Pierce The Veil

15 August 2012 | 3:00 pm | Staff Writer
Originally Appeared In

Pierce The Veil are set for a big year in 2012 after releasing their third full length Collide With The Sky. The album, which features a heavier side to the band has already been recieving positive reviews, proving that the band's risk taking has paid off. After just being announced to play Soundwave 2013 it looks like Australian fans won't have to wait too long to see the new material live. A few weeks before Collide With The Sky was set to be released, the band's vocalist Vic Fuentes had a chat with KillYourStereo abou the album, touring and the band's incredible fans.

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Pierce The Veil are set for a big year in 2012 after releasing their third full length Collide With The Sky. The album, which features a heavier side to the band has already been recieving positive reviews, proving that the band's risk taking has paid off. After just being announced to play Soundwave 2013 it looks like Australian fans won't have to wait too long to see the new material live. A few weeks before Collide With The Sky was set to be released, the band's vocalist Vic Fuentes had a chat with KillYourStereo abou the album, touring and the band's incredible fans.

Hi Vic, how are you? Thanks for chatting with Killyourstereo.

Really good thank you. Its no problem, thanks for having me.

We are currently a few weeks out from the release of Collide With The Sky. What has the preparation been like and what will these next few weeks involve?

The preparation was for us pretty in depth, pretty intense. We rented a whole stage set up and we spent about a week doing our full on rehearsals because our band, we like to put on a full on, planned out kind of show for people, to give them something that they’ll remember. So yeah it was pretty intense, but I’m glad we did it.

It has been two years since your last full length, but I read that you spent a lot of that time preparing this album. What was the writing and recording process like this time around?

For this record it was very long and had a lot of different stages to it, we did a lot of different writing for this. We did some at home in our studio in San Diego and then for some of it I actually flew out to a few different states to write with some of my band friends, writers from other bands that I really respect and I like to write with, so I flew out a couple of times to write with friends. We rented a cabin in the mountains, away from San Diego for months at a time, we would go out with each other or sometimes by myself and just write, do a couple of songs, just get away from any distractions, stress, stuff like that and then when it came down to recording time we recorded in New Jersey which is about as far away from home as possible as we could get, because we wanted to be just completely immersed in the record and that was how we did it.

You went into the studio with Dan Korneff and Kato Khandwala. What made you guys decide to work with them?

Working with them was actually, it was actually hard to find them because Dan’s name is not on a lot of records, even though he did the records there was always, for technical reasons his name was not on a lot of them so it was kind of through word of mouth that we had to find them and I actually had a long talk with the dudes from a band called Mayday Parade and they had recorded with him before and they raved about him and said that he was amazing and our record label recommended them so we kind of took a risk and it all worked out for the best, we had a blast with them.

For you personally, what inspired you during the process?

I kind of write as I go so over the last couple of years I have been writing constantly and that’s the way I’ve always wanted to do it, just to keep everything as clear and up to date in my life as possible so that I am always writing about real, recent things and really focusing on the real emotion and whatever else I’m feeling at that time so that way there are no songs that are just made out of thin air at this stage, that don’t mean anything, I like every single lyric to be inspired by real events.

What were you guys as a band listening to, reading and such while writing the album?

We listen to a lot of different things from hip hop to the bands that we tour with and I think that we get inspiration in little ways from kind of everything that we hear around us, so in that way nothing really in particular.

How do you believe Pierce The Veil has changed or evolved in the two years between Selfish Machines and Collide?

We try with each record to try something different and try to take a risk in our own personal ways, we always want each record to be different to the last one and it has to be better for us, we have to be like this one is way better. We went into the record with no real boundaries to what we wanted to do, we could try anything we wanted. I told Dan, if there is anything you ever wanted to do on an album do it on this album, really have fun with it, just don’t think that there is anything holding is back. So I think that’s kind of what made the record sound different than anything else that we have done.

Late last year Pierce The Veil signed to Fearless Records. What has it been like preparing to release an album with a new label?

So far we feel like Fearless have done an amazing job. It was a big change for us but we made the transition because a good friend of mine works at the label now and he became our A&R guy, so we wanted to work with him and our contract was us with Equal Vision so we had the freedom to do so and we just wanted to try and change it a bit and it is working out really well, they have been working noticeably hard to push the album and to make sure that kids hear about it.

On the album there are 3 tracks featuring guest vocals, what was it like to work with Kellin, Jason and Lindsey?

Each one was a very different process. With Kellin (Quinn, Sleeping With Sirens) we met through twitter because our fans kept tweeting us together saying that we should do a song together, so I didn’t even know him and I hit him up just because our fans were like “hey Vic and Kellin need to do a song together” so we connected through that and now we became super good friends and its cool because we get to perform the song that we did together every day on Warped Tour and its been awesome and Jason Butler from letlive. is on one of the songs and that came about because we were on tour together and between him and I we have a lot of respect for each other as singers and we talk a lot, their band inspired me a lot and I wanted them to be part of it so that worked out well as well and then Lindsey Stamey, she was in a band called Oh No Fiasco! who were actually recording in the same exact studio as us at the same time so we met her at the studio and she had an amazing voice and we needed a girl vocalist on our record and she killed it.

Is there a song off the album yet that really stands out to you?

Yeah, there is a song called “Bulls In The Bronx” and that song has like an entire full on flamenco, Spanish guitar section in it and it is super fun and it was a big risk for the band to take and I think it came out really cool so I cant wait to play that live, so that is definitely one of the highlights for me.

Do you think there are any tracks or stylistic changes that will surprise or shock fans?

I think that the biggest change is just that this entire record at the front has been perceived as a little more aggressive for our band, I’ve has a lot of friends hear it and are just kind of taken back by how much heavier it got in our own respect because we aren’t really a heavy band but I think that is the main difference from the last one.

Aside from vocals, you have also done some of the production and mastering for all your records. Is that an important part of the process for you to be involved in?

Yeah. Actually all the vocals on the album I recorded by myself in a room. Even though we had like three months to do our album we still ran out of time so I was actually doing everything like producing all the vocals just on my own while the producers were mixing the album and doing other things and it actually became a cool process because I was able to just be in a room and kind of not feel embarrassed about anything that I said or did or sang, so every vocal on that record was just done hand held, with a microphone, by myself.

You were last in Australia a little over a year ago, are there any plans to come back soon?

We don’t have anything booked but definitely I promise you we will be back as soon as we possibly can because Australia is my favourite place in the world to tour and I think seeing after last time that we were there we saw that we actually had some fans down there and we really want to keep following up on that and be able to hang out with people again and keep growing in Australia, so we will be back very soon.

Being on the road so much, what are the albums, or bands, that get the most play in the Pierce The Veil tour bus?

Well we are on Warped Tour and The Used has always been an inspiration to me since I was younger, I remember me and my best friend saying, “oh man some day it would be so cool to tour with them or go with the same producers that they use” and now we have done both of those things, we worked with John Feldman and we have toured with The Used and its really, really a dream come true to be able to talk to those guys and to just see how down to earth and real they are so that has been pretty amazing.

What does the rest of 2012 hold for Pierce The Veil?

Well after Warped Tour we go and do our first headlining run in the UK and then we will come back to the US and do a fall tour and after that we don’t have anything booked so hopefully we can get down to Australia as soon as possible but it is just going to be constant touring, our band is a very heavy touring band, we are hardly ever home after we put out an album so we are going to try and spread the touring around the world as much as possible.

Is there anything you’d like to add before we let you go?

The record comes out July 13th and we put literally everything we’ve got into it we did a lot of it for our fans because a lot of it was inspired by messages and letters and talking to them at shows, kids tell us that our music, having music in their lives has saved their lives and keeps them from depression, keeps them from suicide and that’s one of the things that has really motivated me to keep writing music because I feel like I need them just as much as they need music, I can relate to a lot of their problems and things in their lives so its definitely a give-take situation and a lot of this record is dedicated to them. So, yeah, hopefully they enjoy it.

Thank you so much for that and thank you for chatting with us Vic, good luck with the album and we look forward to seeing you soon.