As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special. …
At a meteoric pace, Melbourne’s Belle Haven have grown from local stompers to globetrotters. Those who were exposed to their post-hardcore sensibilities contained on their debut album Everything Ablaze knew this wasn’t a secret we could keep for long.
Last week, the band unleashed number two; You, Me And Everything In Between. Many bands in Belle Haven’s shoes find themselves squaring off with the oft rumoured ‘difficult follow-up album’, but according to vocalist David Vernon, the troupe opted for mind over matter: “We didn’t really think of it that way.
“We had very specific goals we wanted to achieve with Everything Ablaze, so when we started writing for You Me And Everything Between, which was actually before Ablaze had even came out, we had a whole new set of goals that we wanted to achieve. We weren’t thinking about whether we could live up to the hype, we wanted to write an album and achieve the goals we wanted to. It’s awesome to sit back now as a team and think, ‘Man, we did achieve all these goals.’
Given the critical and cultural acclaim that met Everything Ablaze, you could give the band for focusing on the exact same goals with album number two. Their mindsets had shifted for You, Me And Everything Between. “If you compare to Everything Ablaze, one thing we wanted to do on this second record was make sure the whole record was cohesive and everything made more sense.”
David dissects Everything Ablaze down to a few heavy tracks and a few lighter ones, broken up by “a couple of weird other ones.” But for You, Me And Everything Between, the band were craving a more focused output.
“I know I wanted to do something different I just didn’t know where to start. We’re fortunate enough to have Chris in our band, a very optimistic thinker. He has this way of making you feel as though not being positive is just idiotic.” [DAVID]
“We wanted every song on You Me to make sense as a group,” David says, “but also by themselves as well. We really achieved that and we’re stoked with it. Technically both albums are concept albums, technically, but we don’t really talk about that a lot.”
David Vernon/Belle Haven by Breanna Wallace
As well as subject matter, the band entered uncharted waters structurally. They took a peek under the hood of the band prior to the new album, to better understand what they do best.
“I had to work a lot on the way I was singing,” David says, “I know I wanted to do something different I just didn’t know where to start. We’re fortunate enough to have Chris in our band, a very optimistic thinker. He has this way of making you feel as though not being positive is just idiotic.”
An enthralling video prefaced the album, David discussing in depth his history of mental illness. The video was used to frame the album’s themes and was met with thunderous applause by thousands of viewers. Of which David wasn’t one. “I haven’t watched it yet, I’m a little bit too afraid,” he says.
“My phone has been exploding.” he says. “It’s a beautiful and ugly thing. Beautiful that so many people are opening-up, and they feel like that video has helped them realise it’s OK to hurt. But also really sad that so many people are hurting.
“Every person that contacts me, it’s a rush [in that] I’m grateful they want to confide in me, that they feel comfortable talking about what they’re going through, but that they’re also hurting as well as all these other people. It sucks, there’s a lot of pain in the world.”
It would appear that in the lead up to the next effort from Belle Haven, that the band have already achieved their goal of exposing the common thread between you, me, and…everything between.
Read our review of You, Me and Everything In Between here!
