ION INDIE MAGAZINE December 2015, Volume 19 | Page 41

was brought in, and McDonald, formerly the band’s bassist, switched over to guitar. The notso-secret weapon since that 2014 EP, has been vocalist Eric Katchmore, who bleeds his lyrics
into every live performance and slathers them into listener psyche on the band’s recently
released full-length debut, “Through The Grip Of Tyrants”.
The new album has been a long
time coming, and the band
couldn’t be more thrilled to get it
out to eager ears.
“We never planned on touring
that EP as long as we did,” offers
guitarist Will Perna. “We put that
EP out while we worked on the
full-length, and that was a long
process.”
The band initially had 26 songs
they were working on for the fulllength debut, and as it turns out,
upon recruiting Katchmore into
the band, the three tracks on that
2014 EP were actually the first
three songs the band wrote for-what would over a year later-become “Through The Grip Of
Tyrants”.
“The songs were growing and changing along the way,” explains Perna, “implementing Eric’s
style into what we were doing. Then, getting Steve…that changed the dynamic even more. It
was fruitful, but it was a long growing process.”
Perna went further into the sonic maturation that would envelop the band between the threesong EP and the new record.
“That EP was basically recorded by us, mixed by us; there was no outside ear,” he says. “It
was the best that we thought we could possibly make. When we went to Tom (Godin, of Side
B Studios in Dorrance, PA, producer of “Through The Grip Of Tyrants”), we took every song
and ripped it apart. We bounced ideas off of him like the unofficial sixth member--that was
a whole new experience.”
Godin, as producer, gave the band some often tough medicine in his feedback as to what he
thought the band’s strengths were and how they could fully integrate different elements into
their music.
“Write a whole new bridge,” laughs McDonald, mimicking one of Godin’s suggestions.
“I think that took us a whole month to decide upon,” Saypack jumped in.
“We have a song called ‘Nobody Knows The Centerfold’ on the new record that Tom said the
bridge just didn’t live up to the rest of the song,” explains Perna. “We’d been playing the song