Of Mice & Men’s Austin Carlile and Aaron Pauley recently took some time to talk about their epic latest albumRestoring Force with Loudwire! They discussed how they went about writing the album, how it goes down live and the story behind their latest singleYou’re Not Alone!
Youve said that the title Restoring Force refers to what happens after a flood. Were there themes that carried over from The Flood album?
Austin Carlile:The themes necessarily dont. We still kept on track of singing about real situations that we have been through. That is what we did with Restoring Force is that we made each song about kind of something that we have either personally dealt with or we have known someone who has dealt with that then we wrote about it.
Aaron Pauley:That was what was really important to us because that is how you can really connect with people. That is what people a lot of time connect with in music is finding a similarity, you know, just between yourself and another person.
Your voices work so well together. Austin, can you talk about what it means to have Aaron as a part of your band?
AC:Its great. I remember going into the studio and we were recording and it didnt even dawn on us that we actually recording with him until we were like a week or two in. We were like, Oh wait, we are recording a record together, because it just didnt feel like it. It just felt natural and normal, I guess. I dont know how that is supposed to feel. I have never recorded an album like that before.
So Aaron and I got to sit and literally write with each other from a sentence to finding one word to go. Spinning out 150 bad ideas and then getting one good idea and learning to shoot each other down and learning to it was a cool experience and it was cool having someone like him on board. For our band to bring that for us, for Of Mice & Men, he was our restoring force and that was something that we could provide to all of our listeners because of what we have established before he was even around. Then he brought that to us and now we get to bring that to them. It kind of works full circle.
Did you consider how Restoring Force would go over in a live setting when you are putting it together?
AC:Absolutely. I mean with every song you do that we have never been that band that uses really any kind of crazy sounds or loops or instrumentals or orchestras. We have never been that band, so we know whatever is on our record we get to play it live and it going to sound good live. That is a thing we thought about when we were writing entire whole parts. That is something that we are going to continue to do.
You go to a show to see a show. You go to a show to enjoy yourself and to forget the rest of the world for three hours, have a beer with your friends and bang your head and that is what we want to do music for people to do that to.
Youre Not Alone is one of the standout tracks on the disc. If you want to talk a little bit about that song and how it came together
AC:It was the first song we put out from the album. Its a fun, live banger. Watch you will see when we are playing it. I think we are playing it second to last tonight. The crowd gets going. Its an anthem. Its fun. It is a lot of fun. The music was something that was a lot slower than we have ever done in any other song like that people. We were like, Lets just play with it.
AP:The working title of that song was Anthem. We realized that with our fan base thats what people come to shows, people would go seeQueenback in the day for We Will Rock You the (stomps and claps). So you could really feel like you are a part of something. That song is hugely anthematic both just in the way the music is, four on the floor and one twenty. It is just as dance hall as you can get basically. The kids really connect with it because its something that was very important for us to write, you know.
There is always hope, you are not alone. A lot of the time I feel like thats what people that is one of the worst things you can experience is feeling alone. It is one thing to feel sad or angry but feeling alone is like, nobody needs to feel alone. Not that people that listen to our music because they can connect with anybody else that listens to our music. That song was hugely important for us. It was a little bit of an oddball to throw out as the first song because it is so different, sort of, than our previous music. But I really do like that song and the crowd loves the song.
Check out the rest of the interview at Loudwire
