Issues

Splicing genres can be just like splicing DNA; it can end in disaster. Yet sometimes, when you mix the right amount of one genre with the correct amount of another, you can create something truly brilliant. Issues are an example of the right kind of mix. With the perfect amount of sugar, spice and everything nice, the Atlanta six-piece have blended electronics, pop and hardcore into a solid soundscape. We spoke to the band backstage before their set in Melbourne last weekend to talk about the tour, Australia and "fake-fans".

So how has the tour been going so far?

Michael Bohn: Fucking awesome!

Tyler Carter: Long and awesome!

MB: Not THAT long.

Skyler Acord: Well not that long in Australia. We've just gotten here but we've been on the road for about four months since Warped Tour but this is a great way to cap off the end of it. Huge shows, bigger than we've ever played; in the States or otherwise.

Coming off Warped Tour, what were your expectations for Australia and have they been met?

JM: Well, this tour has already been rad. We've never been over here so we didn't really know what the reaction would be but it has been good.

Ty "Scout" Acord: It's been great, however I feel like we're definitely new here and we are trying to gain fans at the same time. There are a select few people so we see who know the words and get really involved. At the same time there are new people who have no idea who we are, which is also cool.

SA: We're breaking into a new market.

So your self-titled album is pretty busy record in terms of sound, how do you go about transferring that into the live setting?

TA: I think we try and break it up as much as possible. We don't want everything to be in the backing tracks obviously. We have certain things that build onto our sound that we leave in the backing tracks but that's not the whole point. We obviously [have stuff] taken out. I take responsibility for the backing tracks and if there's something that is playable, I'll play it live. Anytime there's heavy production we'll leave that in the backing tracks. There has been times where we haven't used backing tracks where it's been cut out or we just couldn't bring them and I thought we sounded just as sick. So it's not a necessity but it adds to it.

What ran through your heads when you found out you were coming to Australia?

SA: It's going to be a long flight.

(Laughs)

MB: Well, I don't think we'd rather be with anyone than The Amity Affliction. It doesn't get much bigger than that over here, [except] maybe Parkway Drive. If we're going to tour over here, Amity is the band to do it with.

SA: It's an honour that they picked us for the biggest thing they've ever undertaken on their own so it's a big deal for them and we're just kind of riding along.

Tonight cost $60 for a ticket and I'm in no way complaining about that but I had friends from the States who complained about Warped Tour being $50. Do you think that by people complaining about that is an example of how spoilt for choice America is with music - 

AJ Rebollo (Guitar): Yep.

MB: That's a pretty good question.

TC: Sixty bucks for five bands as opposed to fifty bucks for one hundred bands and when you get there you can give blood and go backstage and complaining [about that] like, what the hell?

SA: Warped Tour is a dream scenario for any fan of this scene, so if you complain about it at all when the ticket is under a hundred dollars than you're ridiculous. I do think however that there's too many bands in America that just kind of "get started". They tour too early and get signed too early, pay someone else to write their music and get publicity deals and pretty much fake it because they care more about being in a band than the music. There are all these bands with horrible or mediocre music saturating the market. So it's really easy to complain about a fifty dollar ticket to see one hundred bands when all of those bands tour throughout the year and think they can charge thirty bucks for ticket and have no local scene to back them up or anything. They don't really have any stake in the scene; they're just kind of an outlet for suits to make milk money out of kids and their parents.

Proxies.

SA: Yes, exactly.

Kind of going off that, I was a fan of Woe, Is Me for a long time and after "it" all unfolded, we'll leave it at that, I then got to watch ISSUES blow up. Bands don't normally get this big, this fast. What would you say attributed to your success; your history in the scene or the fact you guys have transfused multiple genres?

TC: I think it had a lot to do with not just the history in the scene, obviously that helped kickstart it, but I think it had more to do with us just being smart about how we did it. Not necessarily the great accommodation of music style but the brains behind it. Being smart in every step we took in the first year of being a band and getting our album together. And getting the look so the band appealed. We had a lot of great tours our first year as a band - in fact every tour we've ever done was superb and I just think it was that we were educated from our deteriorating pasts and us having to earn from that; it really educated us.

Do you think if you hadn't of had those past experiences you'd be able to create Issues? Did you always have a desire to make this music or was it something that spawned from your experiences?

TC: I think everything happens for a reason and you learn from everything that happens in life and unfolds. None of us would be here today if one thing had changed in our history; any of us. In our childhood or whenever. I'm sure some of the stuff I learned when I was a kid or learned in grade school or high school or whatever has affected the way things have unfolded today. There's no real answer for what you said but everything happens for a reason. We are here today because of what has come of the past. We've educated ourselves from all that and I'm sure we all would have been playing music regardless. But we are here today and Issues is Issues and even the name Issues came from the things that unfolded before.

TA: I think how this came together was really interesting. Before I was in any sort of touring band, I was a pretty closed minded individual and hated pretty much anything that had to do with singing or clean-vocalist stuff. Literally the only band I like, LITERALLY, was Woe, Is Me. This was someone with an actual voice, writing actual melodies. I met Tyler through a mutual friend, just randomly and when he wanted to start another band I was like "Hell yeah" because if we do it right we can go somewhere. Most of these bands have the worst singing ever; the worst choruses ever! I can't stand it. Even just little things like that are so serendipitous and so cool that Tyler and I are into the same stuff. Growing up on the heavier side of things and both liking hip-hop. When we went into [Issues] the main objective was to be different and do something no one's really done before. All these things kind of put into what Issues is and as Tyler said, we would all be playing music but as far as Issues and the originality go, I think it was all those little factors that brought us as people together with the same mindset [and] is what made Issues "Issues".

So how was your South East Asia tour?

MB: Way better than I thought it would be. A few of the shows were sold out and we didn't expect that. The crowd were just insane! We did play a couple festival dates but there were headlining dates that were completely sold out and it was crazy!

When you play in different countries and places, is the core and energy of what you do the same or does locality affect how the music feels?

TA: Well what was surprising was that it is still playing music but there is a very different vibe of crowd, even in different places in America. I feel like it is a very different thing anywhere you go; like a couple of the Asian countries we've been to where we've never been and bands like us don't normally go out there, there's a big rock show type vibe. Where people are losing their minds because it's huge for them. But in places in America like inner city LA it's almost always pretty bad because everyone is so used to having that stuff in their faces twenty four seven, it's like we're nothing special or important and it's pretty obvious. Definitely wherever we go, crowd vibe will always be different but in terms of what we do we always put the same amount of show in anywhere.

So I've got a bit of a controversial question... What's your take on fan girls? And I mean that in the basic sense of no specific gender but just someone who is more interested in the idea of liking your band as opposed to actually liking your band?

TC: I hate this question because we have been on about that all day.

Should I leave it alone then...

All: No! (Laughs)

SA: Yeah, we want to answer this. I was literally just dealing with this going through my [Twitter] feed. Before we drove up here, I noticed someone tweeted me "I'm a month clean from self-harm today" and as usual I completely ignored it. I looked at her twitter profile and she tweeted all of us separately saying the same thing and then the band itself and then started complaining that we weren't saying anything back. If there is no clear evidence, then that behaviour is attached to more attention seeking, kind of faking the funk and following a trend. It's kind of a bummer. It's cool that this scene is becoming more trendy because there's a lot more fans and I love our fans and music fans and people who love music, but [it's] kind of a bummer how trendy things like recovering from self-harm rely on a band member [to respond] because that means you have to have self harm first. So a lot of people are cutting themselves straight up to get attention from us and so we just completely ignore it. That's definitely sort of faking being a fan because if you were a real fan you would know that we don't sing about that stuff at all. We sing about the exact opposite. That is kind of a direct physical drawback from people following trends. When playing shows it's funny because we can kind of tell how trendy we are by the city because certain places, people just sit there and watch us. As Tyler was saying, in LA our fan base is mostly hype but half an hour out of the city, they're incredible shows. And everything in LA is hype so if you take the hype out of it then there would be nothing else so I don't expect anything else. It's just cool because the real fans will always be there no matter the amount of fake fans.

TC: I'd like to elaborate on that. The whole cutting thing has become such a trend and I don't want to bash anyone who struggles with it or depression, but I know a lot of people in my life that struggle with depression. I know a few people who were cutters or whatever but it was like a private thing and it wasn't something that became [so] public. People come up to me and [say stuff that] almost seems like a script. Chris from Motionless in White put out something that really touched me. He was very respectful about this whole topic and I want people to know we are respectful about it too. It seems like there is a script that you can read that's like "I can't meet my favourite band unless I struggle from cutting and that's the recovery" because it's such a personal thing. I don't know your personal life and I don't know what your story is and whether it is real or not and we try not to acknowledge that stuff.

Tyler (cont.): It's like what Skyler was saying, I will get all sorts of love all day and I like things and I'll retweet it sometimes but I can't get to everybody. Then someone comes in like "F*** you, you're a cocksucker, you're gay, you suck Jeffree Stars dick" or whatever and if I tweet them back, like I did, I tweeted "You don't even know me" and then everybody for a week talked mad shit to me on twitter because they knew that it was the only way to get a response from me. They think, "if I want Tyler Carter to notice me; I have to be a dick". They see me giving attention to somebody who is a cutter and then everyone comes out of the woodworks saying they're cutters and we saved their lives just so we can give them the time of day. If I had the time to give every single person [that time] I would and we always try to when we have the chance. But I would rather just love everybody and hug everybody, and take a picture with everybody then have to hear the darkest deepest stories of their lives. That something you should be sharing with your family or a psychiatrist or your mum, not with a complete stranger. I hope our music impacts people and helps people but people should learn that deep down they are ones helping themselves not us.

Issues - self-titled is out now via Rise Records. Read our review here.

Catch Issues in Sydney (September 4) and Brisbane (September 5) with The Amity Affliction, Architects, Stray From the Path and Deez Nuts.