Silverstein

Wed 18th May, 2011 in Features

Canadian punk rockers Silverstein have recently torn up stages around Australia with the Soundwave tour as well as with a few of their own headlining sideshows. While they were here drummer Paul Koehler and lead vocalist Shane Told sat down in their Sydney hotel with FL to have a chat about the tour and their next album Rescue.

Silverstein played a hectic schedule while they were here and indeed that is what they do when touring. Never doing anything by halves, in the space of a week the band had flown in for Soundwave, performed in Brisbane and Sydney over the first weekend and then flew back to Brisbane for a side show before re-joining the Soundwave team in Melbourne to put on another side show before jumping back into the festival to continue tearing up stages for the fans across the country.

The lads thoroughly enjoyed their time on the Soundwave festival, citing their stage vibe as like being in a little family. “I haven’t had much time to check out any of the other stages as we get so busy with setting up and packing away our gear afterwards and things like that. But I did check out The Amity Affliction and those guys were really rad and hanging out with Bring Me The Horizon was awesome, we are really tight now. I think there might be a bit of rivalry between each stage but in Sydney, our stage was untouchable! It was like a little Colosseum in there, how rad was that?!” Koehler laughs.

Silverstein rate Australia as their favourite place to head for tours, mostly because they like that the fans seem to listen more to their music rather than just jump around like fools in a mosh pit. “I think with Australian fans, because a band doesn’t tour here every few months it makes it more special for them to see their favourite acts. They are so passionate and really just stoked that we are here,” Koehler says.

The quintet have also gone about wowing their fans by showcasing a few new songs off their latest album Rescue. The album has just been released in Australia and the boys explain that with this record they took a different approach to the whole process of writing, recording and putting it together. “I think it is one of the best things we have ever produced,” Koehler says straight out. Told agrees, “We did spend a lot of time on it. With most of our records we took maybe three or four months off but with this record it was a little bit different.”

“We were between record labels so we didn’t really know what we were going to do and we were kind of on our own, ” he continues, “So we would go into a studio and start working on some demo’s but still taking it very seriously like we were recording a record. I think we recorded maybe five songs initially and we produced then the best we could. Then we went back when it was time to write the record and we were like, well how do we fell about these five songs now? We changed a few things and we asked ourselves, how can we change this and this and make the song timeless rather than just producing something and going well, here it is. We took a whole year and we are really pleased. We think this record will be a lot more lasting,” Told continues and Koehler nods his agreement.

Rescue is a heavier album than their previous releases and Koehler thinks this is a bit of an ambiguous term when it comes to describing their music. On every album they have made they have been told that their music isn’t heavy enough or that it is too heavy and that they need to change parts. Koehler shakes his head as he shares his view on the way their music is perceived. “The heavy term is so tough. We constantly go through that and on every album I think that it is totally up to however one wants to interpret as to what constitutes as being heavy,” Koehler says.

“Yeah exactly,” Told interrupts, apologising for his abruptness, “Is heavy screaming? Like if we wrote the heaviest music and I didn’t scream would that equal a heavy record?” he asks.

“Yeah, if you hit the heaviest, lowest and loudest chord is that heavy or does it come back to the screaming?” Koehlor continues. “There is a lot of screaming on the record and maybe that is what comes off as being heavy but at the same time there are some songs that are quite poppy, so what does that make this record?! There are definitely some aggressive moments on the record but still, does that make it heavy?”