CHELSEA GRIN // They’ll put a Smile on that Face

Chelsea Grin last hit Australian shores in 2013 supporting The Amity Affliction, and are finally returning Down Under next month for a headline tour with Melbourne’s Boris The Blade. Having just returned from Europe, vocalist Alex Koehler is happy to keep the PR juggernaut rolling as he relaxes at home.

“At the moment I’m just enjoying being at home man, we got home from tour a couple of days ago. If I’m home for too long I get antsy though, so being on tour gives me something to do and something I enjoy.” Fresh off their European tour, Alex notes his highlight as sharing the stage with Australia’s own homegrown heroes Parkway Drive, which he’s apparently been repping since Don’t Close Your Eyes (100 scene points right there). “We got to meet those guys and have some cool shows with them which was great. The festivals we played were in front of massive amounts of people, so it was a really pleasing tour. I’ve been listening to Parkway pretty much since they started playing, so it was great getting to know them and to play a couple of shows with them.” After being confined to the land of stars and stripes for a significant portion of their career, the band are well and truly glad to be hitting fresh shores like Europe and Australia. “We’ve toured the states countless times man, and although we’ve built up a core following here, we’re still kind of fairly new in Europe and Australia. So it’s really cool to see the crowds go crazy when they see us play to know that we’re starting to do well in those places.”

Their latest effort Ashes To Ashes has moved away from their earlier material and edged farther from the typical death-core mould. Some bands are afraid to alienate their fan-base, but Alex notes it’s part of growing more mature as a group. “The change in music is kind of like the change in times. With every year we get older and we develop more with our instruments. I guess that just becomes part of the product. We still want to put out a heavy record but there are certain things we like to experiment with. We pretty much just keep learning and keep developing over time so I guess that’s just how it goes as time goes by.” Deathcore can be limiting at times, and it’s clear that Chelsea Grin are more than aware of the trappings of their genre. “I grew up loving deathcore, but like you said there can be some aspects that become a little too repetitive to me. It’s another reason why we try and do things a little bit different. Although, we still like being heavy we like to add a couple of twists and turns when we write our music as well.” For one thing, there are surprising moments on the album like an acoustic guitar intro on Morte Ætérna. “We like throwing in random aspects to make it different, and to keep us from just being a ‘deathcore’ band. We embrace that, but we love throwing people curveballs that make people stop and reconsider.”

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“We like throwing in random aspects to make it different, and to keep us from just being a ‘deathcore’ band.”

[ ALEX ] —

With their latest record nearly hitting an hour in terms of length, the album can become a test of sheer endurance. Rather than giving fans a normal length effort, Alex reveals that it’s a reward due to the band taking three years between full releases. “Since we did take so much time since our last full length My Damnation in 2011, we wanted to give the fans a lot of material since they waited so long. We wanted to bust out as many songs as we could whilst still making sure the songs were still good songs, and not quick little fillers. With the writing you can tell which songs are going to better than others to be honest. There’s definitely a couple of songs that we cut from the record and used parts to throw into other ones. We broke them down into riffs, parts etc. and our next album will probably be the same.” Well that’s more than enough reason to try and get the scoop on whether the band have anything laid down for the new album. “We’ve been writing and working. We’ve got nothing really to show yet, but we’ve been working really hard and got a lot of blueprints—so to speak—for songs that I’m going to start putting vocals to. Pretty much just getting that basic pre-production down, and as soon as this year’s over, get into the studio and bust out a new album for the new year!”

Tickets to Chelsea Grin’s Australian headline tour are available through Oztix