Viral Empire

Kevin Lyman, the founder of the Vans Warped Tour, looked down at New Empire drummer Kale Kneale, sitting in the band's tour van in the carpark in his boxers one morning before a show, and said, “Hey guys. First of all, congratulations on the song being on the Olympics ad, and secondly, you're gonna have to move your car.”

That song was One Heart/Million Voices, selected as the official theme song for the 2012 Summer Olympics on Australian TV. “We had no idea that we'd been put forward for it,” Kneale admits, “and we only found out through a mate who was working at Channel 9 at the time and walked past an editing room where the song was being cut to the ad. Then he texted our guitarist and told him what was going on and a week later we found it had been approved and was going to hit the TV screens.”

Still a completely independent band at the time – they're about a fortnight away from announcing some big deals currently in negotiation for the release of their third album, In A Breath, and new single, Say It Like You Mean It – the four lads from Cronulla spent a fortnight on the Vans Warped tour playing to 15-20,000 people a show and then toured with a couple of other US bands for another fortnight before returning to Sydney to work on the new album.

“That tour,” Kneale continues, “we were exposed to a lot of bands and music different to us, which was a good thing 'cause it really challenged us to recognise our own sound amongst everything we were hearing. A lot of the bands on Vans Warped were, I guess, that pop/punk/hardcore sound, so you do feel like what you have as a sound is really yours because everything else you're hearing is different.

“So I think it had a positive effect on this album, because we were able to see, I guess, what's out there, what's gaining attention, what's not gaining attention and it probably helped us focus on sticking to what we do best.

“I think with this album we've achieved the sound we've always wanted to achieve, and that's not so polished. Like, our previous stuff has been quite polished, and I guess perfect. With each album, from the start, we've kind of gone away from having it sound perfect and really digital. We wanted to sort of get some raw sounds in there... We wanted to make it sound as live as possible.”