It’s Always Personal

All That Remains was one of those interviews I was looking forward to, a lot. We’ve been chasing this one for some time. Unfortunately, it was a short one. The Gods of Technology did not grant us a clean line. I had been doing interviews in the same setup all week long, yet this particular one, the other side had a hard time hearing me. Sorry guys! Doing a phone interview through Skype, I give it one out of five stars.

Thank you for taking the time to talk to us, how are things in your world?

Things are good, things are good! I’m actually sitting at home in New Hampshire, killing time before we’re going to shoot a video next week.

Awesome! A new video, can’t wait to see that man. You are soon to release your 8th record: Madness. We did not have access to the promo yet, but I’ve been playing the two songs you’ve released so far: Safe House, and the Title track Madness. What a world of difference!

Yeah, that’s kind of the thing with All That Remains. We don’t really… We’re a Metal band, but we don’t really write specifically one type of songs, and we’re not afraid to write different kinds of songs. When you hear the whole record, you will see that that’s a theme that goes through the whole record. There’s a lot of different types of songs that are pushing what is I guess approved for Metal bands to write.

I think the boxes in Metal have been way too defined and that the boundaries should be a bit pushed!

Yeah, that’s what we are trying to do

It sounded like it were two different bands, and I really like that. The title track sounded very radio friendly by the way. Was that intentional?

Yeah, I mean, we’ve had a lot of success doing stuff with radio here in the States. That’s one of the things that’s part of who we are. We will write some songs that radio stations will play, and we will write some songs that radio stations won’t touch *laughs*

In Europe there isn’t much Metal on the radio. Is that different in the US?

No, I mean there are some Rock stations. They’re not the most prevalent types of radio stations, but you’ll hear Rock stations in most of the regions in the US. There are a few cities that don’t have them.

That’s still better than here then! I love the variety in the vocals and style between the two songs. What was your goal going into the creation of this album?

It’s definitely something we intended to do. We don’t want to make the same kind of stuff over and over.

Your lyrics are usually pretty much drawn from your own world and experiences. Is that the same on the new record?

Lyrics for me are always inspired by stuff that happens in my life, or things I have to go through. It’s always personal. I’m not one of those guys that can write a record or write songs that are historical, about something in history. It’s usual that I’ve experienced it.

So, what are the themes on this record?

Oh, there’s some political stuff, there’s relationship stuff, there’s just trying to relate to other people, some of the difficulties of relating to people in your life, stuff like that. It covers a pretty broad range of normal things, I suppose. The kind of things that everyone kind of deals with. I don’t like to get too far away from stuff that people can relate to. I also think that if I try, when I’m writing something, I’m at my best when I’m writing things that I really had to experience and deal with.

Yeah, I get that. Your 2015 album was called The Order Of Things. The new record is named Madness. Have things become more chaotic in your life, or are there other reasons for this particular title?

Yes, definitely there’s been some chaos in my life. So, that’s definitely something that’s reflecting of my reality.

I saw the Capitol on fire on the cover. In what way has your title been influenced by the political situation happening in the United States right now?

I don’t think it’s just happening in the United States, it’s happening all over a good portion of the world. A lot of the world has some crazy stuff going on, so it’s more reflective of humanity in general, more than specifically the US, but to say it’s reflective of the United States is not an untrue statement.

I also really loved the art on the singles! Who did the art, and what’s the symbolism there?

I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of symbolism. I’m not really a visual kind of artist guy. So where it comes to the album art, I’ll look at something and say cool, I like it. Or I’m like no, I don’t like it. That’s about as far as I get there. I don’t usually come up with concepts for the art. I can’t say that it relates to anything in particular. The art for Safehouse, that definitely kind of sums up the song. I don’t know that Madness does.

So you just go for a pretty picture, as long as it’s powerful.

Yeah, it’s just something, if it’s striking, I’m cool with it.

I was wondering, how do you deal with haters? I saw your Facebook page and there were a couple of very negative remarks on your first two singles right there. How do you deal with these kind of things?

Just people thrash talking? Nah, it never means anything. Anyone with a cellphone can get on the internet and say what they think, so that doesn’t matter.

Thank you for your time, Metal On Loud!