Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. This week, Harry sat down with The Wise Man’s Fear to discuss the band’s upcoming album, creative process, plus literary and musical influences. Stream the latest single from Atlas Ruinica, “Slumbering World“, here.
Harry: What is your guys’ general creative process for writing new music? Do you hash out the concept first, or is it the instrumentals mainly and then narrative later? [0:01]
Tyler: It’s always been such a mix, I feel like. But everybody pretty much submits something that they work on by themselves. Usually it can be sometimes a little thirty second idea, like, ‘hey cool, I wrote this riff’ and it’s something we start building off of. Sometimes it’s the full song.
Joe: I’ll tell you my creative process: I write a song that Codi and I will spend like twenty hours on, collectively, over the course of a couple weeks, we take it to Lee [Albrecht], and he’s like, ‘this fucking sucks, dude’ and he’ll scrap the whole thing and write a new song. That is literally the story of “Tailspin”, dude. I’m like, ‘this is badass’ and he’s like, ‘this does nothing for me’.
Paul: We workshopped “Tailspin” like four different iterations, and in the end, he was like, ‘what if we did more of a doomy riff?’ He played that riff and we’re like, ‘yeah, I mean, that’s it right there’. It’s actually quite a poignant time to ask that question because we’re in the middle of going back into the studio a month from like right now. We’re super excited.
Harry: Yeah, I saw that. Is that new music already or is it just testing the waters?
Collectively: Yeah, new music.
Paul: We’re just trying to like… new year’s resolution, always be working on stuff. Just trying to figure out what’s next. Part of that, like, Tyler has a complete song that he’s had in the demo folder submitted and then Codi’s actually been working on one as well which we’re workshopping together now. Like Tyler was saying, it always fluctuates if we do concept or instrumental first. For this one we’ve just got these instrumentals. We’ve got like ten concept ideas that we’ve been floating, so…
Tyler: We literally just keeping adding to this Google Drive folder we’ve got, different little one-minute ideas. I’m like ‘I’m sure we’ll get back to that someday.’ Sometimes it’s fun to just bring those into the studio, though, and be like, ‘let’s all write this together, right here, right now.’
Harry: So, how did the first trilogy come to pass? Had you conceptualised it as a trilogy before the release of Castle [in the Clouds] or was it just a gradual thing? [3:38]
Paul: It was gradual. I had the idea for a sort of pilgrim’s progress parallel allegory way back when we were like toying around stuff in 2013, but instead we went with our then vocalist’s idea, which was to make a terrible EP full of random lyrics, which is probably good, dude. We got it out of our system and got a couple members out of the band and sort of solidified the line-up.
Harry: I will say, I was sad when that got removed from Spotify.
Paul: That makes one of you, man! Dude, that was a battle. We had to try so hard to get that off.
Harry: “The Black Book” had some proper good riffs on it.
Joe: Facts, facts. Dude, I actually stumbled upon all of the footage for “The Black Book” music video. Did we ever drop that as a group?
Paul: Briefly. I think we privated it a month later.
Joe: I saw all the footage of us goofing around Paul’s house—me, Codi—it was actually just us three at that time.
Tyler: Yeah, I wasn’t in the band yet.
Paul: For the entire EP Tyler was “guest vocals”, just on every song.
Harry: That’s nuts. I found “Spectre” the other day, there’s a saved copy—I think it’s on Codi’s YouTube from like eight years ago. Something song with Johnny Franck. That feature makes me laugh my arse off, I’m not gonna lie.
Paul: That’s actually a funny story, too. I was a massive Attack Attack fan back in the day, that’s what got me into heavy music in the first place. Way back when—I was probably like a freshman or sophomore in high school—my now-housemate/business partner, he got together and pooled together for my birthday, they paid Johnny to write a dubstep track for me, ‘cause that’s what he started doing after Attack was just like electronic stuff. I was like, ‘yo, this is sick’, and then years later we needed an album intro and I was like ‘dude, I have something that will not fit the vibe of the entire record.’ It was funny, ‘cause we went into the studio for the first time with Johnny for Castle and we were referencing, like we did a rewrite of “Prayer of the Prey”, but there was an original EP version and we were referencing that like, ‘oh, just pull it up on Spotify and it’ll be easiest to show you what we had’ and he saw the first track “featuring Johnny Franck”, like ‘what the hell?’
Harry: He’d erased it from his memory.
Paul: Pretty much, yeah. It had been so long. I think it had been like three or four years since he had done that song, and you know, at the time he was doing dubstep tracks mostly for like bands for setlist intros and whatever. I think he put it out there and then on to the next thing. That was kind of funny. Dude, we needed someone to tell us ‘no’ for that entire EP.
Harry: The thing is, it’s not terrible in the sense that you have good music behind it, but like when you compared it to what you did with Castle…
Tyler: That’s what we’re doing in May, we’re retracking the entire EP (laughs).
Harry: Honestly. When I saw it got removed I was like, ‘are they going to harvest some of the riffs?’
Joe: There’s a part of me that wants to use that *guitar noises*.
Paul: Oh, “The Black Book”.
Joe: Yeah, that’s what it’s from.
Tyler: Make it a little more bouncy.
Paul: That was also like the first riff Codi wrote for the band, I think. We wrote that whole EP one summer and he joined midway through the summer.
Harry: I’ve got a question specifically for Codi, actually. ‘Cause you joined from Craigslist, right? What is it about the rest of the guys that sold you on the project? [7:50]
Codi: What happened was, so we live in Indiana, and there’s like very small towns, and between each town is like a giant cornfield, so nobody lives here. So finding another band member is few and far between. Anyway, I was trying to start a garage band with some kid a few towns over, and he left to start a cover band. I was about to give up music completely, because it was a lost cause, and then my uncle suggested I make an ad on Craigslist, an old member found me on there, and that’s when I met the rest of the guys. And it kind of worked out really well.
Paul: It was kind of funny because the window on that was so slim. I think had it been, you know, two years later, nobody probably would’ve still been using Craigslist.
Joe: There was a part of me when Codi showed up—‘cause I knew he was from Craigslist—and I was like, ‘this has gotta be one of the sketchiest things I’ve ever done on a whim.’ It’s just meet up with someone on Craigslist and have them join a band. I was like, ‘there’s a chance that it’s going to be some thirty-five year old—’
Paul: —Who just wants to talk about analogue gear all day.
Joe: So when Codi rolled up, he for some reason, he had in fake gauges and like this haircut. He was cut.
Codi: Still am!
Joe: Still am, dude.
Tyler: He’s still got it.
Joe: Yeah, I just remember when he rolled up, something about him, I was like, ‘oh my freaking gosh, this guy probably smokes weed. I’m scared out of my mind.’ I don’t know what it was about him, but I remember being intimidated. But he’s the fucking sweetest guy.
Harry: Thinking back. Obviously after the EP, you started doing the lyrics, didn’t you, Paul? Was there ever any initial friction to the idea of a concept album, or was it pretty much just like, ‘Paul, you do your thing’?
Paul: No, dude. Everybody’s always been really aligned with the direction, and yeah, we had this little meeting like, ‘hey, I have this idea for a concept album’ and everybody was super down for it, and people were just throwing ideas in and everything. Yeah, I think it was one of those deals where just having the context of the EP, we were like, ‘all right, we probably need to step it up a little bit and do something’. But it was a weird gap where Joe initially in the band was on guitar for that EP and so he was transitioning into doing vocals, but it was still a work-in-progress and we were really not fully-formed yet, just trying to figure out who was doing what. There was a minute there where Tyler played bass and sang, where he played keyboard and sang. We were just testing a bunch of iterations. That said, I was like, ‘I can just start working on story stuff’, because I’ve always been fascinated with the storytelling part of that kind of stuff, so I was like, ‘hey, here’s an idea’ and everyone was like, ‘yeah, let’s do it. Why not?’ It wasn’t really friction, but there was a moment in time where we had to sort of sit down like, ‘should we be Fantasycore or Fantasy Metalcore?’ Just kind of like stupid semantics. But yeah, dude, everybody’s super go-with-the-flow about that kind of conceptual stuff.
Everybody’s always been really aligned with the direction. […]
I think it was one of those deals where just having the context of the EP,
we were like, ‘all right, we probably need to step it up a little bit.’
Harry: Yeah, fair enough. It’s one of those things where you don’t know if it’ll be limiting until it comes to a point, but obviously you’re on your fourth album and you haven’t rehashed any ideas yet.
Paul: Yeah, that’s part of why we kind of wrapped up the trilogy to be honest. I’m really happy and proud of all of the records and all the songs and how they all came to be, and it got to the point where it’s like, ‘all right, if we write another album about a medieval knight, there’s gonna be some overlap and we’re gonna start like, not breaking fresh ground.’
Tyler: ‘This is starting to sound familiar here.’
Paul: To a degree, that’s kind of a storytelling cornerstone. There’s only four stories in existence kind of deal, or whatever it is. So there’s always going to be some sort of ‘person is on a quest’ or ‘internal struggle’, ‘external struggle’, ‘environmental struggle’, or whatever. There’s all these archetypes, but just shaking up the setting, shaking up some of the character decisions and all that kind of [stuff] has helped breathe some new life into it, to the degree that now we’re fully just like… part of the reason we have so many ideas about where to go with the new stuff is because we’re trying to lean into this multiverse feel of anything is on-limits as long as it’s somewhat fantastical. Yeah, just have as much fun with it as we can.
Harry: Was not wanting it to become stale one of the reasons you switched to Lee [Albrecht] for the new album? Or was it a general thing? [14:15]
Tyler: That’s a good question.
Paul: Yeah. Not even. Johnny [Franck] just like kinda…
Tyler: I was gonna say, his project [Bilmuri] started consuming more and more of his time, and it was evident that was what he wanted to focus on anyways, and we already had our foot in a little bit with Lee, ‘cause he had jumped in at some spots throughout the albums and stuff like that. Feedback wise, anyway. But then, yeah, he was like, ‘you guys should check out Lee’, and that’s when we popped over. And everything has been history since.
Paul: Initially the plan for the entire new record that we just finished, in the process of releasing… the idea was that we would go to Lee for all the instrumentals and then we would block out two weeks and go to Johnny and have him do vocals. But then we just did like scratch vocals at Lee’s and we’re like, ‘oh, this sounds great’.
Tyler: ‘Yeah, we’re just gonna sit here.’ Lee’s been awesome.
Harry: How do Lee and Johnny’s production and workflow styles differ. Is there a noticeable difference? [15:19]
Joe: Lee is so fucking meticulous. Johnny is too, but Lee’s so meticulous about instrumental tracking. I feel like we spend minimum ten hours on one day just for instrumentals, where Johnny was like, ‘that’s your eight.’
Tyler: We kind of had this formula with the first three albums where we’d go in and spend two days tracking a whole song front-to-back. But Lee, it could be, some of them go quick, it just depends. Then some of them can be like we spent three or four days on that song.
Paul: Johnny’s such a vocalist, whereas Lee’s such a guitarist. I think Johnny’s biggest strength is that he’s really good at soundscaping and all of our crazy medieval instrumentation—that’s just something that he gets, fundamentally, so that was really powerful for us, to have him on our side with that stuff. But then also, getting vocal takes out of people. He knows when to be like, ‘all right, Tyler, you can push a lot harder on that’ or, ‘Joe, get filthy with it, bro’ or whatever. Lee’s really accomplished vocally, in terms of production as well, but he tends to focus more on the instrumentation, getting all that stuff absolutely perfect. By the end of Valley [of Kings], we could do a song a day with Johnny. Full instrumental and vocals. It was just a very fast workflow, but part of that is because he’s sort of a ‘fix it in post’ mentality, like, ‘let’s get the ideas down, it doesn’t have to be perfect, we’ll make it perfect’ kind of deal.
Harry: We should probably move on to talking about the new record. You’ve described it as an anthology. Was the approach to writing the narrative to this one linear, or did you have a load of random events that you had to connect together? [17:16]
Paul: So this one started as, I knew the setting that I thought would be cool to do it in, and then brought to the guys. We all talked about it, workshopped it, and I was like basically, ‘hey, I’ve been playing a lot of Unchartered’. You know, trying to borrow more from those globetrotter, action-adventure genre pieces, and I had a general idea about where the album should end up, and what the protagonist/antagonist relationship should be. From that, dude, yeah, the writing process for the story on this one was way more intensive than the other ones. There were a lot of different nights where I’d grab the laptop, go on a walk, find a bench somewhere, sit down, and just force myself to figure out how do we get from A to B? And I would figure out ‘here’s a milestone in the middle of the record, here’s where it ends. What’s the connective tissue? How many pieces does that organically break into?’ That was something else that we had internal… not debate, but we were just trying to figure out ‘how long do we make it? We don’t have to do eleven songs if we don’t want.’ We could also do way more, we could do way less. It was a really intensive writing process, because I wanted it to work more like a novel. The other ones I feel like have a mythos feel, which I like a lot, but it’s very ‘everything is representative’, it’s apparent that it’s allegorical. There’s this character and he symbolises mankind or a world-view kind of a deal, and so if you don’t know who his father or whatever, it doesn’t matter because he’s not a real dude, necessarily. Whereas this stuff all the details felt like they had to be a little more tightened up.
The writing process for the story on this one was way more intensive than the other ones.
There were a lot of different nights where I’d grab the laptop, go on a walk, find a bench somewhere,
sit down, and just force myself to figure out how do we get from A to B?
Harry: You’ve got lots of mythological references and stuff. How detailed do you go into those with your own research, or do you kind of just adopt them? [19:22]
Paul: It’s a mixture. There’s some stuff that’s like super one-for-one, historical details that I try to pull in. What I try to do a majority of the time is take super heavy inspiration and then twist it a little bit, because the setting that we landed on for this is not quite a reality but it’s like one-degree parallel universe offshoot.
Harry: A bit like Marvel.
Paul: Yeah, it’s like all these humanities are still in place, and the world functions in the same way, but there’s some extra flavour. There’s a lot of like, you know, ‘I’m gonna research this historical organisation or this whatever’, and then how can we take… The inspiration for the bad guy organisation in this was very heavily drawn from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. That’s kind of tropic at this point almost, because they’re an easy low-hanging fruit for bad guys who use magic and wear scary robes. So it’s like how do we take that and contextualise it in a historical fiction sort of war?
Harry: The “Slumbering World” artwork, it’s got the Code of Hammurabi on it. Is that based on the Louvre—the Pyramid?
Paul: Yeah, it is. That’s where the clue hunt is headed. Elise has to… she works out through the stuff she finds out in “Where the Sky is Empty”—I don’t know when this is going to air but it won’t be spoilers at that point—the author of the book that is the key to unlocking that sort of final stage of the study. He works at the Louvre and she tracks him down, finds out that he was colleagues with her late uncle, and so he sort of serves as the next crumb in the breadcrumb trail. Yeah, the Code is housed in the Louvre, so that’s one of the… through our historical accuracy but then we’re like, ‘let’s take it one step further‘ and ‘how do we make a little mysticism appear on top of what we’ve got already?‘
Harry: What three songs do you consider the heaviest, the most melodic, and the most experimental on the new record? [21:51]
Joe: The heaviest would be… What’s Norway going to be called?
Paul: “[The] Absence of Light”.
Tyler: We’re so used to all the demo names. When you see the demo names for over a year straight and that’s how you reference it, it’s like, I gotta untrain myself to learn. But yeah, “Absence of Light” definitely the heaviest.
Harry: I’m super excited to hear that one.
Paul: It’s sick.
Tyler: Experimental, I’d say “Solomon’s Gate”.
Joe: This one today is not the most experimental, but it is sort of a new wave feel for us.
Paul: It’s definitely a different side of our sound, I think.
Tyler: And then, more melodic, definitely “The Strength to Bury a Friend”.
Paul: Really? I would’ve said “The Rival”.
Tyler: “The Rival” for sure.
Paul: In my mind, “The Rival” is the big banger chorus, just like super the one you find yourself humming.
Harry: You were talking about the last song. This is the first album where you haven’t actually had a title track. Did you try to have one? Did it just not fit right? [22:58]
Paul: Yeah, dude. Honestly, up until like maybe a week before all the finals were submitted for distribution, the plan was to call the record Solomon’s Gate. That was from the beginning, like years ago, when that idea ruminated. But then, towards the end, I don’t know, I was just thinking out loud in the studio with everybody. I was like, ‘dude, what if we had the sort of central book be called the Atlas Ruinica. Like that sounds kind of sick’, and everyone’s like, ‘dude, that should be a song name, maybe, or something‘.
Tyler: It stuck immediately.
Paul: I had a really hard time overcoming that mental hurdle, ‘cause for some reason I just love ending tracks to be the album name. My little monkey brain really enjoys that sort of callback. But I can’t remember whose idea it was to name the record after the book. Everybody else was like, ‘that should happen.’
Tyler: I remember there just being a storyboard of ideas, and then, yeah, I can’t remember who ended up pointing it out. It was probably me!
Joe: It was also a perfect timing thing, where it was like, dude, we’re on a new sort of story arc: perfect time to break away from that whole eleven tracks, last one album title type of thing.
Harry: How far into actually writing the album did you decide on the release structure. Was it something you went into it with, or was it kind of when the album came together you were like, ‘this would work’? [24:32]
Tyler: Selfishly, I’ve been pushing for a single emphasis for like the last couple albums. Pretty much since The Lost City.
Joe: After I brought it up.
Tyler: I just started seeing like… ‘cause 2017 was the first we started seeing playlisting becoming a heavy thing, and it wasn’t even as commercialised as it is now, I feel like. You had to go through a bunch of weird kinda roundabout ways to playlist. There was no SubmitHub or any of these convenient resources you could use for it. So I noticed, if this is the future, or at least the next five, ten years or so, then singles are the way to go. Focus on putting singles out, just ‘cause most people are going to have their one or two or three favourite songs from an artist, and throw it on their playlist or whatever, and that’s what they’re going to revisit. They’re not going to play albums over and over again. Not saying albums are dead in any sense, but I just think that there’s such a heavier emphasis on the individual curated songs. So I’ve always put my stake in that. But the metal community is different because it’s one of the most loyal. On Spotify it actually is the most loyal, when they were doing all these studies and stuff on the different audiences, so I think albums are still really, really relevant in the metal world, too.
Paul: There’s a lot of metal listeners, too, who I think are super traditional about… yeah, metal listeners want a record, and I think that’s cool. I like cohesive albums. I think you miss out on something if your album is just a handful of random songs about different failed relationships or whatever, if there’s not some sort of combined substance. I think it makes the sum greater than the whole of the parts, or whatever. Tyler has always been on top of the direction the industry is headed, and thankfully he’s spearheaded a lot of our promotional stuff. It definitely took some convincing, though. We flip-flopped a lot about it, and it wasn’t until we had everything recorded, I think, that we finally committed to it.
Harry: Since you’re the one pioneering it, Tyler, I was wondering: with inac, is it just going to be singles or are you eventually gonna try to put a record together?
Tyler: That’s a good question. It’s probably singles for now. I’ve noticed a theme in some of these demos that I’m still fleshing out for upcoming releases that I’m like, ‘this would be cool to do a little six or seven song thing, EP, or maybe drag it out into an album, too’, but we’ll see. It’s such a different format to the metal world, being in the more pop/electronic space, because you pay attention to artists that are kind of at the top or the middle of the top in the electronic pop world, and it’s always like a song every couple months or something like that, but it always does better. It’s like quality over quantity. They take so long to put out anything and it’s always one song but that song gets a lot of traction and they do a lot of promotion around it, so it’s a totally different animal to like writing out albums.
Harry: Were you ever worried about rolling it [Atlas Ruinica] out this way? I mean, it’s obviously given you some incredible opportunities with the marketing and stuff, but were you ever worried? [28:50]
Paul: Oh yeah, dude. That’s part of the reason we flip-flopped initially, or we were on the fence about it, is because it could easily come across as cash-grabby. We don’t want to lose people’s attention and have it seem gimmicky, and part of what we were trying to establish for ourselves is, ‘okay, the storyline kind of necessitates, or at least validates, this release structure and we’re not just doing this to hit more Spotify listens.’ That’s a great benefit, and I think that comes with the territory, but part of this story being way more methodical and all that is… you know, we find ourselves listening to stuff that comes out and it’s like, I hadn’t listened to that whole Volumes album until Joe told me a week ago to look into it more. I did and it’s awesome, but everybody is so stricken with the short attention-span, one song at a time, playlist thing. Ourselves included. Who’s even going to listen to an entire album if it drops all at once?
Harry: Has the fan reception surprised you? I know you were a little taken aback by how much theorising was going on in the Discord.
Paul: For sure, man. It’s always been like the story-writing has always been a fun internal thing. There’s always some people who are like, ‘oh that’s cool’, but up until this record I haven’t really seen people take a super heavy interest in that, and that’s super exciting ‘cause we put a lot of thought and time and effort into it. And if it was just us that cared about it, that’s fine too, because at the end of the day we’re just trying to write stuff that we want to listen to and we think is cool, and it definitely falls into that category. But it is also rewarding to see people take note and have fun with it, too, not just have it be like, ‘woah, sick storyline for six people to think about’.
It’s always been like the story-writing has always been a fun internal thing.
There’s always some people who are like, ‘oh that’s cool’, but up until this record
I haven’t really seen people take a super heavy interest in that,
and that’s super exciting ‘cause we put a lot of thought and time and effort into it.
Harry: Obviously you’ve got all the Sumerian and Egyptian references. I do Classics at university, so I look at them and I’m like, ‘am I reading too deep into this? Probably.’
Paul: We need to hire you on for the next record as a consultant or something.
Harry: I will do that for free.
Tyler: Just to side-note on it, because we’re talking about the singles and everything versus albums, but it’s kind of been validating seeing people throw out their theories on what’s going to happen next, and it gives each song a chance to sit out there and breathe a little bit, and everybody kind of chews on it. What’s going to happen next? Here’s where the story is, instead of it being like, ‘oh yeah, we found out what the story is, ‘cause we just sat here and listened to everything all at once.’ So it kind of keeps people engaged and interested, too, throughout the story side of things.
It’s kind of been validating seeing people throw out their theories on what’s going to happen next,
and it gives each song a chance to sit out there and breathe a little bit, and everybody kind of chews on it.
What’s going to happen next?
Harry: That’s great. Do you reckon you’ll do the next record the same way, or is it a bit early for that?
Paul: Hard to say, man. There’s like probably three concepts that we’re potentially gonna go with it, so it depends what we land on, but it’s been a lot of fun, I will say that much, and it really motivates us to stay in the trenches of the story-writing.
Harry: If you had released it in the traditional way, which songs would you have picked as singles? Did you ever discuss that? [31:58]
Joe: That’s a good ass question.
Tyler: “The Rival” would have been one of them.
Joe: “Sea of Fire” or “[The] Absence of Light”, I would’ve been pushing for, for sure. Or “Mazerunner”, dude. Come on, man.
Paul: “Tailspin”’s lit, though.
Tyler: If we were to follow our like what we did the first three albums, where we honestly did the heavier side of the album, then we did the more melodic, and then we would do the more kind of middle ground, quintessential mixture of everything, I feel like you’d have “The Rival”, which would have been the more melodic one, “Sea of Fire” as the quintessential, and then “[The] Absence of the Light”.
Harry: For any fans that haven’t actively been listening along to the lyrics and stuff, what would you say is the general outline plot of Atlas Ruinica? [32:55]
Paul: At its core it’s a murder mystery. Real cosmic gumbo. So there’s a woman, and her uncle is murdered mysteriously but it’s ruled as a natural death, so she starts pulling threads and it leads to a confrontation with this arcane, magical organisation. And it just goes all the way down this weird rabbit hole. Yeah, just globetrotter, action-adventure mystery vibes with a little bit of cosmic horror tossed in the mix.
Joe: Around the world in eighty days.
Paul: Around the world in ten tracks kind of feel, yeah! That’s how I would summarise it.
Harry: You once described each album as ‘man versus nature’, ‘man versus man’, ‘man versus self’. Do you have a tagline for the new record in mind?
Tyler: Girl versus cult.
Paul: Dude, I don’t know. I think as far as underlying themes go, consciousness is a huge deal, that’s a big part of it, and sort of evaluating reality. So it’s being exposed to new parts of reality, it’s observing reality in front of you and making decisions about what’s real, what’s fake, what’s important, what’s not.
Harry: A bit like ‘man versus empiricism’?
Paul: Yeah, dude! You’re on the writers’ staff for the next record, my guy.
Harry: So when it comes to the narratives, do you ever take inspiration directly from the sources, or is it an amalgamation of ideas? [35:07]
Paul: I take pretty direct inspiration from usually like two to five sources, and try not to lean too heavily into just one, because we don’t want it to end up feeling derivative, even if, you know, though there’s nothing innately breakthrough about an action-adventure saga. But, if it’s like Tomb Raider reboot plus Lovecraft plus The Chronicles of Narnia was actually like another—specifically The Magician’s Nephew, like that whole rings and portals and inter-dimensional travel, but all sourced through this sort of singular Yggdrasil tree of life type thing. I feel like as long as we’ve got a few sources that are equally being drawn from, then it tends to generate something that’s a little out-of-the-box.
I take pretty direct inspiration from usually like two to five sources, and try not to lean too heavily into just one,
because we don’t want it to end up feeling derivative. … I feel like as long as we’ve got a few sources that are
equally being drawn from, then it tends to generate something that’s a little out-of-the-box.
Harry: Speaking of portals, since the new song comes out tomorrow: at the end of “Where the Sky is Empty”, you mind letting us know what the portal in the sky is about?
Paul: Yeah so, without nerd-jacking too hard, the standalone song that we did called “Through Inferno”, that track in the context of the new record… we used it as connective tissue from the old trilogy to the new material, but essentially canonically what happened is that that song is written from the perspective of a man who is fleeing from this cult that is the antagonist force in the new record, and he’s stolen their big secret, their sacred text. And he takes it through a portal to escape the pursuant and to hide it. It’s one of those ‘it can’t be created or destroyed’ scenarios, so he’s got to hide it. He hides it, and he’s basically a transplant from the Pneuma-verse into this sort of parallel contemporary universe. Portals are a huge piece of plot for this new record, so he comes through one of those portals, the book is sent through one of those portals. Just, in general, this is another historical thing that we’ve been borrowing from, but the idea of gates in ancient human history. It’s a lot of, you know, they were thought to be portals for the soul kind of deal, like your gates of Ishtar, even Egyptian gates and monolithic Anglo-Saxon things. All that stuff was meant to be passageways. So we’re trying to pull that lore, that mythos, and give it this modern, practical spin. When the whole uncle dying and vanishing, that’s what’s being depicted at the end of that song. Elise is sort of seeing to the other side and communicating with him a little bit.
Portals are a huge piece of plot for this new record … This is another historical thing that we’ve been borrowing from, but the idea of gates in ancient human history. They were thought to be portals for the soul kind of deal, like your gates of Ishtar, even Egyptian gates and monolithic Anglo-Saxon things. All that stuff was meant to be passageways. So we’re trying to pull that lore, that mythos, and give it this modern, practical spin.
Harry: You spoke about “Through Inferno” briefly. You did a video rundown of that. Are you gonna be doing video rundowns for the tracks on this album or is it going to be liner notes like the last albums? [38:34]
Paul: Yeah, I think on the song-by-song basis we’ll do the liner notes, and then probably at the end we’ll do a whole summation video.
Joe: Nothing confirmed, but we do be talking about maybe compiling the album story notes and putting them with the physical release on this one. I think that would be a lot of fun.
Harry: Is there a vinyl press possibly in the works? [39:07]
Paul: Yeah… We’ve talked to Jarrod [Alonge] already a little bit. Basically, we need to gauge the demand more accurately. It’s still super early to figure out… you have to sell like a minimum quantity of records to make it viable. It’s definitely something we want to do.
Harry: Obviously you’re named after The Wise Man’s Fear book by Patrick Rothfuss. Have you all read the books?
Codi: Does Paul count as like five members?
Tyler: I’ve read The Name of the Wind and then the first third of The Wise Man’s Fear.
Joe: I just cracked Name of the Wind.
Harry: I think the first one is better. No offence.
Paul: Dude, yeah, the pacing in the first one I like a lot more, actually.
Harry: The only problem I have with the second one is the bit of self-insert sexual fantasy with the fae, but you know, we love Patrick Rothfuss.
Joe: *Typing on his phone* So this is called The Wise Man’s Fear?
Harry: Do you know if Pat’s aware of the band at all?
Tyler: I feel like he’s gotta be, because when you look it up on Google or anything it’s neck and neck. The book pops up and then a song from us is underneath. He’s gotta see that.
Joe: I’ve never thought about that but you’re right. On anything: Google, YouTube.
Paul: We were mostly just scared of a lawsuit for the first few years until nothing… But actually, so they have Gen Con here in Indianapolis. It’s just this massive convention for comic books and everything. But he was hosting a panel in 2015, right when our first record came out, so I was going to go and give him a copy of Castle, but then that ended up being the day that we played that Indi Warp Tour date.
Harry: You should’ve taken posters of the record art and pinned them over the posters.
Paul: Little hand-drawn The Wise Man’s Fear panel #2 is happening in Room…
Joe: What would you do if you got there and he was like … ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BRAND?’
Paul: I was worried about that for a long time, that we were gonna get a cease and desist or something. Never thought of a good backup name, though.
Joe: Name of the Wind! I lowkey when we were shooting ideas back and forth on the name, I distinctly remember in my head I was like, ‘The Name of the Wind’ is a badass band name. Wouldn’t it be so funny if that cease and desist came back and we were A Name of the Wind. A Wise Man’s Fear.
Harry: So we’ve talked about literary influences, but what about musical influences? Because you guys are all over the place. [46:33]
Tyler: I feel like we all listen to a bit of everything. Honestly, recently, I’ve just been listening to metalcore, though. I go through phases where I just listen to a lot of like pop or even more electronic music, but recently it’s been all metalcore.
Joe: I like a lot of metalcore, deathcore. Always hip-hop. My recent musical development is anime OPs. Big time, dude. Vinland Saga “Mukanjyo”, that is a banger, man. I don’t know if you watch that.
Harry: I haven’t watched it yet. It’s on my list.
Joe: It’s a slow burn. I think it really compensates with with really fucking good character development and the animation on it is insane, dude.
Harry: What about Paul and Codi?
Paul: I’m kind of in the same boat as Joe. Lot of metalcore, deathcore, post-hardcore. I like a good share of piano music, though. The contemporary classical vibe, depending on the mood, really hits.
Harry: I remember coming across The Lierman Brothers on Spotify.
Tyler: Yeah, viral sensation.
Harry: That was a deep cut.
Paul: No kidding, dude. You’ve done your freaking homework.
Joe: Speaking of which, you [Paul] did a little panflute last weekend.
Paul: Yeah, yeah. I had my brother over, and I’ve got a little recording setup in the room, and he just came up over to the house, slammed a bunch of beers, and started recording something. So that’s not done yet, but hopefully we’ll have a song done sooner than later.
Harry: That flutedown on “Tree of Life” still makes me laugh.
Paul: Dude, that’s one of the all-time great moments in my opinion from any of the songs we’ve done.
Tyler: Great moments in the band. We were having a crisis if we actually should put it in there or not. The band was divided.
Harry: Is there any weird instrument that you’ve tried to add to a record that hasn’t worked yet that you would like to? [50:14]
Tyler: Honestly, we tried to really make the didgeridoo. We found a sick idea on Splice that we were going to go in and recreate, but it just didn’t end up working out. We were probably way too hyped on it. We felt like we were forcing it.
Paul: I feel like there’s plenty of stuff we’ve tried. Even actually the breakdown of “Tailspin”.
Tyler: Oh, that’s what I was talking about. The sitar! Not didgeridoos, sitar.
Paul: But also didgeridoo. We tried to get that to work in Norway [“The Absence of Light”] for a long time.
Tyler: It just didn’t end up working. I personally was like, ‘I like where it’s going’, but we couldn’t get everybody in a consensus.
Paul: Lee didn’t like the energy of that sitar sample, either, which was fair. The chant ended up being really heavy. But honestly, I feel like the plane impact made that breakdown anyway. It probably wouldn’t have mattered what we put there. I still have that sample saved somewhere, I want to use it for something.
Harry: You mentioned Norway a second ago. I have to ask about “Absence of Light”. Was that a pre-emptive ‘we want to do an exceptionally heavy track’ or did the track come first and then you build around it?
Paul: Even circling back to that conversation we were having about the record, development of the plotline and all that stuff, we wanted to do a Norwegian black metal inspired track.
Joe: That’s something we’ve wanted for a minute.
Paul: Exactly. Me and Joe especially. We will dabble with some of that blackened deathcore vibe, and so, we were just like, ‘we just need to have one where it goes hard, and we can just have the plot point be in Norway’, which actually ended up being a really good springboard in both directions to connect the beginning to the end. Just having Joe go feral mode.
Joe: What’s funny, though, is that it’s the heaviest song on the album but I don’t think that’s my best vocal performance on the album. I think that’s on “Sea of Fire”. Still be smacking, though. Also, this one, ‘cause every album has the heavy song—“Chaotica”, “Bloodlust”, “Firefall”—and on this one we were like, ‘heavy heavy song, but with cleans on it.’ It’s got Mr. Eads sprinkled in the mix, too. I’m really excited for it.
Harry: I’m really interested to hear how a black metal song works with Lee’s production.
Joe: Very well.
Harry: Black metal is just one of those things where it’s like the worst production you’ve ever heard.
Paul: Oh dude, right? Which makes it so cool when there’s actually really great production behind it. That’s one thing that’s kept me from getting into true black metal. It just sounds like ass and that’s part of the equation.
Joe: Yo, this Fender amp from the 90s? Mic it up with a Garage Band mic. Sounds badass.
Harry: Would you say there’s any one track from across your discography which you would say defines your sound? One that springs to mind for me is “The Deepest Dark”, and that’s ‘not’ because it’s my favourite. [54:33]
Tyler: Still the most slept-on song.
Paul: Dude, agreed. That was Codi’s brainchild on The Lost City, too. He wrote that whole thing from start to finish. I don’t know that we changed anything about it. Honestly, Codi, I’d be interested to know your answer to that.
Codi: On this new record I’d probably say “Sea of Fire”.
Joe: For some reason, I think the title track on Valley. It’s got a little bit of all of it, man.
Tyler: I’ve always seen songs like “[The] Relics [of Nihlux]” and “Blackroot Forest” as a quintessential mix of sound, where you kind of have a nice fifty-fifty split, vocally anyways. Instrumentally it’s got the heavier moments, then the softer moments.
Joe: Also, “Relics”. I would actually switch my answer to “Relics”, because that had a little bit of everyone musically. I remember I did the vocal demo for that before there was really any album talk. Codi just had this cool instrumental and I was like, ‘I wanna get cracking on something’. I took some of your scrapped lyrics and I was like, ‘I just remember the thorn of land’s side breakdown’. I was so in the zone and really liking everything that I came up with, and then Tyler and I workshopped it and added the 808 with the bridge on it.
Tyler: Yeah, so to touch on that, ‘cause we were talking about how we go about writing our songs typically. But those are the songs that I mentioned where it actually was a really equal collaborative effort between everybody. It wasn’t ‘here’s an idea that somebody wrote’ and then we built on it, or ‘here’s one that’s fully written out’. This one was like, I remember getting ideas from Codi and then I went in and added the chorus. Then Joe came over and we built the whole bridge section out. It felt like the most collaborative. There’s a lot of songs like that that, but that one flowed smooth as butter.
Harry: Do you envision doing any more acoustic versions like “In Reach (Out of Touch)” down the line? [59:26]
Tyler: We hope to, for sure. It’s kind of been in the mix, but with this new album we focused on, and then also now, as we were talking about, we’re going into the studio in May. It’s kind of been one of those things where it’s gotten shelved for now, but we’re all still very interested in doing more of the acoustic stuff. We would love to put that spin on things. It’s so much fun.
Paul: Especially now. When we originally did that “In Reach” acoustic—that was Nathan that recorded it, and that was his first year of audio production school, so he knew like how to boot Pro Tools and hit record, but it was very not the same story as now. And with your [Tyler] inac production level, I feel like that stuff could really shine.
Tyler: We should do it.
Harry: If you had to pick one track from the new album to do an acoustic of, what would it be?
Tyler: “The Strength to Bury a Friend” is probably…
Paul: Yeah, I mean it’s all cleans. I feel like “Solomon’s Gate” would work pretty well, too. We’d have to do some arrangement stuff, that could be cool.
Joe: What if we took the arpeggios on “Mazerunner”?
Paul: That would actually be really cool.
Tyler: There we go. We’re conceptualising the acoustic album right now.
Paul: Honestly, I feel like “Sunchaser” would also work well.
Joe: Dude, I am actually really excited for “Sunchaser”.
Tyler: Okay, we talked about experimental. It’s kind of experimental but also going to be a familiar sound, “Sunchaser”, and so I’m really excited for that one to come out.
Paul: Yeah, this one was weird, because that was like you [Joe] and Nathan wrote the instrumental for it. Initially, it was like the concept for the Valley of Kings title track, and it just didn’t end up matching the vibe closely enough. It was like too happy. And so we sort of shelved it and rediscovered it as we were drumming up demos for this record and fleshed it out a little more. But that was another cool one, like Tyler was talking about, where’s it very collaborative.
This one was weird [“Sunchaser“]. … Initially, it was like the concept for the Valley of Kings title track,
and it just didn’t end up matching the vibe closely enough. It was like too happy.
Joe: It actually kind of feels like an anime opener. Nathan, I remember even saying by the end of it, ‘this sounds like a Miyazaki soundtrack’.
Paul: That’s kind of like his flavour of fantasy, is Miyazaki.
Harry: Due to the pandemic you’ve pretty much got two album releases to celebrate when it comes back to shows. I know you just booked your first Whale Bones show. Are you gonna be doing any Wise Man’s shows in the near future? [1:02:31]
Paul: Yeah dude. Actually, right now we’re trying to figure out scheduling for this, but we want to do a Valley of Kings release show sometime this summer and just pretend like it’s two years ago. The tentative plan is just like: do it in my basement, have SPAWN open, and just play Valley straight through and then have a listening party for Atlas Ruinica afterwards, so there would be some unheard tracks that people can hear, and just like everybody chill and drink some beers, and enjoy the summer.
Harry: You said about pretending it’s 2020. Did you ever consider pushing back the release date for Valley of Kings in those early stages of the pandemic? A lot of bands were doing it.
Joe: Yeah, I think the thing was, like, that album was done over a year prior to it being released, and we were sick of pushing it back. There were some options with SharpTone that was like, well, do it this date, yada yada. We were like, ‘let’s just get it out, man’.
Tyler: We were all super eager. Like he said, those songs were literally recorded and done in the end of 2018.
Paul: The masters were literally in our hands in early 2019.
Joe: Every road bump we could hit, we hit.
Paul: There was some internal discussion briefly, but basically what we arrived at was, ‘hey everybody’s trapped at home with stimulus money and nothing to do, it’s kind of a good time to put an album out’. So it ended up being all right.
Harry: What was the motivation behind leaving SharpTone when you did? [1:04:27]
Joe: I would say it was like right place at the wrong time, almost. I don’t know, man. I feel like when we dropped that album, since the world was shut down, it was kind of like, ‘well if we’re only dropping music with them, why don’t we just drop the music ourselves?’
Tyler: We couldn’t tour on anything. It was one of the big benefits.
Joe: We couldn’t tap into a lot of what we signed on for. It was all love with that label, man. I still to this day—probably my favourite label. Everyone in that label is genuinely, like they care about metalcore music. It’s not just some ‘here’s Black Veil Brides. Love it.’
Paul: They had a three-option contract with us, so if they wanted to they could be like, ‘no, make more albums for us.’ Literally, we hopped on the phone with the owner of the label and he’s like, ‘oh yeah. Totally get it. You guys do what’s going to be best for the band. We don’t want to be standing in any way between you guys and what you want to do. You’re always welcome back’ kind of deal. You just don’t hear about that.
Tyler: Literally the best-case scenario.
Paul: But, our motivation for signing in the first place was you know, we were thinking financially, obviously a label’s gonna take a lot of proceeds from a record and you have to recoup on the cost first. So we knew we weren’t going to make a lot of money on Valley, but we were like, ‘that’s okay, we can take a wash because of these touring options and all of these avenues’, but it just didn’t end up working obviously, because of COVID. It sort of felt like the window had passed a little bit for us to do heavy label-supported touring two years down the line. We’re still very interested in touring, it’s just something that we need to do at our pace based on what’s going on in our lives and being choosy about the kind of stuff we pick up.
Harry: I remember when you signed to SharpTone, I was kind of excited for maybe a UK tour.
Paul: I still hope that’s gonna happen someday, man.
Tyler: It’s definitely not out of the picture.
Paul: The bands that we’re seeing successfully model the independent route, that stuff’s way more within reality than what you might expect. We honestly now, it feels like we have a lot of good connections compared to a few years ago. So we know some good booking agents. The label, we got in touch with some good people through that, so when we really wanna hit the pavement and start getting out for shows and stuff like that, I’m feeling way more optimistic about our options.
Here we did a little lyric quiz to see if they recognised their own songs [Audio only] [1:10:26]
Harry: You have a few features on the upcoming record. Would you mind giving us a hint of a track we can look forward to a feature on? [1:18:47]
Joe: Technically “Tailspin” had some, from Jordan [Radvansky], right?
Paul: Yeah, he did harmonies.
Tyler: No, that was “Where the Sky is Empty”.
Joe: He was on “Tailspin”, too. A final Tailspin, a fiery glory.
Paul: That’s Nathan, dude.
Tyler: Yeah, Jordan wasn’t on that. So, Jordan Radvansky was on “Where the Sky is Empty”.
Harry: From Seraphim?
Tyler: Yes! He actually tracked some of the higher harmonies, ‘cause we were tracking our harmonies and he came in a threw some of the super gritty ones over the top and we were like, ‘hell yeah, dude!’ So that was cool.
Paul: “The Rival”’s got a feature. “Solomon’s Gate”’s got a feature. “Mazerunner”’s got a feature.
Tyler: Oh gosh, that’s another one I keep forgetting.
Harry: Is that the one with Nathan from SPAWN?
Paul: Yeah, it goes hard, dude. It’s such a cool part, too. It’s like very narrative voice-y, so he’s embodying a character kind of feel, and it just works so well.
Joe: I love his screams so much.
Harry: I need new SPAWN, Joe. I know you’ve got the songs done, so hurry it up.
Joe: Coming soooon.
Harry: How much do the features influence the song-writing? Do you write it with the feature in mind, or when it’s written do you go, ‘this would fit so and so’?
Joe: So far it’s been an afterthought, in a way. It’s kind of like, ‘okay, this smacks. Which song would work best with a feature and where?’
Paul: I think for every song we did all of the vocals—like Joe and Tyler tracked all of the vocals—ship it to somebody and be like, ‘hey, can you do this line or this verse or whatever?’
Harry: With “Firefall”, obviously you had Sean. So did Sean not contribute to writing that all? Because there was like a bit of a Make Them Suffer reference, wasn’t there?
Paul: Dude, that was me nerding out. They’re like Joe and I’s all-time favourite bands. He’s got the freaking Neverbloom…
Harry: Tattoo?
Paul: Yeah. It’s funny, I met Sean, saw them play Columbus, Ohio, briefly talked to them for a second, but then I did a little trip in Germany, just solo travelling, and I caught them twice—once in Frankfurt, once in Berlin—and I was talking to him and I was like, ‘yeah, I play in this band and, not to fanboy, but we really like your stuff. My vocalist actually has a tattoo of your… He was like “oh, I think I saw your music video.”’ He knew about the “Castle in the Clouds” music video, like he namedropped Castle in the Clouds. I was like, ‘bro, you wanna do a feature?’ Basically is how it went down, just talked to him for a really long time and then hit him up. Initially, we were on the fence about… he was talking about maybe wanting to do a co-write of the part and all that stuff, but it just kinda hit time crunch. ‘Cause that was like Worlds Apart time for them, I think. Yeah so, we just sent him what we had and I was like, ‘hey, here’s the sections that I think would be cool if you did it’, and he was like, ‘yeah, that looks good’. And selfishly, I stuck in the Make Them Suffer reference.
Harry: That feature is sick, because he does the first time and then he does it the second time with Joe doing it at the same time, and that sounds fucking gnarly.
Paul: Yeah, it’s so mean sounding. He has a very unique tone to his voice, but it’s just so intimidating sounding.
Joe: One of the hardest bleghs in the scene.
Harry: It’s no surprise you like Make Them Suffer. Do you guys listen to any other fantasy concept bands like Shadow of Intent, Coheed & Cambria? [1:23:39]
Tyler: Coheed, a little bit.
Paul: I love that first Shadow record in particular. Wait, what is the blue one? Not the first one.
Harry: Reclaimer.
Joe: Dude, the very first one they put out, “The Prelude to Bereavement”. I remember when that song dropped and I was like, ‘yo, this shit is fucking insane.’
Harry: What are you guys looking forward to for the rest of the year, music wise? [1:24:54]
Joe: New Veil of Maya, for sure.
Paul: D.R.U.G.S. has a new record coming out in June for the first time in ten years. I was very hyped.
Tyler: I was looking forward to ERRA and then it just dropped not too long ago, so I’m happy with that.
Paul: Is that whole thing out? Doesn’t Dayseeker have one coming out as well?
Harry: They do. It’s supposed to be this year, yeah.
Harry: If you could have one vocalist from any genre feature on a track, who would you have? [1:26:05]
Joe: Bro, straight up, my white whale is Pete Wentz screaming on a song. Also, Patrick Stump is like hands down all-time favourite vocalist for me. But yeah, Pete Wentz coming in on a breakdown or a bridge would be…
Tyler: I didn’t know this about you.
Joe: Really?! Fall Out Boy is literally my favourite band, dude. If I was stranded on an island and they were like, ‘you have one album’, it would probably be one of the first three Fall Out Boy records for sure.
Tyler: He’s always been a top five for me, too—Patrick Stump.
Paul: Dude, I feel like lowkey having Katy Perry on a song would be awesome.
Harry: Honestly, if you stick her on the Valley of Kings title track you wouldn’t even know a difference.
Tyler: I feel basic but mine would definitely be Jeremy McKinnon. I love that man still.
Harry: I’m not a huge fan of what ADTR are doing right now, but his vocals are iconic as fuck.
Round 2 of the lyric segment, where they try to guess the songs of each others’ side projects [Audio only] [1:28:30]
Harry: I’ve been a fan of Castle since 2015. What does success for you as a band look like in another seven years? Where would you want to be? [1:32:08]
Paul: Good question, man.
Tyler: I love what we’re doing now, where we’re constantly keeping stuff out in front of us, so to me that sounds like the goal, to keep constantly pushing stuff out, and if we’re there in seven years where we’re just like constantly still got something that we’re releasing, every year we’ve got something ahead of us that we’re working on—
Joe: —and still satisfied.
Tyler: Yeah, still happy with it and still satisfied with the reception. But at the same time it would be cool to be at a point where we could pick and choose some like cooler shows and things to play, too.
Paul: Yeah, some festival type things, too. Ultimately, I feel like it’s not super common to get a metalcore band that sticks around for fourteen years in general, so I feel, like Tyler was saying, just success seven years from now feels like we’re making stuff we’re still excited about, people enjoy it. I think there’s a component to it to that’s like, it gets to a point where it’s heavily subsidising our living, and that allows us to put more time into the creation of it. For me at least that’s a piece of the puzzle.
Harry: From what I’ve seen, you’re the band I’ve seen that enjoys making music the most, if that makes sense. You guys seem amazing friends that just, you love writing and fuck around.
Joe: I hate Tyler, but…
Paul: Every band needs a shitty second vocalist.
Tyler: I feel like that’s been the secret, the key to our longevity as a band, is that, yeah, we’re just having fun with it. So many bands set these deadlines for themselves, ‘if we’re not at X amount by this time’ then they’ll disband or get into these big feuds, whereas nobody’s super headstrong in this band. We just want to find something we’re happy to create together.
Paul: Even just expectations. We kind of talk about expectations sometimes in broad terms, but with us it’s like, ‘it would be cool if by the time Atlas Ruinica was released we had 100,000 monthly listeners’, and then the first song hit that and we’re like, ‘cool’. Everything is literally just have fun with it. There are a lot of bands that set expectations super high, and if they’re not met then they get super discouraged or angry or ‘this is so dumb’. We’re super lucky. I legitimately feel like every person in the band I could spend a full day one-on-one with and just have a blast. I don’t think a lot of bands can say that. It’s hard to find people who are likemindedly going to treat a band as a business and also preserve the friendships first and foremost. There’s probably ways which we could expand it as a business if we were like super hardcore about it, but it’s not as important as being friends.
Harry: Are there any last words or a message you want to give current fans and anyone who might be looking to get into the band? [1:35:42]
Paul: Dude, thank you for freaking sticking with us since the Castle days, man. It sounds cheesy but it seriously is crazy to us that people care.
Joe: Especially on the other side of the motherfucking globe, dude.
Paul: We appreciate the support from you and like people in the Discord and whoever listens to the stuff. It’s awesome. It means a lot.
I cannot thank Paul, Joe, Tyler, and Codi enough for hopping on and humouring me for a couple hours. It was an absolute blast. They tolerated my poorly-concealed fanboying for well over two hours, and in addition to the attached audio we got to trash Machine Gun Kelly, belt out “Misery Business“, and chat the shit about recent animated phenomena like Arcane and Attack on Titan. For all things metalcore and The Wise Man’s Fear, keep it locked on Boolin Tunes.
* Transcript abridged for the sake of brevity. All images credited to The Wise Man’s Fear.
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