Last week Northlane surprised us with the sudden release of Mesmer. Meanwhile, their fans managed to shock them with the overwhelming response. The band expressed the following on their Facebook:
“It’s now been five days since we released ‘Mesmer’ out into the universe, and to say the response has been overwhelming feels like a drastic understatement. Everywhere we look we’ve had such amazing feedback. We’re still seeing reviews, comments and messages that blow our minds. The signings we did in Sydney and Melbourne over the weekend were a testament to that. Not to mention the people who collect every piece of vinyl, merch design and format we release it in, the people who stream and add the album to playlists, who share music with their friends and who are already buying tickets to our Asian, Australian, European and Canadian shows. We love all of you and can’t thank you enough.
You can only imagine how nervous we were in the weeks leading up to March 24 as we waited patiently to share the news with you all. It’s not often that you have to keep such a massive secret for so long, especially one that hundreds of thousands of people are interested in knowing. The fact the news or the album didn’t leak is insane to us. It was hard enough for us to keep under wraps purely because of how excited we were to share it with you. It took so much careful work and meticulous planning to make ‘Mesmer’ the surprise it was. We are very grateful that you’ve embraced it the way you have.
The fact we have so many fans who have joined us on our journey through each of our albums, and fans who are new to our music but go back and enjoy everything we created in the past, is an amazing experience. It’s also an experience that we hope to continue to share with people for many years and albums to come. The creation of the music and shared experience we have with our fans on stage and via recorded music – that is everything to us. We’re never going to be a band that stays in the same place musically, we’re always going to be a band that pushes ourselves as musicians and artists to create something we find fresh and appealing. If you look back you’ll see we’ve done that since day one.
We feel we’ve achieved what we believe to be the most important – making thousands of people happy by releasing an album that they love like we do.
Get Mesmer: https://northlane.lnk.to/Mesmer
See you all on the road (Note: USA, Western Australia, New Zealand, Latin America – dates are ALL coming very soon) “
Throughout the week, Northlane explained part of the writing process for the new album. According to ThePrp, the band revealed during a fan Q&A the powerful meaning behind the song “Paragon” was written for late Architects guitarist Tom Searle who passed away last August from cancer.
Northlane guitarist Josh Smith answered the following:
the lines in Paragon that aren’t Tom’s lines or reappropriations of his lyrics are from “architects” by Rise Against
— Josh Smith (@northlanejosh) March 28, 2017
I felt the only just way to do that was to reappropriate my favorite Architects lyrics #Mesmer
— Josh Smith (@northlanejosh) March 28, 2017
it was an extremely hard thing to do because we wanted it to live up to his stellar talent for songwriting #mesmer
— Josh Smith (@northlanejosh) March 28, 2017
About a week after Tom Searle passed @jondeiley called me a told me we had to write a tribute song for him. I wanted to as well #mesmer
— Josh Smith (@northlanejosh) March 28, 2017
