We catch up with Shadows Fall’s lead singer Brain Fair on their last night of their UK tour with Five Finger Death Punch to talk about the band’s new record label, the Massachusetts scene and the future of Overcast.
Planet Loud – Good evening. How are things today?
Shadows Fall – Good times, good times, woke up not hung over, which is always good on tour. Show should be good tonight, I dunno if it’s sold out, but it’s close to it or it already is. That’s always a great way to start your day as well.
Planet Loud – Tonight is the last night of the tour with 5FDP. How has it gone?
Shadows Fall – It?s been great, we’ve actually been out with these guys since September, we did a whole US tour with them, and then we did mainland Europe, now the UK. We’re at the point were we could do each other’s set, we know it so well. It’s been a blast though; the UK run has been incredible, every show so far has been sold out and totally out of control so you’ve got to love that.
Planet Loud – Your carrying on a doing a few headline shows as well. You looking forward to them?
Shadows Fall – Yeah we’ve got two shows left, we’re doing Colchester and Nottingham, with Rise To Remain who are with us on this tour. Five Finger are heading home, but we have shows coming up in Greece, Russia and Australia so we had to fill in those few days before they start. It’s cool we get to go out and do full sets and have a good time. I love the church in Colchester, we’ve played there a few times, it’s always cool when you get to desecrate an old church with metal. It’s pretty awesome, we’ve had good shows there in the past, we were there on an off date from the Black Crusade two years ago, great crowd, the kids have a lot of energy. I think they don’t get as many shows as other cities so whenever you play there everyone comes, I always like that. Smaller towns even like tonight are always like that, you get that energy, and people aren’t spoiled, like in London there’s ten shows a night.
Planet Loud – The Massachusetts scene that you were part off was instrumental in shaping how metal has gone in the last decade. Is that something you are proud off?
Shadows Fall – It’s pretty crazy; it’s something you never really expected back then. It was honestly a small group of friends that happened to be in different bands, throughout high school. When one band broke up a few of the guys would get together with a few guys from another band that had broken up to form a new band. That’s kind of how us, Killswitch Engage, All That Remains all formed. We were always playing shows with Converge and Unearth, but back then you played to your friends and the other bands, there was no one else there. So it’s crazy to see how it’s grown to a worldwide thing. I mean we’ll end up in Japan with Killswitch and it’s like how the fuck did we get here. It’s pretty amazing. It’s cool that we’ve got to influence younger bands as well, because when we first started, even before Shadows Fall and Killswitch, when it was Overcast and Aftershock people were like keep your metal out of my hardcore, and why is he signing and screaming. Now it’s normal but back then you were looked at like a freak.
Planet Loud – What do you think of how the scene has progressed since those early days?
Shadows Fall – It’s a totally different world, back then you had to book your own shows and put out your own records. Most of those shows were at little halls or peoples houses and now Killswitch has gold records, we have two Grammy nominations, Lamb Of God are out with Metallica, it’s just insane, we never thought the scene would get to that point. Like when we started the only heavy music on the radio would be all the nu-metal stuff. But at the time that’s what was happening. So people would be like why are you playing metal with guitar solos and shit. But we were into melodic death metal and old school thrash and what was the original metalcore not what people thing of now but bands like Agnostic Front and the Cro-Mags and stuff like that. That’s what we were into so we kinda combined all those influences into the sound we have now. Now it’s weird because the new bands are like we can be as successful as the likes of Killswitch and us, where as when we started we had no plans of being successful.
Planet Loud – Much has been said about the Massachusetts scene and how all the bands are friends. Do you still get the chance to hang out with them when your home?
Shadows Fall – Yeah, you know I live right near Mike D from Killswitch so we see each other a good amount. Matt and John our two guitar players live five seconds away from Adam and Joel from Killwitch and they all hang out at the same shitty bar. So yeah we still see each other a bunch. We just played a show the other day in Kansas City that ended up crossing over a bunch of tours. It ended up being Killswitch, us and All That Remains and Five Finger were there caught in the middle of this Massachusetts metalcore sandwich. But yeah it is all just a group of friends, people still hang out and go over peoples houses on New Years and shit, so it pretty funny.
Planet Loud – Now your new album ?Retribution? was put out on your own label. Explain the reasoning behind this?
Shadows Fall – Well it’s sort of our own imprint but it’s through Warner Bros independent label group. Through the years we’ve done every stage. We self released our debut on Matt’s little imprint out of his house. Then we were with Century Media for years and learned how the indie world works. Then we signed with Atlantic and Roadrunner for one record which was more of a major label world. Now we realise all the things that work and don’t work for us. We were able to form a partnership with a bunch of people to do exactly that. We have a major label to do what they do well, which is retail. They get you into stores; do all the manufacturing for cheap. But that’s all that Warner does for us. We do all the every day stuff and license out to Ferret in the US and Spinefarm over here. They do all the promotion because they’re metal and hardcore labels so they understand what a band like us need and don’t leave out the smaller stuff whereas a major label is just going to push to get you on MTV and all the big magazines and for a metal band like us we don’t really need that shit. They would spend money on stuff we didn’t really need. For us it’s all about getting on the road, playing shows, we don’t need to waste a ton on radio edits and videos. Now we are in a place where the band owns the album, but we have a major label for what they’re good at and independent label for what they’re good at. So we make all the money first as opposed to a traditional record label deal when you get paid after everyone else has made their money and there’s a few pennies left after each album which goes to the band which you have to spilt between five of you. The other thing is now the band makes all the final decisions, it’s more work but you never have any surprises, you never waste any money with out knowing you did, so there’s no one else to blame but yourself. But the bottom line now is the bands best interest. We were lucky that we have been a band over ten years and had the leverage to make this happen. But a lot of established bands are going down this route. A few bands we know are asking us how does this work? How did you do it? Unfortunately for younger bands they are in a situation were the only thing out there is what’s called a 360 deal where you sign your life away. The label takes a percentage of your merchandising, your touring, your publishing and that’s because record labels don’t make any money, as people will just steal albums. Planet Loud – Are you looking to put out other people?s albums, or is this solely for Shadows Fall records?
Shadows Fall – Right now it’s all about Retribution, getting everything figured out, how it’s all going to work. But in the future we would love to use the Ever Black Industries imprint to either help out younger bands to get the same deal that we get. Where it’s like you’re going to be in control, we’re just going to give you a platform to do it. Or partnering up with established bands, and being like since we already have this infrastructure you guys will run it, we’ll just put our name to it, get a small finders fee, but really let them run it. But right now we’re focused on this release and getting the most out of it as we can. But in the future we’ll see what happens, hopefully we can create this new entity that is this band friendly record label.
Planet Loud – What do Shadows Fall have planned for 2010?
Shadows Fall – We’re going to be touring, touring, touring some more and then going back out on the road. After this UK run we go to Greece, Russia, Australia, then we get home and have the holidays off. Then we go back out on the road in the US with Five Finger Death Punch, hit all the cities we didn’t get to on the last run. From there we either want to do European festivals or get back over to Japan. Then in the summer we’re doing a big US festival tour which hopefully we’ll be able to announce soon. After that maybe back to the UK for a headlining run and then probably do one US tour and then pass the fuck out for six months.
Planet Loud – How do you find the European festivals compared to the US ones?
Shadows Fall – There’s nothing as big a Download in the US. They are well run and established here, where as in the US unless it’s a tour like Ozzfest or Mayhem that has been going a while and has it all figured out, it’s still a bit trial and error. There’s nothing like Rock Am Ring in Germany where you have Metallica and The Killers and it’s really mixed up. The closest things would be Bonnaroo, which we played this year. It started as a hippy festival then it became a mix of everything. We played on the same day as Snoop Dogg and Fish. And that was cool to be part of, yeah we had a rock stage with us Dillinger Escape Plan and High on Fire, but the other stages were really mixed up, and that was cool to see. I think in the US right now you could have a metal band play at a hippy festival cause it’s musicians and they would be into that, but you could not have a hippy band play at a metal festival, that would not go down well.
Planet Loud – Just quickly I want to ask you about Overcast. Can we expect anything more from you guys or was ?Reborn To Kill Again? it?
Shadows Fall – We never close the door totally; it’s really scheduling, that’s the hardest thing. Mike’s pretty busy in this small band called Killswitch Engage, you may have heard of them. Pete and Scott both have young kids, our drummer Jay would do it, he would go on tour right now. He’s playing in a great new band called Acaro, so check them out, he’s drumming better than he has even done in his life. But that if we are all in the same place at the same time we?ll try and play shows, we did a short little run of clubs last year and it was great, we all got back in the van again like the old days and it was a lot of fun. We’ve talked about writing new music but honestly I don’t know if we could ever recreate the vibe of where we were at when we were seventeen. It would have to stick the Overcast rules, which are, tuned to E, you don’t need to drop tune to be heavy. It would have to have the mosh parts that go nowhere, and don’t make any sense and Mike would have to go into a very dark place and writing some evil lyrics again, he’s too happy now. We could try, but we wouldn’t want to do new songs that didn’t sound Overcast and call it Overcast so we’ll see. But we’ll always down to do some shows when we get a chance, usually has to be a festival.
Planet Loud – Have you thought of touring Overcast, Aftershock and Blood Has Been Shed on the same bill?
Shadows Fall – We’ve always talked about that. We want to call it the Kissing Cousins tour. Where we have all the old bands, Overcast, Aftershock and Blood Has Been Shed, but then Killswitch, All That Remains, Shadows Fall as well. We’d get Seemless to get back together with Jesse the original singer of Killswitch, and Pete from Overcast played guitar for Seemless, and Derek who’s in Uneath was their drummer, so then you bring Unearth, so we’ll just have everybody. It will be the Massachusetts Massacre. Getting everyone together at the same time will be tough, and everyone will have to double down on sets. I’ve done the Overcast and Shadows Fall sets on the same festival and honestly I almost died but it was fun.
Planet Loud – Thanks for your time Enjoy the ret of your tour.
Shadows Fall – You’re welcome dude.
Interview by Simon Douglass
