my finger already so you can't take it that's exactly the same as registering it with the fucking trademark office yeah as soon as you get it tattooed on your first person to get it tattooed and say sorry nike someone got it tattooed on them in 1940 or some bullshit uh gabe and eric I appreciate the fuck out of both of you.

I think the new record's fantastic.

Everyone should go and stream it.

Are you touring?

When are you touring next?

Or have you not released that?

Haven't released it at the moment.

We're playing Warped Tour in November.

But yeah, really busy next year that people will see.

We're in Europe in October.

That's announced.

September, October?

Yeah, something like that.

And then, yeah, to be determined.

Yeah.

Lots of stuff coming, though, so keep an eye.

We'll be touring.

We were just saying we're going to be touring like four or five months a year.

It's a lot more than that this year, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would also just like to sign off by saying, Chris, your calves are magnificent.

I'm so jealous.

I did not know this about you.

It has not been addressed, at least from what I've seen, and damn.

Thanks, man.

I wondered why you were looking at that angle.

I thought it was something else.

I would say... I would say... sort of the forearm and calf, the extremities.

I do well at the extremities.

As you get more toward the middle, less conditioned.

You get out toward the ends, very lean and very well conditioned.

Boys, you're great.

The new record fucking slaps.

I'm so happy to see you.

I thought you crushed it when I saw you at Summer of Loud as well.

And I'm looking forward to the tour.

I'll be there.

Nice.

Thanks for having us.

I get asked all the time for book suggestions.

People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories.

And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read.

These are the most life-changing reads that I've ever found.

And there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them.

And it's completely free.

And you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com books.

That's chriswillx.com books.

[The Evolution of Rock, Band Dynamics, and the Shadow of AI]-[#1023 - I Prevail - The Trades You Make to Live Your Dreams]

📋 Summary

The Resurgence of Rock and Heavy Music

Songwriting, Emotion, and the Art of the Breakdown

The AI Dilemma: Tool or Threat?

Navigating the Business and Personal Toll of Touring

The Illusion of the Horizon

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Evolution of Rock, Band Dynamics, and the Shadow of AI]-[#1023 - I Prevail - The Trades You Make to Live Your Dreams]

📋 Summary

The Resurgence of Rock and Heavy Music

Songwriting, Emotion, and the Art of the Breakdown

The AI Dilemma: Tool or Threat?

Navigating the Business and Personal Toll of Touring

The Illusion of the Horizon

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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