HARD NOISE: SYLAR // Spawned From The Five Boroughs

Miss May I are set to make landfall in Australia in November for the first time since 2013. In a special twist the band will be bringing New York nu-metalcore (guys, it’s totally a thing) Sylar along or their first Australian run.

Born from the same school as Sworn In and Emmure, the band fuse their take on beatdown hardcore with hip-hop elements, creating a truly diverse and aggressive sound.

With two full-lengths and more road miles than is humanly possible under their belts, we took some time to get to know frontman Jayden Panesso, who filled us in on the importance of playing Warped Tour, dealing with mental demons during a touring cycle and how the band plans to approach playing a country for the first time.

Hysteria: I can imagine that downtime is really valued, especially after coming off the full Vans Warped Tour. What is the significance of a band scoring a slot on that bill?

Jayden: Firstly, we were one of the first bands to get offered it last year, so we’ve known about it since October but we had to wait until March. It was just so nuts to be a part of that tour. I grew up going to Warped and just hoping one day to be up onstage. So, to be out there doing the main stages of the tour and have such a successful run over the entire summer was just unreal. Every band wants to play it, so it’s massive.

Share some memories of Warped, attending as a fan.

I remember going for the first time in 2004 just to see Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold, and that was just wild. It was my first experience being around so many people that were just hanging out and having a blast making new friends. I also remember seeing Alexisonfire which area big band for me, along with like Underoath and Devil Wears Prada. I specifically remember crowd surfing during Prada’s set and the vocalist handed me the mic and I did a part and he gave me a thumb up, so experiences like that just stick with you. It’s funny because I went to Warped as a fan to see Miss May I, who we are coming out with, so that’s really really rad.

What kind of relationship would you say the two bands have?

We’ve never toured together but we have mutual friends and all. We have hung out and seen each other around. Hanging out in Australia will be really cool though to get to know them a bit more.

Just going back to Warped tour, you guys stated two years ago that you didn’t want to play Warped until it was the “right time.” Why was this year that time for your band?

The way I see it is that we’ve been grinding for so long, and we’re not afraid of doing a tour where we have to take less pay or whatever, because we started playing basements and backyards because we didn’t care. As we’ve been going we felt it was the right time because we had just dropped our recent record Help! which was the best record we’ve done as a band. The hype we were having from it was by far the biggest we’ve received as a band, so it just felt right. The crowds were getting bigger, social media was growing … I just feel that if we had gotten the spot one or two years ago it wouldn’t have been as successful as this recent trip was for us.

Dropping Help! cemented that platform. You guys have a reputation for racking up heaps of miles on the road. How did you balance writing and extensive touring this time around, whilst trying to prepare yourselves for the follow-up record?

We just take it as we go. Personally, I think you go through different ups and downs, so I try to capture emotions and how I’m feeling at different times. It could be like writing random journal entries on my phone, or even carrying a notepad with me and writing random phrases that turn into lyrics and songs. Overall, we like to make sure that we are on the right route on the road, and then as soon as we have some time off we go away and write new stuff. So, for example, we will have toured all the way from March through to August this year, which included shows across Europe and Japan as well as US dates, but then we got home, chilled for a week and then got into the studio writing new stuff. We try to use our time as best we can, balancing it between chilling out and making sure we keep progressing, because we have a lot of ideas out on the road, but it’s important that when we come home we put them straight on file.

We try to use our time as best we can, balancing it between chilling out and making sure we keep progressing, because we have a lot of ideas out on the road, but it’s important that when we come home we put them straight on file.
[ Jayden ]

Is going on an extended break something that could hinder the momentum you guys have?

We already had a good break after our first record. We learnt from dropping that album, which put us on the map but didn’t lead to anything to crazy, that was just a very hectic process, and it was hard because we weren’t really established, we had to change labels and people can forget about you. Everyone wants to be in a band, everyone can make good demos so it’s hard. People have a crazy attention span, and if you don’t work hard people will forget about you.

So, what does Sylar do to try and meet that attention demand?

We’re very keen on just spacing out things one the albums out. When we’re on tour we’ll make sure only one video is out, we dropped a cover recently—we kind of try to keep a balance of not overdoing it and utilising our platform to make sure we peak at the right time.

Referring to the cover in question, being Points Of Authority by Linkin Park, the timing was obviously very bittersweet. How did that come about?

Crazily enough, we’d just been jamming it last year when we were done touring. On new year’s day, we flew out to Cleveland and just decided to do a Points Of Authority cover for fun. It sounded sick, it sounded heavy and we sat on it thinking we would wait for the right time to release it. Unfortunately, the Chester thing happened, and that tore me apart. As a band, we just felt like it was the right time to pay tribute to one of our idols and donate all the proceeds of that profit to an established institution. We feel good about it now.

Touching on those mental health themes, Help! as a record clearly touches on some of those issues. Where those themes things that you were going through, and how did you process those emotions going through the album cycle?

It was a real weird time. It was around the time we transferred from one label to another, so going from touring that first record to suddenly having it all stop and we had to sit at home working day jobs, because we wanted to keep pursuing the dream, it just wasn’t fun. That shaped that record. It was a tough situation, but it’s cool to listen to it now because it feels very liberating. Although it does bring bad memories, it just feels like a relief. Some songs hit harder than others when we play them and bring me back to that moment, but that’s what we love so much about having those moments captured.

To finish up, it’s very exciting to have you guys come down under with Miss May I. It’s your first tour down here, so how does the band go about exposing their sound to new audiences show-wise?

To begin with, we are all very curious people, so we just want to show the people who we are because we are just a bunch of kids from New York City with our own persona, our own ideas and creative drive. We try and make sure we imitate the culture of the country we are in though, because the best part about travelling and touring is meeting so many different people from all over the world. It’s like “Hey, I’m here because of music.” It’s a universal language which is so cool.