ACROSS THE ATLANTIC // Like Re-Pinning A Grenade

There’s something beautiful in a comeback story, and when American easy-core upstarts Across The Atlantic are the protagonists, the script couldn’t be more perfect.

With the pressures of a DIY indie band becoming too much for the band to battle, front-man Jay Martinez recalls the realisation that the band’s second record Works Of Progress would potentially be his last, needing to turn his attention towards a sustainable career and work. What would come next was an international record deal, opportunities for hitting international markets and more flexibility that the band could have dreamt of in their five-year history. If there was ever an interview to inspire you not to give up on your dreams, this is it.

The lyrics of this new record are very personal about your own choices and doubts with how you were going about your life. Is this a cathartic new record, or is that tension still there?

I’ve got a story for you. Basically, we’ve been a band for five years and Texas is very hard for bands to get any ground because it’s very much a heavy metal oriented state. Gaining a following was harder, but we stuck to our guns and persevered in hopes of breaking through, and eventually, we did We just started seeing that hard work pay off- it was a five-year tenure before we got the label offer at the beginning of this year, so it’s been a stretch. I started this band when I was 19 years old and I had just begun college, so I was honestly just looking for a hobby. A lot of my friends had moved outside the city and I just had spare time. Our background was nonexistent, none of us knew each other before joining the band. We all met online through Craigslist, so because we had no prior standing our influences came from all over the place. We worked our way up the ranks from playing shows locally to a little outside town to going on full tours of the country, so we really had to scratch and claw to get to that point, and because we chose to make it a priority over the likes of school, over work, over relationships-the band always came first which was something we agreed upon very early on. If we were to do this it’d be all in.

So years progressed and we were losing money every time we recorded or toured, but all of a sudden you age and your perspective starts to change as you get older, and I realised that I was 24 and all of a sudden everyone had their shit together. My friends from high school were getting married and buying houses and I was at the point in my life where my only investment was the band. I questioned whether this endeavour made me selfish and less than my friends and peers and the people that I looked up to. For a long time I had a lot of self-doubts because we had a little bit of traction, but we still weren’t a household name or anything like that, so it was hard and I reluctantly reached out to people I cared about, like parents and family and friends, and I asked them if I was on the right track and if me pursuing music, if it was right. I was surprised by their answers because most of them were saying “you should focus on school and getting a job.” That for me was the fire to prove them wrong and that’s what I needed to hear to push me through. That attitude and mentality gave me the inspiration to write the record, and I realised ‘I’m 24 and in three years I’ll be 27, so I don’t know if I can do a whole new album cycle after this.’ Because eventually, the shit has to hit the fan. Eventually, the responsibilities and student debt will add up and I won’t have the freedom I have now.

I asked [friends and family] if I was on the right track and if me pursuing music, if it was right. I was surprised by their answers because most of them were saying “you should focus on school and getting a job.”
[JAY]

I wrote this with the intention that this could be my last, and because I wrote in that way, my goal and ambition wasn’t to get signed, it was more just to find some peace within myself and knowing if this was the last run, I could take some pride saying everything I had to say and that I gave it my best go. I left no stone unturned, so that mentality really gave me a freedom that I had personally never had before to say what I wanted to say and not care how people took it. I knew that personally leading up to the album, I didn’t share that mindset with my bandmates. At the time I didn’t want them to worry or have anxiety y or stress going to the studio, so I waited until everything was tracked, and I remember one evening I just said to them ‘I wanna be honest, I don’t know if I can do another two to three years of being an independent band. I just want to be real with you guys, because this could be my last one.’ For two days, the guys were on edge because nobody had seen it coming. As fate would have it, two days after that I got a call from an area code that I had never recognised, and it was a Nuclear Blast rep who personally gave us the label offer then and there. It was a crazy turn of events how things turned out, but it needed to happen that way. I think we’re a better band and I’m a better artist and the record is better because of how that all worked out.

Given that you have been an independent band for so long, how is getting this record deal going to change things?

More than anything it gives us the freedom to explore markets outside of America, which was the main priority and consideration for us when we thought about who to sign with. I wanted to make sure that it was a high priority for us to get out of America and play new places, as much as playing here, because that can pigeon-hole bands that just focus on their home-turf, and for us, the sentiment has always been bigger than that. I really envisage spreading our music everywhere. Diversity is lacking in America now, and if we can help bridge that gap and build some sort of unity, what better reason? When I think about it, for the name and what I think of when I think of the band and, music is universal. When you hear a good band, it moves you regardless of age, ethnicity, background or whatever. I think music is universal and it’s one of the few things in life that has the power to grab you by the balls and take you on a different journey. We made sure that our message and our music wasn’t just boxed in. That’d be a disservice not just to us but to everybody else who had supported us up to that time.

The new record is very honest and personal. In terms of transitioning into adulthood, how heavily has the band played a part for the better?

For the entire idea of a work in progress, where I was coming from when writing the record was capturing the moments when you are 24 that stand out the most. Everything that stood out and meant something to me, I wanted to make sure that I touched on it, and that included the good and the bad. I think that particularly in America with social media, everything is so regulated, everyone writes about how great their life is and how awesome it is to get so many likes, and then on Instagram, everybody has the perfect picture, holiday body and all. It’s a very dangerous thing because somebody who isn’t having the best of luck could feel that their different, or when the shit hits the fan, that they’re doing something wrong. For me, it was important to expose myself 100%. That’s what I wanted to do in hope to show what has captured my life. When we thought about album titles, there’s so much diversity on this record, and all the emotions in life left me trying to figure out how to tie it all together.

I remember just sitting back and listening to all these different demos and the lyrics took me to different memories, and I realised how much my perspective has changed. You just look at shit differently, and it made me realise ‘I’m just a work in progress.’ I thought I had my shit together in high school, and now look where I’m at. Even in the present day, it’s important that we all not only realise that we have a chance every day to better where we are at, but also know that if things aren’t going well it’s not the end of the world. We can change shit. We have that freedom and that’s really cool. That was the concept behind the record and how I viewed myself. Regardless of your luck, I think it goes without saying that we don’t take enough time with ourselves to reflect on what we can achieve. We pin ourselves up against what’s considered perfect, like the celebrity, and we compare it. It’s so easy to just become so discouraged. We just feel like we settle and are not good enough. The revelation that made the biggest difference to me was realising it was all bullshit. What’s considered perfection is bullshit, and what matters is how you view yourself. If you’re happy then fuck it. That’s what I hope to convey with this record.

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