5:53 PM
PropertyOfZack Interview : : New Found Glory
PropertyOfZack had a chance to interview Steve Klein from New Found Glory a few weeks ago for a great interview. Steve and I discussed the band’s last album, what creating a real album still means for the band, how it was working with Neal Avron again, and much more. Read up and enjoy!
Many fans saw Not Without A Fight as a return to form for the band. You guys supported the album with a long list of tours as well that ended with the 2010 Honda Civic Tour. Were you guys happy with the whole album cycle for the record?
I thought we did everything we wanted to do with that album. That whole cycle was showing our fans that we were still a heavy band with Not Without A Fight. I just felt like it brought together all the elements of our music together.
When the writing process for this album started, did you guys want to try anything different?
I think, for us, we wanted to really figure out what got us into music in the first place. You listen to music now and it feels like it has lost that special kind of feeling. Everything feels drowned out. For us, we wanted to go back to our roots and figure out what made music special for us. We were listening to Descendents, Ramones, and older Green Day records. That was more of our influence than anything else. We wanted it to have more of that feel. Records now sound overproduced, and I think this was about having fun and writing fun songs.
The music on this album seems almost more upbeat and poppy than normal, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Was that a conscious decision?
Catalyst and Not Without A Fight were hard driven records. They were riff driven. This record is closer to Coming Home for me. It’s really melody driven. There are still a lot of catchy guitar parts on this record, but I think this record is lyrically and melody driven. The record sort of takes you on a journey and goes through the stages of a person going through some shit.
How was it working with Neal Avron once again after a little break?
Neal’s awesome. Neal is one of our best friends and we consider him to be the sixth member of New Found Glory. We started working with him on our self-titled record as a baby band. He showed us how to record and how to make an amazing sounding record when we were little kids. We were fortunate to have him on board and he gives a crap about the band. He cares about the record as a whole and the whole feel of it compared to just the singles. We all talked about the style we wanted going into it, and Neal helped us stick to that path.
In an interview Chad did, it seemed like Neal really pushed you guys and was even frank with telling you that your original songs weren’t good enough. How was experiencing that?
I think we all needed that push. Neal’s the kind of person that we all respect. If he doesn’t like something we really wonder why. We try to inspire each other when we write. We try to really work on parts before we even show it to each other. Whether it be lyrics or melodies, we all try to make it the best we can be before it even gets to be a real song. When we get everyone together in the room, the idea is already there. It’s just about nitpicking at the little things
The album has been streaming for a few days now. How has the reception to it been?
It’s been great. If I see people writing negative comments, I just stop reading. I’m only looking at positive things. Even if they don’t like it and listen to it, we still affected them some how for us to still be a band this long. People have really been liking the record a lot though. Usually we get bad reviews with every record we’ve had, but critics have been really really good to us with this record. It seems everyone is enjoying the record. People are posting the lyrics on Twitter and Tumblr too, and that stuff is cool. You want people to be close to your lyrics.
Once bands get to their seventh album, or even fifth, it becomes less about the new material and how it does compared to the earlier material, but not for New Found Glory. How important is it to you guys for this record to strike?
It’s definitely important. We want our fans to obviously like the record. It’s always a struggle. We’ve gotten this far. We write songs that we like and everyone else seems to love them. So we go with that formula and don’t really think about it too hard. Every record kind of like captures a time period of what we’re going through at the time personally or business wise.
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