SLEEPING WITH SIRENS // Clawing Up From Despair

Post-hardcore titans Sleeping With Sirens have just released their newest studio album Gossip.

Teaming up with one of the top producers of heavy music David Bendeth, Gossip is a massive leap forward for the band who set out to write their most mature music to date. The common consensus appears to be that that goal was achieved. Though dark and brooding, Gossip is far from negative or depressed. Hell, it’s hopeful. Gossip, as guitarist Nick Martin explains to us is essentially the sound of Sleeping with Sirens all grown up. We caught up with Nick to chat about the album while the band were preparing for their headline show in New York City.

MORE: Read Sleeping With Sirens review of their latest album Gossip here.

Hysteria: Gossip is mere hours away from release here. You must be stoked to finally be getting this thing out.

Nick: I’m so happy. As we speak, I have a smile on my face. I’m just so excited man. It feels very special right now. And it feels, like just you telling me that it comes out, obviously it does come out earlier there, so that just hit me so hard. God, this is so exciting. We have been sitting on this album for a while now and it feels good to finally have that moment where it’s gonna come out and we can press on and move forward with pushing the album.

The songs on this records seem so mature. They seem like you guys have aged 50 years between albums. I imagine a lot of stuff has happened between in the band and members and in your lives and personal lives to be able to create this album. 

I think everything you just said. That’s a big part of it. The band has been around for so long and where the band was eight years ago when they started. It’s funny today someone made the joke that eight years in a musician’s life is like 20 years in dog years. We’ve been doing this for over 20 years in our brains and like what we’ve experienced. Kellin [Quinn, vocalist/keyboards] is in his early 30’s now. I’m in my mid-30’s. We are not kids anymore so I think that reflects very much so through the music now. And it’s not just musically but also lyrically. The things that Kellin has experienced in his life over the past year to year and a half. He always mentioned that he is not a boy anymore. He is a man. He has had to experience a lot of things that has made him realise that he is much more grown up now. He has gone through real life adult shit. And I think that’s very apparent on the new album and that’s something that we are proud of. We are not gonna act like we are adolescents anymore. We are gonna write what is exactly going on with us and keep it tried and true to where we are at in our life.

You could say that Gossip is what Sleeping with Sirens sounds like in their 30s.

We are very adamant about that we don’t want to create the same albums over and over. We are going to keep on creating what it is that we want and where we are at in our lives and honestly I think that album definitely reflects that.

“We are not gonna act like we are adolescents anymore. We are gonna write what is exactly going on with us and keep it tried and true to where we are at in our life.”
[NICK]

Really interesting that you guys work with David Bendeth for this album. I’ve heard a lot of crazy stories about what it’s like to work with this guy. How he is not just the kind of producer that sits back and just dwells in the studio. He gets all up in your shit. He challenges you. He pushes you. What was it like for you guys working with him?

That’s exactly it. He is a producer that does not take the back seat at all. He’s very much a driver. He is a motivator. He inspires us. We had heard those horror stories from other bands with him in the studio. Bendeth has shared a lot of those stories with us as well. But, it really wasn’t to scare us. I think for him, he has worked with so many amazing artist. His background just in general with being a musician, the people that he has performed with. Where he likes musicians to be at in the studio is at a very high level and that really means being very present and pushing yourself. What he was really great about. I feel like he is like a psychiatrist, like a psychologist type, where he psychoanalyses you at the beginning of the process. Within a few minutes of talking to him he knows where you should be at.

Oh Jesus…

I think that he feels like, ‘Nick Martin, he can accomplish this and I know that I can push him to get to that point, so I’m going to do that.’ He does for each one of us. I’ve been doing this for a really long time. I’m definitely not cocky in my playing abilities. I always feel like I can totally be better. But, he pushed me to a whole different level and that was fun for me. It definitely wasn’t stressful. Not to say that there wasn’t those moments in the studio where I was extremely frustrated, but it feels extremely gratifying at the end of the recording process knowing I survived that. But, I also came out of it a much better player, a much better listener for music and just all around a well round musician, so I thank David Bendeth for that.

It sounds like it’s a really rewarding process, but it does sound like one of those processes where I imagine each member of the band probably needed to walk out of the studio room to do a walk around the block just to stomp out the frustrations at least once.

Oh yeah. We definitely had some recording sessions where it was like, “I need to go to the bar right now and get a drink in me and just calm down the nerves.”

It just felt good and what was good about Bendeth was that once you are done recording all of your parts you realise that the album is very tried and true. The album is us. It’s not processed. He is not programming our guitars. Everything is very raw, very real. So when you listen to the album you know that is us. That is us performing. That is us playing. That’s not somebody else doing it. That’s no computer generating those sounds or those riffs. We are very proud that the record is 100% us and ours. I thank him for that.

A lot of talk about how the album is dark and how there is a lot of dark thematically and lyrically it’s dark. What’s interesting was that while it might be dark, its not negative. It’s not a downer of an album. Its got dark moments. Its got light moments, but I felt my take away from was it the overall feeling was more so aspiration or inspiration even. So, was it difficult to write a dark album without being negative?

I think everything you just said, you nailed it. Like I said before, Kellin has gone through a lot in the last year to year and a half, but he’s been talking a lot about how through all of the negative dark shit that he went through and he wrote about, there’s actually, it’s all positive. He came out of it in a positive way. Whether he learned from it or he changed something in his life for a better reason. Everything that is kinda dark about this album is actually very positive and I think that shows through the lyrical content. I think sometime people automatically associate dark music with fucking the darkest days and I can’t go on doing this anymore type of stuff, but its actually the opposite I think. Talking about I’ve gone through a lot of shit, but hell I came out a hell of a lot stronger because of it.

Listen to the entire Sleeping With Sirens interview on Hysteria Radio!