Having recently released their third album, The Black Swan, Story Of The Year are back in the UK for a small tour.  I managed to speak to the band before their show in Birmingham to discuss the album.  

It has been a while since the release of In The Wake Of Determination, and you have been off the radar in the UK for a bit.  Why has it been so long to get the album out and what have you been up to during that time? 

The Skull:  We wrote it. 

Ryan Phillips: We switched labels, we decided on the second record, when we took two to three months to write, it always seemed like everything in this band is bam, bam, bam, you know.  So after the last touring cycle of the last record we decided that for once we were going to take our time and really, focus on nothing but song writing, not touring, not anything.  So that six months we planned turned into a little over a year of just nothing but writing, then we switched labels. 

TS:  Worked out though.

 RP:  And we worked out, we joined gyms.  

So you are now on Epitaph, how has that worked out so far, how is it different to your previous label? 

TS:  It is different, and it’s been amazing so far.  We feel at home, we feel like we maybe belonged to Epitaph all along.  Obviously Maverick did well for us on the first record and there’s that in between Maverick and Warner second record world.  But Epitaph are amazing, they’re indie but have more resources than a lot of the smaller ones so it’s working great.  We’re stoked. 

It was said that you feel like it is a new beginning? 

TS:  Especially having taken so long to write, being back on the road now, it feels really fresh, and new in a way.  And being on the new label, all those things definitely make it feel fresh like starting over.  But this time we have the lessons we have gained from the years of being a band on a major label. 

That brings onto the new album, The Black Swan, why was this chosen as the title? 

RP:  (to The Skull) You keep going, you’re the talker. 

TS:  Ryan found this book in a bookstore called The Black Swan, and kind of browsed it and thought that it looked like an interesting concept, and we all looked into it and learned about The Black Swan, the theory, everything behind it, the symbolism, found that in a lot of ways it tied into lyrics and different big social kind of issues that we are tackling lyrically on this record and it also presented a good opportunity to have a really central icon to go along with the record cycle, the logo and all that.  So it’s an all encompassing thing to really like, for the first time wraps up the whole record, the look and feel of everything, the meaning, all in one. 

So it’s not a themed album as such, it just covers the songs you have written? 

TS:  It could be taken that way, but it wasn’t intentional, it just happened that coincidentally it worked out really well. 

Musically, how do you feel you have moved on since the last record? 

RP:  Yeah, I would say so.  We always try to push ourselves creatively, artistically, as musicians, as technicians of our instruments and playing shows every single night on the whole entire record cycle you will just naturally gonna play your instrument better.  I think the biggest noticeable jump is just like in song writing and lyric writing in general.  I think we pushed ourselves further than we pretty much ever have. 

Do you find yourselves being put into any certain genres.  Where do you see yourselves fitting into the general music scene? 

RP:  I just tell people rock music, that’s what I say.   

TS:  It’s hard to figure out where we fit.  Even as a touring band, just knowing what bands to tour with.  It’s not like we’re Primus or anything, I mean we’re a pretty straight forward band but still it’s kind of hard to figure out where we belong; we’re not an emo band, we’re not a punk band, we’re not a metal band, we kind of hit all over the map. 

Do you each bring something slightly different to the band’s music?  Are you all into different bands? 

RP:  It’s a pretty wide array.  There’s a lot of different influences from each of us, we all pretty much listen to different stuff. 

Dan Marsala:  All rock of some sort, you know, but everyone brings something different to the band musically. 

TS:  Josh brings the hip hop. 

On the album you also have the influence of Carl Sagan.  Does this fit into the record in a similar manner to The Black Swan?

 TS:  In a round about way it’s associated. 

RP:  Wake Up, Pale Blue Dot. 

TS:  Yeah, Wake Up was written about, was inspired by The Pale Blue Dot, the book that Carl Sagan wrote in the nineties.  That little interlude is kind of an excerpt from the audio version of the book.  I think since a lot of the themes are a little broader and more on a world view like that.  The space theme, on some metaphorical level it represents like a view that is taken from a distant vantage point.  As opposed to the little trivial shit of day to day life, you know what I mean. 

Lyrically you do cover some big issues rather than the smaller things, why is that?

 DM:  Why not? 

There are a lot of serious issues there, and on videos and all that you seem quite a fun band to then be singing about discrimination and poverty and the like. 

RP:  Yeah it’s always a weird line that we walk on.  I’m going to quote myself because I did say it best in an interview.  ‘We are dudes who watch presidential debates and read books by Carl Sagan and at the same time throw up.’ 

TS:  On each other. 

RP:  Yeah, and put turds on the stage and light pubes on fire, we’re like cool nerds.   

DM:  We definitely like to have fun, but when it comes to making music we definitely take music seriously.  We’ve never written funny songs it’s just that we like to have fun while performing our songs and while we are hanging out, so it’s kind of a confusing thing for us.  Because we are way too goofy to be real serious sometimes but we manage to do both. 

TS:  We don’t know where to draw the line sometimes. 

RP:  That’s a good point that you made, our music has never been a joke.  Our music is the one thing that we take completely seriously and there’s no jokes on it or anything like that.   I always thought it was weird growing up and you see a band that is all dark and gloomy and they have all of this hard depressing shit, and then there’s people that are all bummed out, gloomy and it is like, ‘dude, you don’t have to wear black all of the time and hate your parents and stuff’.  You can make hard aggressive music and still be like having a fucking good time. 

With that in mind are there any songs on the new album that have specific or deeper meanings for anyone?  More personal? 

DM:  They all have some kind of meaning in some way.  But not all exactly personal songs because it’s more just observations of injustices in the world and/or just situations that we see people in.  I mean there are a few songs that are written about our personal experiences, but it’s just whatever, anything that sparks some kind of emotion in me and I think is gonna be important to some people, I’ll write about it, it doesn’t always have to be just a personal song to me.  There’s a little bit of both, it’s mainly just like different stuff we’ve seen over the last few years. 

RP:   There’s a song on the record called, er… fuck I don’t know what the real title is I only know the working title.  What’s Machete Sunrise called? 

TS & DM:  We’re Not Gonna Make It. 

RP:  Oh, there’s a song on the record called We’re Not Gonna Make It.  That song to me, lyrically really, that’s the one that to me kind of hits me the hardest.  It’s a story Dan wrote, and it’s got some great meaning and that one really hits me pretty hard.  On the musical side the last track Welcome To Our New War, everything about that, the lyrics and the music, everything, that’s like my favourite song our band’s ever written.  As far as just the lyrics and meaning, definitely that song We’re Not Gonna Make It, that one is awesome. 

Some of the profits from the album are also going to charity, why was that chosen? 

TS:  In the process of getting the rights for that Carl Sagan excerpt his widow, who is the beneficiary of his entire estate and receives all his charities and various foundations chose that one for his portion of the royalties for using that.  She sent us a little description of the school and what the charity is all about and we thought that’s a good place to put the money, education. 

You are now back on tour, after being away for some time, is it difficult being back on the road? 

TS:  It’s fucking awesome. 

DM:  It’s a lot more fun now.  When you go home for a year and you get real bored just writing music every day, you get to go back out and play a show every night you get that feeling again.  Nothing will ever top the feeling of playing in front of 500 to 1,000 screaming fans, it’s like the best feeling ever. 

 TS:  Unless it’s 1,001 fans. 

DM:  If it’s over 1,000, not cool anymore. 

You are doing the Warped tour, aren’t you doing a headline thing on that? 

DM:  We’re doing the whole Warped tour this summer, there’s no real headliner on the Warped tour… 

RP:  Besides from us. 

DM:  Everyday it’s like the line up switches everyday, but we are gonna be on the main stage so it’s gonna be pretty exciting.  We’ve done it like three times, three, four times in the past so we’re almost veterans of that now.

You were in London last night, how was that, that was the first UK date?

 DM:  Yeah it was amazing, really really good. 

TS:  It was one of our favourite, if not our favourite show so far on this European run. 

RP:  What are you talking about?  London? 

TS:  Yeah. 

RP:  That was one of my top ten favourite shows I’ve ever had in my whole life.   

DM:  I think it was our best London show for sure.  We played the bigger Astoria, the upstairs part, last time we played.  This time we played the smaller one and it just blew it away, the whole environment, the crowd was so amazing.  Very exciting.

You are doing the smaller room here as well today.  

DM:  It’s kind of cool.  The big shows are awesome just because they are huge shows, but there’s something just awesome about packing in like little tiny clubs. 

Leading on from that, did you want to play smaller venues on this tour for that reason?

 TS:  We just trust our booking agent. 

RP:  I just got an e-mail from our manager, what’s the big venue across the street where we played Taste Of Chaos (NIA) that’s where we were supposed to headline.  We said no.  Honestly last time we toured was 2005/2006, we have been off the radar for a while so with the new record just coming out, we’ve got to build it you know.  But playing the smaller clubs, usually, I’d say like 3:1 it’s always wicked, like nine times out of ten I like it way better because the crowd are this close to you and everyone’s sweating together, and you can smell everyone, everyone’s sweat is flying all over you.  It’s intimate, it’s just raw, it’s gross, I don’t know dude, sometimes that’s just way cooler to me than being on a big stage where the closest person to you is ten feet away.  On an arena stage sometimes the people are like 15 – 20 feet away from you, I hate that.  I like to having the big stage but as far as the show goes the smaller venues are so much cooler to me.   

Are there plans to come back later in the year as well? 

RP:  Yeah, we’re gonna do Taste Of Chaos.  And then after that we’re gonna come back and headline again sometime in the Winter. 

TS:  Are we even supposed to be announcing that. 

RP:  We are, but we cannot say the other bands. 

TS:  OK. So Metallica’s not doing it, Queen reunion’s not doing it. 

RP:  Dave Mustaine’s solo project are doing it though! 

DM:  So yeah we’ll be back in October/November, whenever Taste Of Chaos is, and then hopefully we will be back a couple of months after that to follow up with another headlining tour.   

You have also released a DVD recently? 

DM:  It kind of got released.   

Josh Wills:  It’s off back order at Best Buy now. 

DM:  They sent about two copies to each store everywhere, that’s about it.  All of our fans are freaking out as they cannot find it anywhere.   

JW:  You go on line and it says that it is available now, it was on back order. 

RP:  Basically they’re didn’t ship enough because that’s how huge our band is. 

 So what does it cover, just the bit between records or does it go back further than that? 

TS:  It’s the whole touring, like the whole second record cycle, and the making of the second record, it’s like three hours worth of content.

 DM:  It covers everything from the second record until now basically. 

So are you recording now for another one? 

DM:  Yeah, we are always filming, always. 

 TS:  Except for this tour.

 DM:  We haven’t really filmed much yet but we have got some stuff going.  We’ll make another one eventually.   

It is being released very close to the album, was that a conscious decision, was there any temptation to put it back a bit? 

TS:  We talked about releasing it six months ago, a year ago.  We been talking about it for like forever, it’s been done forever.  But the company wanted to release it as close to the release date, once the buzz was building again, once we got out to everybody and everyone ‘here we are, remember us?’. 

RP:  That’s gonna be cool, when you say it it’s funny ‘here we are’, but when it’s printed it’s gonna look stupid.  ‘Here we are, remember us?’ 

TS:  We want to remind everyone how badass we are. 

RP:  Ask Josh a question. 

TS:  Just give him a question about anything. 

OK what is on your iPod? 

JW:  At the moment Outkast, before you came in Lupe Fiasco…  

TS:  Told you it was hip hop. 

JW:  Into Lynyrd Skynyrd because it was alphabetically in there.   

Lastly to round things up, is there anything else anyone wants to add? 

TS:  Buy the fucking record. 

RP:  Honestly, the new record, we’re real proud of it, we put everything we had into it and we love it so just go buy it man.  

TS:  We’re really proud of this record and we want everyone to hear it so everyone reading this might as well just go buy it.

And on that note the boys headed off to get ready for the show. Their new album The Black Swan, as if you hadn't realised it for the last few comments, is out now via Epitaph and you can buy it from all good records shops!

Darren Brushneen