VANS WARPED TOUR-MISS MAY I

Thursday, 28 June 2012 06:34

VANS WARPED TOUR-MISS MAY I

By Pandie Suicide

Ohio’s Miss May I are back on the Warped Tour for their second time this year. Press Pass LA caught up with lead singer Levi Benton to talk new album At Heart, touring, and 'old skool' metal.

PPLA: How’s Warped Tour been going for you?

LB: It’s good. It’s our second year so going into this year is a lot easier because we know what we’re doing. It’s our first year on the main stage so we are pretty nervous, but kids have been awesome so we’re also really excited.

PPLA: You have a new album out. Can you tell us a bit about recording it?

LB: We just released it a couple of weeks ago. It’s called At Heart. We worked with a whole new team. We worked with this producer called Machine. He’s awesome. It’s cool because we always did the digital thing with Joey Sturgis which was great, but our whole thing right now is doing the 'old skool metal' so going with an 'old skool' producer everything was live. There was no digital stuff. It was all live amps, live instruments, and that made it sound a lot cooler. It was the longest we ever worked on an album. We spent two months working on it. It was cool to actually do pre-production because we’ve never recorded songs and listened to them before we put them on the CD. We just recorded them, put them on the CD, and sold it. Then a month later, we’re like ‘aw these songs suck’. (laughs) So this was our first time doing it this way. We’re happy with the CD because we recorded it, sat, listened to it, changed it and did that about five times before we actually put it out there. We were a 'real band' for a change, and it worked out really good so I’m excited.

PPLA: How has the ablum been received so far? (We know it's only been out one week!)

LB: We did Top 40 on Billboard. Everyone has been freaking out about that. It’s been only one out of ten reviews that’s a bad review. So there aren't really many bad reviews on it. We’re getting a lot of respect from older fans which is nice because we’re all getting older ourselves. We know we can’t be a ‘scene band’ forever so for older guys to like our band and respect us,well it’s just nice to get in that whole new world.

PPLA: Do you think that’s because you’re trying to do more of the 'old skool metal' thing?

LB: Yes. We’ve always tried to do the 'old skool metal' thing, but we’re stuck with- I think because of our age- these younger “scene band” tours. I think that’s what got us into that whole ‘scene’ thing so it's nice to finally be like ‘oh we’re a metal band’. We know we’re going to get older and our fans are going to get older. We’re trying to jump the gun and do it ahead of time. So to make that transition and have everybody accept that transition right now is awesome.

PPLA: What’s happening for you after Warped Tour?

LB: After Warped Tour we’re off for a little bit and then we go to South America with Asking Alexandria. We’re working on a headliner in the fall, and then we’re headlining over to Europe in the winter. I can’t announce anything officially yet but that’s as much as I can announce.