Tonight I sit down with Vocalist, Mack from All’s Quiet.
[Done Via E-mail]
Tyler: What inspired the start of the band and how long have you been together?
Mack: Basically, we started as just four 14 year old kids that just wanted to play in a band. We were all just super into punk music and Nirvana, and we just wanted to play music like that. We have been a band now for about 5 years, its taken us a long time to shape our band into what it is now [laughs]
T: Is there a meaning behind the band name? How did you guys come up with it?
M: [Laughs] I hate when I get this question. This a terrible answer, but basically when I was 15, I was on sparknotes.com reading a summary for some book I had to read for school, and while I was on the site, I decided to go through book titles that could be cool band names. I stumbled across All Quiet on the Western Front. We all thought it had a cool ring to it, like it just seemed to fit for a southern rock infused hardcore band. So we used that name, except we didn’t want to copy it exactly so we made it All’s Quiet on the Western Front. About 4 months ago we made shortened it to just All’s Quiet because that is what everyone called us anyways [laughs]
T: How has the band changed or improved since its beginnings?
M: I can’t even begin to describe how much we have improved since our inception. We were terrible when we started, but then this band wasn’t serious. Since then we have just worked extremely hard to always continue writing better songs, and always making our live performance that much more interesting than the last, so every new thing we do, tops the last thing we did. That is what keeps us constantly improving, if any readers want a good laugh check out: http://www.purevolume.com/theflamingjohnnyproject those are the first recordings that we ever did. This just proves how much better we have gotten since then [laughs again].
T: There’s a Twitter contest going on with you guys right now, if I’m correct. How’s that work?
M: Well the twitter contest ended this past Saturday, but basically anyone who re tweeted a message for us (RT @allsquietmusic LIKE VULTURES EP on iTunes NOV. 17th. New Song “Men of the Forest” and Preorder on www.myspace.com/allsquiet) would be entered in for a chance to win a free copy of our brand new EP “Like Vultures”. We are announcing the winners this week, so everyone keep their eyes peeled!!!
T: The new album “LIKE VULTURES” drops in 9 days. What are your thoughts on the album? How does it differ to any previous releases? What are fans in store for?
M: We are so stoked on this album, we put countless months into a very carefully constructed writing process. These are by the best songs we have written to date, and we are so happy on how they came out. These songs differ quite a bit from our past releases because for once they are actually written with a structure in mind as opposed to our way of writing songs which was just throw a part in if it sounds cool [laughs]. They are also much more aggressive musically and darker lyrically than anything we have put out. Fans are in store for a brand new All’s Quiet, something they didn’t see coming, but will love.
T: How was the album recorded, with whom? Was this self-produced or was their a producer in the studio?
M: We recorded the album at Spider Studios in Cleveland, Ohio (Misery Signals, Walls of Jericho, Drowning Pool, Etc.) with producer Tony Gammalo. We spent each day doing one set of instruments, and then a full day on all vocals. We did majority of the producing for this album, but Tony has a lot of input.
T: How did the writing process pan out and how much time was taken to record it?
M: We spent about 3 months writing and perfecting all the songs for the album. Basically our guitarists get together and throw ideas out until they have a basic song structure, and once that is done we all get together and finalize everything until we think the song is perfect. That usually takes a very long time [laughs]. We recorded the EP in only 4 days due to our horrible financial situation. We saved up for months just to get those 4 days, but the songs came out great, so it really worked out.
T: Are there any plans for a tour in support of the release?
M: Well as of now, we leave in January with our friends from Ohio in The Gunshow, and we have some special secret tour plans for February and March with some friends from down south which we are incredibly stoked about. Hopefully things will just keep getting better as the year continues.
T: How long have you guys been touring for?
M: Well being that we all just graduated from High School last June, we haven’t been touring full time for very long. Only a few months, but we have been touring on weekends and school breaks for the last 2 years. So we have a good amount of experience under our belts for as young as we are.
T: What’s the most fucked up thing to ever happen on the road?
M: On our winter icebreaker tour December of 2008, we were touring with our friends in a band called With Wings of Lead and we were driving to Stevens Point Wisconsin for one of our shows. We had been driving behind them all night. It was about 4 in the morning, cold as fuck outside, and pouring rain, and on the freeway when all of the sudden we smelled something burning. We thought at first it was our van and started getting really freaked out, but then With Wings of Lead’s trailer tire just exploded in front of us and started sparking all over. They pulled over and we pulled next to them to figure out what was going on. They didn’t have a spare, so we decided to drive a few of them up to the nearest Walmart to go buy one being that it was the only store open that early in the morning. Once we arrived in the parking lot of the store we were driving to go park when all of a sudden our guitarist at the time ran into a cemented stop sign and wrapped our brand new $2000.00 trailer with all of our gear around it. Basically think of when a car is driving 90 mph down and road then hits a tree that’s what it looked like. We had to spend the rest of the day prying it off the sign in the freezing pouring rain and trying to find a place that could potentially fix our trailer for cheap. No place could do it, so instead of canceling tour we put all of our equipment in WWoL’s trailer, pawned our trailer at a truck shop for $400.00 even though it was worth 2 grand, and we just continued in our van. We lost over 600 dollars that tour and it put us in a really bad place for long time. It was fucked [laughs]
T: How do you guys keep sane while living out of a van with five sweaty dudes?
M: [Laughs] that is probably one of the hardest things about being in a touring band. Basically everyone just does things to keep themselves occupied and happy. When you spend all this time in a van, feeling disgusting, sweaty, and sleep deprived, pretty much anything can get on your nerves, so we find it best to just try to keep to ourselves as much as possible during the day and like text, sleep, or listen to our ipods and stuff. Then after shows we just find places to get crazy and party to blow off steam. It seems to work out.
Also, our van has no stereo system and some of the windows don’t close, so that drives us crazy sometimes too [laughs]
T: That’s it for me dudes thanks again.
M: No problem, thanks for taking the time to interview us!!
<33Mack and All’s Quiet
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