Die EP der FOREIGN TONGUES erscheint diesen Sommer auf Vinyl und Kassette via Paper & Plastick. Letztere Version ist auf jeweils 200 Exemplare limitiert und kann ab sofort in verschiedenen Fassungen vorbestellt werden.
Der Stream sowie ein Interview mit den Labelkollegen finden sich unten.
Your debut self-titled EP was mixed and mastered by Jay Maas, who is pretty well known for playing guitar in Defeater and producing pretty decent sized bands like American Nightmare and No Trigger. Can you talk a bit about how you were able to get someone with a fairly impressive resume to help you out with your first release?
Jay is a great friend of mine/ours. I've known him for years through prior bands an whatnot. I hit Jay up personally when James and I decided to peruse this band. We knew recording with him would give us a real defined sound and also we knew we'd have a killer time recording. We did a lot of dicking around but even more crushing through all the amounts of drums guitars and vocals.
It seems that the last couple of years have had a lot of newer bands (Balance & Composure; Sainthood Reps) come out with releases highly influenced by '90s noise-rock bands like Nirvana, Pavement and The Jesus Lizard. Can you talk about the influence the band has received from that style and why you think it is making a resurgence lately?
I grew up listening to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Dinosaur Jr. etc as well with a lot of others my age. I feel the recent clique that is emerging is honestly the music scenes replenishing itself. More simplistic bands that sing are clinging to 90's rock band as influence because its in your face intense music but also at times rather simplistic. We've been getting really great responses from the public. Every time we play a show I feel like someone compares us to another band I wouldn't of expected, and that's rad!
The New England area is fairly well-known for a few generations of extremely strong and tight-knit hardcore communities. What is it about that region that it seems to be this breeding ground for hardcore bands?
It's always been that way around here. We all were in hardcore bands at one point, and I can honestly say its a great community. Amazing hardcore bands have emerged from the east coast and I know will continue too. I'll always love and support the hardcore music scene.
Can you talk about some of the lyrical influence in the EP and some of the themes that it touches on? There seems to be a bit of a trend of monotony in some of the songs; would you feel this is accurate?
There are plenty of touchy subjects lyrically that I wanted to scrape the surface of, but while I was writing I realized I held back from keeping things vague and wrote lines a lot more straight forward.
Envy - discusses mostly how human instinct always has the need to want more. It discusses mostly how I've felt in the past trying to please people, trying to obtain acceptance from a larger crowed. As the song goes on its more of a awakening that I won't live like that anymore. I am who I am and will never be apart of something I don't truly stand for.
Maps Of The Sky - is about the inflation of the price of living in America. It's me giving my heart out to all the family's out there who work 2 jobs and can barley afford to put a roof over their head. Man/women who work for corporations for 25 years, give their life to the companies only to loose their jobs to budget cuts.
Jealous Children - has a lot to do with self doubt. How I time and time again second guess almost everyone of my actions. Not really too much more to say for that one it's pretty straight forward.
You - is about the love hate relationship I have with a certain girl. How we can always bring out the best and the worst in each other. Near the end of the song it becomes apparent that I realize my sometimes hard to cope with personality but that this girl truly makes me happy and would be a little lost with out her.
There's A Hole In My Head - is another really personal song. It touches on how I always feel "stuck" never gaining or loosing anything. A constant struggle within my own mind.
The artwork for the EP is pretty unique and out there (and awesome) to say the least. Can you talk about coming up with the design of it and what influenced it?
Well we originally just had the little boy playing racquetball and were very happy with it. It was supposed to represent being young but working towards something. Around the time the art was being finalized my Cat had passed away. He was very close with me and all my friends. We sort of last minuet ask my friend Daniel Wagner to somehow work it in.. And boom. It turned out like that Haa!
If you guys could have a dream tour of your band and any other three, what would that tour be?
Wow setting genres aside I'd have to say: (in no specific order) Pearl Jam. Radiohead. Counting Crows.
The only other material on the band's bandcamp (other than a single from the EP), is a two-song cover EP, with "Incinerate" by Sonic Youth and "Feel the Pain" by Dinosaur Jr. What went into choosing to cover these songs for your first multiple-song release?
We didn't have complete songs at the time of recording the album, but wanted to give people a general idea of our band. Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. are some of my all time favorite artists. Feel The Pain was picked because it's the most popular song to do for Dino Jr and figured people would enjoy it. But Incinerate was more of our choice and just wanted to jam that song compared to most of their other hits like Kool Thing or Dirty Boots.
At Paper + Plastick, we are big fans of coffee and donuts. What is your favorite type of each?
I enjoy this because we are ALL coffee fiends. We all order differently but I enjoy a nice Coffee 1 cream 1 sugar. And am a huge fan of butternut donuts. Thank god for Dunkin Donuts.
