Blessthefall

author TL date 20/12/07

Following up on the hype Blessthefall has received in the emo/screamo scene this past year, it was natural for us to grap a hold of the guys when they hit Vega in Copenhagen on tour with Silverstein and Vincent Black Shadow. Unfortunately the news of ex-frontman Craig's departure from the band hadn't become public yet, so we were too early to ask into that issue, but even so it was still a good interview with some pretty interesting answers from bassist Jared and drummer Matt. Enjoy!

RF.net: First question is: Since your band is a quite new one, especially to people over here on this side of the pond I'm sure, could you please introduce yourselves and your music?
Matt: We're Blessthefall from Phoenix, Arizona. We're screamo/rock music, we love to play and we're here to have fun. That's pretty much it.

RF.net: Maybe also just introduce each other?

Matt: Oh yeah I'm Matt I play drums..

Jared: And I'm Jared and I play bass.

RF.net: So you've been touring along with Silverstein for a pretty long while now and we just want to know how the tour's working out for you?
Jared: It's really been awesome with a lot of kids coming out, hanging out and having a good time with us. Kids've really been responding well to our music out here and that's really cool.

RF.net: You mentioned before that you're kind of a screamo band, and a lot of band tend to hate being labelled with a genre like that or metalcore for instance. What do you guys prefer yourself?
Jared: Yeah we kind of prefer just rock basically. A lot of people consider us screamo so we just go with that, even though I don't personally like that or the emo thing so much. We are who we are, and we're here to make music as who we are and that's all.

RF.net: You guys have been keeping your fans updated with some quality photo blogs on myspace lately. How did you get the idea for this?
Matt: I was actually doing the one for last week right now when you guys came. We do it to try to keep in touch with all the fans, because in the very beginning of the band's existence I would answer every message or friend request made to us on myspace, but now, having something like 122.000 friends makes it kind of hard. So just keeping in touch with our fans, showing kids what's going on with the tour.. Like "Hey this is us in the backroom, we're doing this" or something.. Just try to keep people interested.

RF.net: You've been touring quite intensely since the release of your first album "His Last Walk" - Who's been the best band you've toured with and what's been your best and/or funniest experience?
Jared: I don't know about the coolest band because we played with a lot of awesome ones. Bands like As I Lay Dying, Bullet For My Valentine and Chiodos and those guys were really awesome. All Warped Tour was probably one of my favourite tours ever, because you get to meet so many people and make new friends. When it comes to funny experiences we always seem to have a whole bunch of drunk people come up to the van, just rambling about random things..

Matt: Yeah especially in Canada - I don't know if you've seen the video, but this guy came up and he thougth he was a cowboy and he just started mooh'ing and stuff..

Jared: Yeah in Canada it was intense.. Haha..

RF.net: Based on some of your tour blogs as well as some of your lyrics, how important a theme is religion in your music?
Jared: It's really really big. We like to get kids to open themselves up and let it out when they have problems, and we do that through our music. We write about our personal experiences with God and about how he helps us through each day and we just want to show kids that there's more to life than sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

RF.net: Seeing the videos of you guys on the web, reading your blogs and other things, it seems however that you're a bunch of guys who like to mess around a lot, and then when you listen to the music everything is very dramatic - Can you explain what this contrast means to you?
Matt: Well we kind of distance ourselves from the drinking and the drugs. That happens in the music business and we don't judge anyone but we just don't do it ourselves. We have fun in our own way and we'll just.. fart.. and.. I don't know.. 'Couple of weeks ago we had a vicious toilet paper fight in the upstairs lounge of our bus so yeah, we have fun in our own way.

Jared: A lot of the time we just have random laugh attacks, and people think we're on drugs but we're not. We're just really weird kids with strange minds. Through our music it's more serious simply because we really want to touch people and let them know that we're here for them.

RF.net: On this topic it's also not uncommon to find videos online, of Craig diving into a crowd from insane heights or having his teeth knocked out or something like that. Is he looking for trouble or is he just very unlucky?
Jared: I don't know, he's just a crazy kid. It's good to have that element in your frontman.

RF.net: You're rumoured to have a pretty crazy liveshow, so what do you do as a band when you're about to go on there?
Matt: It kind of just happens when we go on and we hit the first note and it comes naturally.. All the crazyness comes out with the music..

Jared: Fans are a big part of it as well. If they're more energetic then we feed off that and the show gets better from it.

RF.net: So what would happen if you played for something like only 10 kids and only one of them knew you. Surely you must have played shows like that at some stage?

Jared: Yeah we still play shows like that in fact. It won't change. We're always out there to give ourselves and it doesn't matter if it's one or a thousand kids.

RF.net: We'd like to know a little bit about the album. What kind of album did you want to write when you started it, and what were your inspirations behind it?
Jared: Well a lot of us like different styles of music. Mike's more for poppy stuff and then me and Eric like heavy rock/metal and Matt like's As I Lay Dying and bands like that. We just all wanted to combine all those aspects into one album and each song kind of defines who we are as musicians. I think "Guys Like You Make Us Look Bad" is probably the best example on what our band is, because it has all the elements ranging from the poppy to the heavy. We like to portray that. We don't want just one style of music. It's better for everything to come together so we can all have a good time.

RF.net: What's the story about the whole "Purple Dog" song at the end of the album?
Jared: Eric - I don't know what he was doing but - he wrote that. He was just playing some guitar chord in the studio and he wrote it and was like "Ah let's just record it" and then it went from there. I personally didn't think it was going to be a good idea on the cd but it turned out that some kids really liked it so I guess it was okay..

Matt: Yeah another example on why we have crazy heads.

RF.net: So what does the future have in store for your band and your fans?
Matt: Oh next year we're going to pick it straight up and start writing new songs for the new record. We're going to be touring in February/March, don't know what tour yet but we've had a couple of good offers and we'll figure it out pretty soon. Then after that we'll record the new record and then hopefully do Warped Tour in the summer. So we're pretty ready for next year.

Jared: You should start looking in January for a demo of one of our new songs.

RF.net: Come to think of it, how did you guys decide on the bandname Blessthefall?
Jared: We were sitting around like forever trying to figure out a bandname..

Matt: Yeah we had one a day for two months or something

Jared: Yeah we couldn't really all agree on one till this one came up and like I said, we like to pick people up with our music so in some way it made sense to "Bless them when they fall down", and that's kind of how it came out.

RF.net: Okay, last question is an quick one. Off the top of your heads, what's your favourite song?
Jared: Uhh that's hard.. Erhhm.. "Tears Don't Fall" by Bullet For My Valentine aaaand.. "You're Not Alone" by Saosin is also phenomenal.

Matt: "Kanye West - Anything".. Haha..

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