Gig Reviews
The Smile
K.B. Hallen, Copenhagen, DEN - 13/3
Album Reviews
Silverstein
Previous Nextauthor TL date 04/06/08
Last time Silverstein was in Denmark we decided to talk to their support band BlessTheFall instead, so naturally, when they came back less than 6 months later, we had to go for the headliners. Having encountered trouble calling a Canadian phonenumber in Denmark, my interview had already been postponed one and a half hour, so I ended up sitting down with half the band in the kebab place across the street from Vega. Having helped the guys find out what dishes on the menu were vegetarian, I got to sit down and have a chat about violent lyricism, emo and Danish band Mew - enjoy:
Shane: I\'m Shane, I sing
Paul: And I\'m Paul and I play the drums
Shane: Pretty good you know.. We\'re enjoying our second European tour in quite a short time.. We were just here not too long ago (Ed: December 07) and the weather is much better now and we really like it, just to walk around here and have a good time. It\'s much nicer to be here when you have a lot of sunlight.
Josh: I think to be honest that I\'m having the most fun over here that I\'ve ever had while being here so..
Paul: I think it\'s a dedication to really breaking that Scandinavian market, and especially here in Copenhagen, it\'s our third time here now and we think there\'s something special going on here, so we reckon there\'s no reason not to come back here and try to help it grow.
Shane: Yeah the people here are awesome and it\'s always a pleasure to come around and enjoy playing music and being at a show together.
RF.net: Do you ever see yourself doing a record that\'s drastically different from what you\'re doing now though? Maybe without any screaming at all, or simply just more mellow in sound?
Shane: Well maybe, but the thing is that we\'ve done this band for such a long time now and worked so much on it and I think the reason it works is because of how our music is. If we just played mellow shit all the time I think we\'d get bored of it and if we only played heavy stuff all the time I think we\'d get bored of that too. We\'ve had a punk rock song on one record and a lot of bands couldn\'t do that because it would be too out there for them, and other people wouldn\'t do something super mellow as well. I think the reason that we still like doing what we do is that we allow ourselves to do something different when we feel like it, but for now however, we\'re pretty happy about what we are doing.
RF.net: Seeing that last time you said you at least knew where the term originated from, do you then have some bandnames you\'d like to recommend to fans who wants to check out the roots?
Shane: Yeah, definetely like Mineral, Knapsack, The Get Up Kids, Braid.. Early Jimmy Eat World.. That\'s kind of where we come from.. That and hardcore bands, and that\'s kind of what we\'re trying to mend together.
RF.net: Do you think musically that it\'s still growing or do you feel that it\'s started to decline?
Shane: Hmm.. I generally think music right now is as good as it\'s ever been but talking about a specific movement is really difficult, keeping track of what bands are doing what. In general though, things are really good right now both creatively and with the technology of today I think it\'s a great time for music. I\'m really into the fact that a band can record a really good record for less money now and put it out and sell it on the internet without having to worry about labels or stuff like that. These are all positives for art. I think the best bands are getting well known now, where 10 years ago it wasn\'t the best bands that got known, rather bands that would sell well.
Shane: Really? That just doesn\'t seem to make sense..
Paul: Well back in the day bands released singles all the time you know. The album would come out later on and would be more like a compilation of the singles. I guess it could make sense in an economical perspective, but to us we\'re about making an album and making things flow and creating a full package and we\'re not writing singles, we\'re writing albums..
Shane: Yeah it\'s never like we sit down and try to write a \"hit song\".. I mean sure then you can buy one of those off the internet for 5.99 or whatever but... Then what? Is that all you want? All you want is a 5.99 song? It makes sense in a business perspective as well that if you put a band in a studio, you might as well make them record more songs so that later on, you can put out another song, so it seems stupid to only want to have them do a single.
Paul: I really like \"Love In The Club\" by Usher
Josh: Yeah that one\'s been stuck in my head too along with that Umbrella song.
Shane: Rick Astley, \"Never Gonna Give You Up\"
Paul: We celebrate his entire catalogue!
Josh: How about anything off \"Slaughter Of The Soul\" by At The Gates
Shane: Yeah we love that record.. We also love a Danish band called Mew? Can\'t wait for their new record - Could you imagine if Mew signed a deal where they only put out singles? Wouldn\'t that be horrible?
RF.net: Yeah it would. I don\'t know about the album since their bassist left to do a band with his wife (Ed: The Storm) that critically speaking flopped quite horribly..
Paul: Well when we saw them a year ago, they were already playing with their new bassist..
Shane: I thought that the band was pretty much the singer dude, the other guitar player and the drummer.