After releasing their new album over the weekend, Sydney’s Vices will next set their sights on touring to launch it. They have a run of dates coming up later this month with Counterparts. The band’s second album ‘We’ll Make It Through This‘ is out now through Resist Records. You can order it via Resist [Here] or on iTunes [Here]. To find out a bit more about the album, the band answered our On The Record questions this week. Expand this post to check out their answers, some tunes and all those tour dates.
Tell us about the release title.
‘We’ll Make It Through This’ is the title track of the album. The album is about a really dark year of my life and how it affected me and the people around me.
Tell us about the artwork.
My wife did the artwork, she does almost all our art, videos and photography. I wanted a sunrise over Sydney city because that’s where I was living when everything happened and the sunrise means we made it through the night, the whole dark ugly ordeal.
What format/s will it be released on and how will it be packaged?
It’s our first time on vinyl which is really cool, there’s a 12″ vinyl with some limited colour presses and then standard CDs and iTunes.
Who will it be released through, and when?
Resist records is putting the record out and it just came out on November 14.
Tell us about the studio and why you chose to record there?
We recorded at The Brain studios with Clayton Segelov and Fletcher Matthews. They had recorded a bunch of stuff that sounded really tight and we’ve known Fletch for a long time. We were actually going to just record it ourselves originally and I’m really glad we didn’t because those guys made it so much better than anything we could of ever done.
Tell us about the producer / engineer and why you chose to record with them?
Clayton and Fletch both shared producing and engineering. It was the first time we’ve really had anyone have input on our songs and it was really cool. The week before tracking started we went in and played everything we had live for both of them. I think we used almost every suggestion they gave us, they both have killer musical minds.
Did you go into the writing process with a clear direction in mind?
I had already written almost all the lyrics so we knew it was going to be a more aggressive record, just because of the headspace I was in. Musically we all wanted to build on the good stuff we did on the first record. Fast, angsty, emotional music, that’s just what we do.
Were you listening to anything in particular during the writing / recording process that influenced the songs at all?
The bands we all agreed on when we started were Comeback Kid, Counterparts, Hundredth, Touché Amore and Verse. Those bands and their new music are still our main influences today.
Were there any albums you were referencing to aim for a certain type of sound production wise?
We like how Hundredth do big vocals in the mix, we liked the way verse do guitars and for drums we just wanted real drums that still sounded big and full enough, that’s what we went for.
How long did you spend in the studio recording?
We tracked the record in 10 days.
Tell us a little about the recording process the band used?
It was all pretty standard. A week out we did pre production. Then we started with drums, then bass, then rythmns and leads. After the rythmns were down we started doing maybe 2 hours of vocals a day. I prefer to do vocals that way than trying to sing for 8 hours straight, my voice just never sounds as good by the end of a long day and then the next day im toast so two hours a day works for me.
Was this any different to previous processes you have used?
Minus the pre production the first album was pretty much the same, 10 days and the same style.
Any guests involved? if so, who.. and what did they do?
Nope just us.
Any particular equipment outside your usual live gear used in the process?
We used all our own gear for almost everything. Clayton had a telecaster that we used for some of the leads and his Riviera head worked really well for a few sounds. Marcus also used a china cymbal once, literally just one hit haha but he was real psyched about that.
Any memorable studio moments?
The recording itself was all super chill, we could only afford 10 days where a lot of bands take twice that time or more for a full length so we were all business most of the time. We only stopped to eat lunch and the rest of the time we were working.
Any additional tracks recorded that didn’t make the cut but may see the light of day sometime?
We only cut one song. Calum our guitarist wrote it and was really into it. None of us were really vibing it but we agreed to take it to pre production cause he liked it so much. We played it for Clayton and all he said was “yeah that song can fuck right off…” And it was hilarious, a little bit of Calum died with that song haha. But he took the little ego hit like a champ and we just got on with it. He’s still convinced the songs gonna be on the next album, hopefully Clayton is there to be the bad man again.
What track/s are you most looking forward to playing live?
Im really keen to play the tittle track live, the song means a lot to me and im really stoked on how it turned out.
How would you compare the final product to previous releases?
Lyrically it sounds like a whole bunch of horrible shit happened but through it all I found myself as cliché as that is, its what happened. Musically it just sounds like we grew up a bit, we cut out all the lame stuff and built on the good stuff.
Anything else you want to say or about the release?
Thanks to everyone who helped us get to this point, having a place to vent all this stuff keeps me sane and connecting with other people over my struggles in a way brings closure to that whole period of my life. I need this, so thankyou.
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VICES – ‘We’ll Make It Through This‘
Available now on Resist Records.
Pre-order now on iTunes [Here] or on CD / Vinyl [Here].
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