Recently, WMSC/Montclair NJ’s The Metal Teddy Bear Experience interviewed After the Burial’s Trent Hafdahl and Adrian Oropeza . With the band currently on tour celebrating the 10th Anniversary of “Rareform”, the radio show spoke to them about their upcoming 6th studio album.
You guys just recently posted that the new album was completed. It took like 5 weeks?
Trent: Yup. We were in there for 5 weeks, well 5 weeks was the recording process itself.
So is it still being mixed?
Trent: No, it’s all done. Mixed, mastered. That’s just step one. You have to align your team, roll out music videos, you have to roll out artwork. Conceptual stuff. All across the board with marketing the album itself. Publicity and stuff like that. It takes a long time. 6 months minimum to roll it all out.
Speaking of the new album, anything like album titles, vision or anything?
Trent: Can’t give you anything like that yet. No even a song name. What I can tell you.
How many tracks?
Trent: I can’t tell you that yet either. I can tell you that we will be releasing a single sometime over the winter and then we are releasing it next year, some time in the Spring. Other than that..we wrapped the mix and master up about two weeks before we started rehearsals for this tour. When we are out on the road it’s kinda hard to take care of that business just because it’s a very involving process being out here. Once we get back, the wheels are going to start turning, balls gonna be rolling.
You were speaking about nostalgia before with “Rareform” and all that. Did that have any influence on the album?
Trent: No, no. Really with every one of our albums, it’s like it has to be it’s own thing. Every album sounds different.
Adrian: It still has that core element, that core feel for sure.
Trent: Yeah, it still sounds like After the Burial but it’s a snapshot of us musically in that time in space. So no, never really went back and being like “oh yeah, we should write another ‘Bezerker’ ” or anything like that. We tried that before and it just never works. You end up having a song you spend two months on and it’s track 7 that everybody skips over. So doing that is a way thing in the past, just because we wrote those songs because we didn’t have an identity yet and it was trying to find what works for us, like as players, as musicians, as enthusiasts of metal and hip-hop and all these different types of music we listen to. Now we have our own brand, our own identity musically. There’s still inspiration but it’s never like “oh hey lets go back and write a riff like this because it’s nostalgic”. If people like it, they’re gonna like it, if they don’t, they’re not going to, you can’t force it.
Adrian: But it’s not like a huge leap and you know those bands who change their whole direction entirely.
Trent: Yeah, no it’s still a heavy as fuck. It’s a heavy ass After the Burial record. It’s still us you know? People are like, “Is it going to sound like Dig Deep?” Well no dude, Dig Deep sounds like Dig Deep. That record was written and we did it and it sounds great. This one is a different record. It sounds sick.
Adrian: I’ll say, it sounds really intense. I’ll say that for sure.
Trent: It is it’s own thing. It’s hard to explain, man. It’s just art. You don’t want to paint the same picture 50 times. We all really enjoy it. It’s definitely a heavy, heavy one and I think my favorite solo work that I’ve done on any record, like solo guitars, guitar solos. I’m pumped, I’m really pumped.
