Cinematic rock and metal collective Earthside recently wrapped up their first-ever headline North American tour with Som in March, following the release of their latest single, “frozen heart ~ burning world.” This powerful instrumental track stands as a poignant reflection on the chaos, compassion, and consequences of modern humanity. Originally written during the Let The Truth Speak sessions, the song came together too late to be included on the album’s initial release but now finds its place as a bonus track. Entirely performed by Earthside’s four core members, Jamie van Dyck (guitar), Frank Sacramone (keys), Ryan Griffin (bass), and Ben Shanbrom (drums), the track captures the essence of the band’s emotive sound. Metal Insider caught up with the group to discuss the new release, their recent tour, and what lies ahead.
How are you doing on your tour? This is the first headline tour in the USA, right?
Jamie: It’s. It’s our first headline tour. We played some headline shows before; we had a couple of headline shows in our hometown. You know our home state of Connecticut, which is between New York City and Boston. We sort of had a headline show in Stockholm, Sweden, and sort of had a headline show in London, England. But yeah, this is our first time, you know, getting in a vehicle and going around where it’s an Earthside tour. And the first time getting to sort of choose a band to take on tour with us. I feel like we chose a really cool band to come with us.
And how do you feel about the reception of the fans there?
Jamie: So, we are only three shows into the tour and we got eight more to go. So, we have one show in Boston to start. This is pretty close to home and then We have two Canada shows on the tour. I think both in terms of us getting to know our production better with each show as far as working with the lighting person and just getting every aspect of our show better with each show that goes by, I think the two Canada shows have been especially good. Unfortunately, our lighting setup set off the fire alarm at the end of yesterday’s In Toronto. So, during the really creepy part of our song, the closest I’ve. Like you know, just little atmospheric sounds before it gets heavy. There was suddenly like. Going and. It was extra scary, so that was awesome. But the bad part is that everyone Had to leave the venue. It actually finished so.
Well, that was the mood.
Frank: Yeah, we were just so fired up, like the performance that set off the alarm scene, the build like, these guys are too good we can’t have them play anymore, you know.
Jamie: Rammstein is pyrotechnics, but we’re the ones to get the Fire apartment.
I want to ask about the beginning of Earthside, how did you start and make you say ok let’s make a band and grab some records?
Jamie: Look really quick aside, Metal Insider, I think, was the first site ever to review something of us or interview us like something like that in 2015. I Think. We ever got any coverage from any other metal site, so Metal Insider was the first site to Give us some coverage and it was our first publication, so we go back with Metal Insider about 10 years now. But Frank and I, the two of us, have been best friends since. Since I was 7 and he was six we went to school together. Back then, he played the violin and I played the guitar. But then he switched to piano and I switched to guitar and we influenced each other a lot musically and showed each other a lot of things and. Force each other to listen to a lot of things. More me forcing him. So, you know the growth, I think we raised each other a lot in those ways.
Frank went away to a different high school for a couple years and he met our drummer, Ben, and I went to one of their rehearsals for another project that they were doing for school and I thought that Ben was a really great drummer, a great guy so When Frank and I wanted to create a new band, we both thought Ben would be a great fit. And this is Three of Four of us have known each other and been connected for Basically for Frank and me, most of our lives for, for Ben and us more than half of our lives. So, much of our life is just making music together and that’s something really the origins of the band.
And for a lot of that time it wasn’t progressive music, it was just Music we liked and were inspired by from different areas, we both became progressive just because we liked all different kinds of music that when you combine them it creates a progressive sound.
Frank: I think the band, the very early origins of it were like 15 years ago or whatever. We’re more about just trying everything and seeing what happened. There weren’t any like restrictions and it was just. Yeah, we were just trying everything we could have, so it was a major like Earthside kind of started from. We had a different name before then, but it basically started from like a place of discovery. To like eventually finding what we really believed in and what we wanted to express as we got old enough to figure that out. So yeah, I’d kind of run this big course of like Being young, experimenting with music, and then eventually getting to a place of like still being experimental but getting to a place of like knowing ourselves and knowing what we wanted to say. And I think that’s really when Earthside became Earthside essentially.
And what inspired A Dream in Static album? It’s a really ambient post rock album. Very different from the last one actually.
Frank: Well, what inspired it? And there’s too many things. You Have life, you have work. You have where you are. You have the music you’re Listening. I mean, there’s so many, you know, the people you make music with. Yeah, there’s just so many layers to it. I mean, it’s hard to know, It’s kind of song by song too. Not just like Thinking about the inspiration for the record, but like each song, maybe having its own inspiration, like unique inspiration when it was conceived.
Jamie: Yeah, something I would say is off the heels of your answer to the previous question. You know, our previous band was discovering and playing around with things and actually the final song we wrote with our previous band was “The Closest I’ve Come,“ which I think is an approach way, we’re not there yet and We’re not perfect, but this is the closest we’ve gotten to the thing we want to. And I don’t know if that’s why we titled the song that way, but I think there is an aspect. We’re still striving, we’re never going to create something perfect, but we’re always going to try to find that Exact expression. Pure expression of self and with each other. And I think the album A Dream in Static, really was inspired in the same way that the creation of starting a new band as Earthside was created. Those happened at the same time and I think the song The Closest I’ve Come Was really the first step towards OK, we found something and is not that every song is going to sound like The closest I’ve Come, but what that ethos is that song laid the groundwork for sort of longer journeys and songs that blended those post rock elements that you refer to. I mean, the album also has orchestral songs like Mob Mentality and Contemplation of the Beautiful but It was an arrival point of we have a vision for what we want to create and we’re going to start now with a new band that sort of, and this was right when our college careers ended.
We just finished university and so it’s like the beginning of adulthood setting out on our lives. And I think that’s why a lot of the lyrics in A Dream in Static are a lot of What is our vision for life. It’s very individual, for me lyrics are contemplating What our purpose is, what our whether we’re going to live our dreams, whether you know the fear of those dreams never coming true, What’s my legacy? And you know, does my life have any meaning at all? Does anything have any beauty too? There’re these things that I think we’re very existentially weighing on us as we came out of college, and each of us individually as well. And so, I think A Dream in Static was a natural product of that stage of life where we both feel like we’re on the precipice of becoming the thing we want to be, both individually and together, but also afraid, we’re not going to make it happen. That fear, especially in the song of A Dream in Static I think there’s that fear in the lyrics that is like, you know what? It’s all for nothing. You know this dream is just stuck in neutral and can’t get off the ground.
You take a long time after you release your second album. What happened in between?
Jamie: I want to go back to because you said also that you felt like the two albums sounded very differently. Why? I’m curious about what you think was different about Let the Truth Speak? I might agree, but I’m curious what you’re getting at there.
The first time I listened to Earthside was probably 10 years ago and I was really into that post rock vibe instead of math prog. And I remember the first time that I listened the single “All We Knew and Ever Loved“ I may hear it a thousand times and then “Let the Truth Speaks“ featuring Daniel Tompkins the first thought that it comes to my mind was Oh, my God, this sound like progressive metal, way more technical and, as a fan, for me was like seeing you growing up. A complete and professional work entirely.
Jamie: A couple things that really happened. So right around the time we released the Dream In Static was 2015 And we got on touring and promoting it, it was 2016, which was a very Pivotal time in our country, especially in the US 2016, you know it was a time Where we weren’t thinking about our own individual dreams, we were thinking about the direction of humanity, the direction of the country, the direction of the environment in the world. What is the world we’re gonna leave behind for our grandchildren and many generations beyond that. And I think those more global themes may Let the Truth Speak a much more “we“ album. On A Dream in Static we had these more post rock songs as you talked about, and then there’s Like Mob Mentality, Contemplation of the Beautiful and Entering the Light, which are just like they’re the songs that have like an orchestra of some kind and only in these songs. For the Let the truth Speak album we did more combining where there’s post rock elements and orchestra elements in the same songs together. As opposed to these post rock songs and these orchestra songs separately. It Was more combining those things and other things to create a sound that every song sounds pretty different from each other. There were different ways we incorporated elements from both sides in it.
And I mean to your question of what took so long and Frank and maybe elaborate on this too, but You mean one thing is A dream in Static have 4 singers, Let the truth speak had eight and 7 or 8, but most of the songs have vocals or a collaborator, and with the pandemic hitting we had a lot of collaborators who agreed to Beyond the album, who then had something in their life that Totally changed when the pandemic happened. And so, you know, we started recording the drums in early 2018. We’ve written most of the songs most of the way in 2016, 2017, but we had such a specific vision of what we wanted the vocals to be and what we wanted the collaborations to be. And when certain collaborations didn’t work out We weren’t just going to accept any replacement, It had to still fit the thing we had in mind, and so we spent months and years until we found the people we really felt would create the vision for what we wanted and unfortunately it meant a lot of time where we were sitting there kind of just in limbo and feeling kind of depressed and unable to share this thing we’d been working on. And so going forward, I I’m hoping we can be less attached to such a specific vision so that we can write things and release them soon after we write them, so that way it feels like our current self is sharing something of the time that we were inspired to create it, but I would say that’s a big part of it.
Frank: I think it’s like two things. I Mean you have a very complicated record that has a lot of ambition that you know is basically like on a practical level potentially would be a film soundtrack where you know you need all you need like a team to help make this happen. And you know, we’re four people and we’re also trying to bring in all these other people to help us, but it is hard as that operation and it’s not like we have a movie studio like delegating everything to everyone. So, there’s like just practical aspects of, like, the ambition of the music but then I also think we had gotten to a point where we lost our way as individuals in terms of how we knew how to work with each other.
We weren’t able to, like, find a symbiotic relationship amongst us to like figure out a way that we all agreed on was like the best way forward to make the record and I think behind the scenes a lot was going on in terms of not able to fully like manage the project in a way that all fit our vision or the way we all wanted to work in the manner we wanted to do things and no one was really right or wrong and kind of I think the last even though like the last like 3 or 4 years this album has been used as like a way to teach us, like how we can better work with each other. And it is unfortunate like we did Lose in quotes that time, but like at least, I’m certainly more hopeful that we’re better equipped as people to like talk with each other and like figure out how to do what we want without like over complicating the process in which we do it and what’s important and what isn’t as important.
When you have a complicated project and you’re not able to manage it in a way that’s efficient or where everyone can agree and feel good about the way that it’s being done, you’re gonna take eight years to do it, you know, like, that’s just what it’s going to be. I mean at the end of the day, Jamie will agree, we’re really proud of it. Hopefully these were lessons that we learned and that allow us to make positive changes moving forward and have a better and a healthier relationship with our workflow and with managing the band.
Jamie: I would say some of those problems and or ways that were fraught and how we work together were made even worse during the A Dream in Static era, but the project was not as complicated, we had a producer for the whole project and none of y’all knew who we were so we could take as long as he wants.
And now you release Frozen Heart Burning World as a Bonus Track of Let the Truth Speak, Is this the beginning of something new? Any surprises coming up?
Jamie: We’re never going to surprise anybody (joking). Sorry, part of it was Let the truth Speak was already so big, it was like 70 something minutes and so. In order to put frozen heart burning world on that album, we would have had to take at least one song off and maybe 2, and it was the last song written from that era. We were kind of already working with like a list of songs that were going to be on the album and then we wrote that one right after that and it was a question of whether or not we would take anything off to include that one, but it just means still we wrote it a long time ago, most of it.
Always knew it had real potential, so we did want to revisit it and I think we had still at the same time forgotten how good it had the potential to be. I think we listened back to our really rough demo maybe six months ago or something and we’re just there, like, you know, this song actually really could be really freaking good. Like it already is and if we actually, do it right can be great. So, we made this plan that it’s going to be out for our tour that was coming up, like having something new to play on this first headline tour ’cause to have your first ever headline tour more than a year after the album came out, I think having something new to go with the first headline tour, I think you know create something more of a purpose for doing this. And I also think of the song, even though we wrote most of it a long time ago, I think the feelings feel like they resonate just right with the current state of our country and the state of the world.
You know, we titled the Song Frozen Heart Burning World back in October and then started recording it in November, and then, in the US since then we’ve had the wildfires that are, you know, feel literally like evidence that this world could be burning. And, you know, there are leaders that are largely in control of the direction we take and have a huge impact on others, people around the world, in humanity in general and you know, these are frozen hearts, who are just people that don’t care about other people suffering. And there’s many ways that the world burns because of that, not just literally the wildfires. All that we knew and ever loved feels that way, that’s something that’s at stake right now are frozen hearts letting a world burn away and we don’t necessarily have a solution to stop it, but we do have a song that hopefully helps people feel less alone in being scared about that. This is a song that shares in that emotion of feeling powerless to do anything to change it.
Frank: I think going to the point of, you know, do we have anything?
Jamie: Or any surprises?
Frank: Yeah, you went on that, which was very, very well stated. You don’t have to cut that from the interview, but. Yeah, I think we do have quite a few ideas kicking around and I would certainly say that there are ideas in the tank and I think we just have to agree on like when we put it down but I think there’s enough ideas and enough kind of preparation that we’re like prepared to do that where it’s not gonna be another eight-year thing like. I think we’ve already learned what we’ve needed to learn and it would be difficult for that process to repeat itself.
And now, what can people expect of Earthside shows?
Frank: I would just say that like I think you get like pretty much everything. can be a cool thing. I do like when bands have a certain vibe and a stage set up and it’s like you just get that vibe for the whole show. But sometimes, like, you can lose your attention and I think the good thing about our shows is like you get every, High energy, you get nuance, you get emotion. There’re so many aspects to the show where you get the full human experience going to an Earthside show, you get to feel the like high-powered energy and then Jamie will crack a joke and then there’ll be time to really, like, reflect in the music and close your eyes and really be immersed in it. Then you know there will be us just ripping riffs and like just head banging so I think that’s something that can keep people engaged for an hour and so. Sometimes you know it can be depending on the band or whatever kind of event, if it feels like the same thing is happening over and over again, you are going to be looking at your watch, but I think it’s the diversity that makes the shows really cool.
Jamie: I would definitely second what Frank said as far as it being a more dynamic experience, I think as far as people who’ve seen us before. I think it’s the first time we’ve gotten to deliver a show that’s more. It’s not exactly what we would dream of it, we’re still playing on fairly small stages or certain limitations, but I think it’s the closest we’ve come to playing putting on a performance that has sort of the experience we’re wanting to give, whether between visual sound or the dynamic curve from beginning to end, where the show itself feels like a journey, just like some of our instrumental songs can feel like a journey. And I think it’s the first time we’ve gotten to kind of give a show that kind of Arc, in which you’re more able to do that as a headliner than as a support bin. It’s still not the show where we have an orchestra with us, four or five of the guest vocalists from each of the two albums, do a special live for DVD or whatever but it’s going to be amazing.
In this tour, in Boston I saw faces that I recognized in our audience from previous shows, and I saw a look in their faces from this show. That was more immersed than I’d seen from those same people at previous shows of ours. And it’s the first time we’ve gotten to give them the experience that takes them along where they want to go with us. I think those people can see the effort we’ve put into kind of elevate what the Earthside live experience and that we’re finally getting the opportunity to have these songs in this. Yeah, this music and all that goes into it. And that’s exciting for us and I think it’s been exciting for many of the people that have been on the shows so far.
That’s great! Well, thank you so much for the interview and for your music, of course.
