A Conversation with The World Is A Beautiful Place's Chris Teti
The Connecticut band's guitarist/producer and I cut it up over the band's fourth album Illusory Walls, the genesis behind the record's epic closing tracks, and becoming the band's sole guitarist.
(photo by Adam Peditto)
Over Labor Day weekend after a long drive from Indianapolis to visit my parents in North Carolina, I was fortunate to chat with Chris Teti - the guitarist for one of emo’s greatest band’s The World Is A Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid To Die - about the band’s stunning and rich new album Illusory Walls, the challenges and blessings behind recording the record during a pandemic, becoming the sole guitarist, and more. Illusory Walls is by far the grandest and most complete TWIABP record - a listen that rewards you ever single time - its hour-long run time going by like breeze due to its immersive nature. It’s one for the OG heads and for new fans alike. I hope you check out the record today and then dive into our chat. As always thanks for reading. (And also one again this has been lightly edited).
Hey Chris, how are you doing today?
I'm all right. I'm all right. I liked just finished doing like a short video for Premier Guitar today. I'm not tracking a band today so I’m just doing some interview related stuff for the record, which is cool.
Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, new record Illus….I can't pronounce it all the time. Elusive? Illusory Walls. There we go.
Correct. (Laughs)
It’s like I see the i and those double l’s and I want to say like, like illumination or illustration or something. I just can't get it through my brain to say it correctly all the time.
Yeah. No, that's that's fair. It's funny. I told my studio partner (Greg Thomas) the title and he was like 10 minutes later, “what was it again?” (Laughs)
That's funny. So yeah, just getting into it - Illusory Walls is - and this is also not to say that the prior TWIBP records were light-hearted - but this is a very dense and complex record. I feel like even for your band, considering you've put out a record, like Harmlessness, which is like pretty dense in it's own right. But this one just feels like it’s on a whole other level.
Yeah. Yeah thanks. Yeah. It's funny. Cause when we did Harmlessness we were like, ‘oh, can we ever have anything with more layers?’ (laughs) But it's kinda like once you cross that hurdle, the next one might not seem as daunting. Even like when we had….so we had like a split with Deer Leap years ago, back then it's like two guitars…. There's literally two guitar tracks - there’s the left and right guitar track and then like a trumpet that comes in, like for a couple parts. Back then we were like, ‘wow, this is totally wild’ and you know, with each next step you kind of like take you can say, ‘well, I did that. What can I do next?"‘ Granted, Always Foreign wasn't as dense as Harmlessness but the goal of that record was different.
It's crazy to me to think that it's been four years since a new TWIBP record because you had like such an insane run of productivity, whether it was like a full length or an EP or a split. So was it like kind of reinvigorating to just have a few years that weren’t consumed by putting out new music?
Um, sort of. I feel like those years when we were really like hammering a lot of stuff out, um pretty much everyone in the band was in Connecticut still. So we were still having like weekly rehearsals and stuff. And it worked out even for me, like schedule wise. Cause I was recording other bands then, but not as much as I do now. So I was able to be like, ‘oh, I'll take off like a day or two every week for rehearsal and writing.’ Um, whereas like now even for like me, it doesn't really make sense because I'll have bands in for like a few weeks at a time. So we wouldn't be able to really have weekly practice anyways.
But um, I mean it all was happening so fast at that point then so it just seemed like just going with the flow on it, I guess, because we had all the splits and all that stuff, but a good amount of those were recorded in like the same little like time period when did Between Bodies. So somewhere around that time, um, we did Between Bodies and then soon after we did, we, we did like the Long Live Happy Birthday and Death to New Years seven inches. And in that same time period, we also did the rerecording of Formlessness. Um, it was all kind of jam packed in there. And then like soon after it was like Harmlessness like a few months later.
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
But it was cool to not have that constant thing, but it was like pretty fucking daunting for me - to also be producing the record and then also think about, “oh my God, I have to be like the one guitar on the record.”
Yeah. And with the recording of the new record - and not like…I don't really think there's any good news to come out of the pandemic, but there's definitely like a silver lining that you guys kinda got to take your time recording this, even though it was remotely. Cuz if it was like a normal recording schedule, um, “Queen Sophie” might not be a song that exists, correct?
Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Um, that song…it’s actually kind of crazy. I think that song, when we initially wrote it, it was actually combined with “Invading The World,” but there was like, there was like, it wasn't like all one song, but there was like the middle section of ”Queen Sophie” was part of the first like quarter of “Invading.” Those were like together. Cause it's funny, like when we were doing that initially, like writing in the practice space, in my head, I was like, ‘oh, I want to do like a high guitar thing.’ Kind of like full like kind of like staccato high single notes stuff. And as we were like putting it together, we split them apart. But we had tracked the drums to “Queen Sophie” last year and I kinda sat on it for a few weeks and I was like, this isn't like doing it for me.
Like I can't figure it out. And I was doing a record with a band called Anxious and they brought up Smashing Pumpkin as a reference for one of their songs. And I like started listening to “1979” again. And I was like, ‘oh wait, I can make a drum loop.’ I want to do a hi-hat based drum loop for like the first third of the song, because the drums were…those are Steve's drums, but he had different changes in it. But I was like, ‘why don't I just kinda simplify it and get this kind of just like a beat that loops from that.’ So yeah, it kinda actually helps because I was working on other records in between ours. So it'd be kind of like working on one record and a band would mentioned someone they were referencing and it would kind of get in my head and I'd be like, ‘oh, this solves this problem that I had on our record’ or something. Like this makes sense.
And I love the first two choices for singles between ”Invading The World,” which is like very riffy and kind of proggy throughout it. And ”Queen Sophie” is still a very like guitar-heavy song like what you were describing, but it has a little more pop-sensibility to it and I feel like those two singles do a really good job at showing off like the range, like the left and right sides of the brain of this record. I'm assuming that was kind of being intentional, right?
Yeah, thanks. It’s funny. we didn't really want to lead with “Queen Sophie.” Cuz I think everybody was going to think it was like an indie-pop record. And like, I mean with ”Invading,” people were like, ‘oh, it's going to be a prog-metal.’ That one song in particular - “Invading” - I was kind of glad we ended up leading with it. I was pretty against it at first. Cuz I thought it was too divisive. And like, it was like my favorite song on the record for a while. It's the first song I actually tracked guitars to. And like, I was like really proud of it, but I was like, it might be too weird, because it did all these vocal effects and shit with guitar pedals and I wanted it to be weird, but I was like, maybe people are just gonna fucking hate this if that's the first thing they hear. Granted that's not the case, but yeah. It kind of focused on , at least in my brain - a pull from these two different like drastic areas. But I think that's kinda what like makes TWIABP what it is - like it's pulling from like so many places because if you ask each member of the band, like what do you think this part sounds like they're going to give you like a different answer, but they're like referencing all awesome bands, like bands that I love. So that works out, but it's definitely like, because everybody's just kind of pulling from something else the way it kind of comes together. It’s really unique I feel.
Yeah. I thought it was really cool that I was the first single as I kind of like quote unquote, re-introduction of the band after four years since the last release, I was like this, all right, this fucking goes. It's awesome. I thought it was really cool that that's kind of how this record is introduced. And then you have the two “Blank” tracks on here and they aren't your typical numbered instrumental ones, instead they carry the theme of worker oppression and government corruption and the like. I thought that's really cool portray those two sides through “Blank” songs. If you've listened to TWIABP for awhile, you know that usually the “Blank” track is an instrumental of sorts, so it was really cool to see that kind of flipped on its head on this record.
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because we almost didn't even do a “Blank” track. We had to like change up. And in my head I was like, kind of like, fuck whatever, I want to change it up as well. And I think the fans wanted to change it up. So it was kind of like, ‘okay, it's the fourth LP. Like we can't just like do the same thing again exactly.’ And then kind of in the end we were like, ‘oh, we can call these “Blank” but not have the number’ and make them vastly different than just like here's a minute of atmosphere and like maybe like distant talking under it or something like, so I liked that we still kept like a theme in there. So it’s back to previous stuff of the band, but that they're so different that someone doesn't have to be like, ‘oh, what is “Blank #15” what is this? I've never heard of this before. I don't understand what this is.’
Yeah this record is essentially like a rebirth of the band. This is the first record that really is just like a core five of you. It's not like seven or nine or ten people playing on the record. And it’s dope that there’s references for the true OG heads throughout, for those who’ve been listening to the band forever. Like we got the “Katamari Duquette” references on “Died in the Prison of the Holy Office.” And of course the last two tracks and the way they end - it legit gave me goosebumps cuz it's just like such a fire way to like incorporate those throwbacks without it being super cheeseball.
Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. I remember getting the demos from Dave. basically how it all would happen is he and then Katie would send me like a vocal demo and I would go back and forth with them, like whether on a zoom call or an email of ideas, like things to shift as we would normally do in the studio. But because they were in Philly, I couldn't do that in person.. So when Dave sent me those two particular parts, I just remember going like, ‘oh fuck!’ Like I didn't even think that was like… I didn't even consider that. I would have never considered that. Like if someone was like right here and asked me to write lyrics I would have never pulled that. And I thought it was so awesome. Like I love this, I love to throw like little Easter eggs and stuff like throughout the record.
I mean, even on “Invading” the last like few seconds actually has a clip from Harmlessness that is a little transitional clip that's in between the last two songs (“I Can Be Afraid of Anything” and “Mount Hum”), it's just like a little clip of a vocal that says ‘we're all gonna die.’ And it's a loop that I used all over Harmlessness but it's under parts where you might not even hear it, but I constantly threw it in there. So on this, I actually used that to transition out of “Invading” and on a single version, you can still kind of hear it in the last few seconds, but I do like throwing in little things like that, even though it's like a rebirth for the band and like that’s how I've also viewed it. But I do like throwing in little things that maybe someone will notice.
It had to be a little bit different just being the five of y'all. I mean, I don't know how long it's been kind of like a quintet but going from like a band size of like nine or so members to just five - does that make recording something like this a little bit easier than it was in the past? How was the recording process for you guys this time?
Um, I'd say a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Um, and I've been a quintet since, oh God, uh, summer of 2018. So we had that Sunny Day Real Estate cover and that's the first one where I just played all…I did all the guitars on it and that was like pretty daunting too. I mean, that was meant for like a documentary that never came out. And that's why we covered that song in particular. Like they wanted that song. We weren't like, ‘oh, I want to cover “In Circles” by Sunny Day. They were like, ‘we want you to do “In Circles” by Sunny Day.’ But like I was glad we got to change it and in that one I feel like I was just testing the waters. So that kinda like helped break me into feeling better about being the solo guitarist.
Cuz I guess the last quarter of the song in my head, I was just trying to go for like… there’s an In The Fishtank record which is a split record between ISIS and Aereogramme, and in my head I was like, ‘oh, I wanna like pull from this like darker stuff a little bit more.’ Um, and the band was into it. So that was kind of like almost a testing ground. And when it came out, a lot of people I respected were like, ‘oh, I like this direction.’ So I was like, ‘I guess I can go pull a little bit more from that realm and not worry about like, oh, am I writing like a part that's for TWIABP.’ But it was…there was a lot of sleepless nights. Like, like staying up all night and like, literally just like, ‘how the fuck am I going to like do this?’ Like granted I like produced most of the record so like I've already been at the helm on them and was like helping call a lot of the decisions on the record and have like a big hand in that already. Like on Harmlessness the last day I cut five minutes off that record and it still was like 52 minutes, but like, this is like a huge shift I was able to do that I was fine with, but yeah, doing some of this stuff from the ground up was like pretty daunting. We'd like rehearse for a week and like try to write stuff. And I would just like, I just couldn't sleep. Like what the fuck am I gonna do? (Laughs)
Speaking of it, you and Greg co-producing this, I think this is the best sounding TWIABP record ever. It's just massive sounding. It sounds awesome. And I think my favorite track at the moment is “Died in the Prison of the Holy Office.” Cuz that's like…it feels like five different songs in one, there's so many crazy transitions. I just love the effects and just like how heavy and epic those final moments sound.
Thank you. Yeah. It's funny. That actually was…so the big, heavy part of that song, like where the Katamari part is, that was one of the first guitar parts I wrote where…so like COVID happened, everything got shut down and we had done live demos in February my studio. So I had recordings of that with like isolated tracks. And so for like two months, you know, like during April and May I rewrote most of my guitar stuff or reworked it. And that was the first song where I was like, starting to work on it. And I was like, I really liked this track. How can I add to it? And that heavy guitar part that was the first one I wrote like when adding and I went, ‘oh fuck.’ Okay. I can like, I can just do whatever the fuck I want. Um, and that was the first song that Greg wrote strings for. Um, cuz he wrote almost all the strings. There's like one part he didn’t - I think in one of the “Blank” tracks at the end, but like he, that was the first song and section that he wrote strings for, and we were like, ‘fuck it. Like if we can get, if we can just do that, if we can get away with that, anything else on the record is fine.’. Um, and it's funny, I kind of wanted that song to be a single, but with “Invading” it's like it would be too crazy. It would be too much. I think if we were like, oh, here's “Invading” and then here’s “Holy Office”… (laughs) But um, yeah, that one, that one's been a favorite of mine for a while.
I feel like a lot of people are gonna be like, ‘wow, I didn't think I would ever hear something like this on a TWIABP record.’ I love that this is a TWIABP through and through but the band is still trying new things. There's different effects. There's different sounds. And it's just like such a thrilling, engaging listen. Like it's not background music, which I think is really important. I think we're missing that a lot in music today. Like everyone's just like, ‘I just put it in the background or this is going to be a single that goes on a playlist.’ We've really lost just like that feeling of just sitting down and taking in like an entire record, entire track length. And I think this is a record that demands that kind of attention which so rewarding.
Thank you. Yeah. I mean, we tried to like lay it out so that it would kind of make context within itself so that sort of made it hard to find a single. Yeah. I mean, there's like a couple songs that was like, ‘oh yeah, we could release this as a single I guess.’ But like in my brain I'm like, it's like, there's a whole context surrounding it. It's not like a typical rock album where you're like, okay, check 1, 2, 3 there's the singles. Good. All right. It's like a couple like lighter tracks, but like they all work. They're like all on their own almost. You know, we tried to like combine stuff like the “Blank” tracks are technically…they're technically like one long song if you slam them together. That's kind of how we wrote it, but like we split that up and put it in different parts of the record to kind of break things up specifically. Cuz some stuff like in “Prison” is like really intense, same with “Invading.” So we kind of needed something as like a little stop gap in, within the idea of listening to the whole record of like, ‘how can we like have peaks and valleys?’
And I feel like Katie's vocals have a more prominent role in this record in the last one. Was that kinda like some like a conscious decision or that's just kinda how the recording kind of sorted out for this one?
Okay. So I would go back a little further than Harmlessness and then get to Always Foreign, I guess. So on Harmlessness. I really made a push to have Katie on more shit. Like that was like a specific goal. Cuz I, I really like Katie's voice. We all loved it as we were going through the vocals. I was like, ‘Dave, this has to be a Katie part, we need to feature Katie more.’ So like for example, “January 10th” has like this trading back and forth between Dave and Katie, and that's partly because I had tried to instill the idea of like have more stuff that goes back and forth. Um, when we hit Always Foreign, there's less of Katie because we did the record in four weeks, which is like for most bands, like a fine amount of time but for a TWIABP record, it’s not. It was pretty crazy because we had done on like a week or two tour, we had three days in between before we starting tracking. We immediately went in to track and then I think Katie was getting sick or there was something she, she got sick at some point and was like starting to lose her voice. So basically there was like a day or two where it was like, ‘let's get whatever we can for Katie.’ Cuz I knew like we were about to hit a point where she wasn't going to be able to sing and what we got was kind of what we got because then the record had to be turned in like three or four weeks later, like final mix master and everything.
So like, it was actually less Katie only because of, I think she got sick and the whole schedule from turning in the record was like really wild. Um, so with this it was like, hey we can have more time. Um, and I mean, Katie got like injured. She had like an injury to her neck, which kind of inspired the lyrics to “Queen Sophie.” Um, and it basically made it so like I was supposed to do her vocals in September of last year. It didn't actually happen until December or January because she couldn't really talk or let alone sing. But thankfully, because she could do this stuff on her own time, you know, like we'd go back and forth on some notes, but it'd be like, if you want to track vocals today, you can track vocals today. If they're not feeling good, you don't have to. There wasn't the pressure of, well, you're here for the next two days and you need to get this done right now.
I'm really glad that “Queen Sophie” made it. And she sound great on “Your Brain is a Rubbermaid.” But now I definitely have to get into the last two tracks cause like holy moly man. Unless you’re like Bell Witch or some doom metal band, not many bands are putting out one 15 minute track, let alone two 15-plus minute tracks, and especially not back the back to close their album. And it's kind of cool cuz I feel like they kind of work as just like one super long kind of song just because of the way “Infinite Josh” ends with Dave saying “fewer afraid,” which obviously leads it into final track. But like you gotta have a certain type confidence and boldness to be like, ‘yeah, we're closing our record with two tracks - they take up about 35 minutes,’ and I think that's super rad. I know that the “Fewer Afraid” took you guys a longer time than usual to finish but I feel like it got executed awesomely. What was that mindset of wanting to close the record with two sprawling tracks like that?
Um, oh man, it’s funny cuz when we were writing the record, we were like…so when we write, we jam stuff out. And so like I'll record it live and have separate mics on everything just for the writing. And so I think it started off, like we were just writing something and got into a groove and we're like, oh, we want to have a long song. Okay. So, you know, or like ended up at first we're like, ‘oh, let's have a 15 minute song or something. That would be crazy, right?’ And then there were some other idea that we had and we were like, ‘why don't we have a 20 minute song?’ And like, I remember when I was doing the Fiddlehead LP, Between The Richness. I remember talking to Pat Flynn and he asked me something about TWIABP, and I remember he had some comment that was like, ‘do you guys have like something crazy, like a 20 minute song or something?’ And I remember going, ‘no, we don't, I mean, we have something that maybe nine minutes,’ and in the back of my mind, I was like ‘wait till he hears that we have a 15 minute song.’ And then when we were writing, I think it somehow came up like, you know what, if we have a 20 minute song and it all kind of snowballed. So, I mean, it's definitely like bold, but like, I kind of viewed those two songs for a while as like, almost a bonus to the album in my head because like the closer to the album, technically to me was “Trouble.”
But that was just like how I was viewing it. I think everybody else who's heard it doesn’t view it that way. But, um, cause even our manager really pushing for us to play those live and stuff, but yeah, it's definitely bold. But it's such a stupid idea that like we had to do it. Um, it just worked out naturally, but I think if a band came to me, um, say like a year or two ago before we did this and told me they were going to do that, I'd be like, absolutely the fuck not. We're going to have one longer song. There's probably so much to cut out of these. But like now I can't even like, I can't even like judge bands on like that’s too long of a song. It's six minutes. It's like, I think one of the shorter ones on our records, I can't hate it, but like, I don't know, they kind of just came naturally, but it was definitely not easy.
It was like, it really like pushed the record back pretty far so like the process was like super stressful and like even going through the vocal, like to go through the vocal demo and like, think about like how to help lay them out or anything was like, I was like so stressed about it I couldn't like do it for like a week. I like, you know, like when you have to do something, you're like, oh, I have to write a school paper. I have to do this. I couldn't bring myself to like sit down and like help map the vocals to a 20 minute song or even like listen through it. But I went back and forth with Dave and on his second version, he liked pretty much nailed it. Like, I suggested a couple of lyric changes and like added a couple of placement ideas. But like I remember hearing back his second vocal demo and like 10 minutes of the song or 15 minutes of the song went by and I didn't realize it. And I was like, ‘oh, we're like at the end, like what? Oh, that's great.’ Like I felt like I answered like some sort of time warp. I was like, it shouldn't feel like that, but it does, which is amazing. But I mean, even with the last song “Fewer Afraid,” we have Chris Zizzamia who is on Between Bodies, just like a layer of Chris Z in the beginning. Which didn't even happen until like two days before the final version of the record had to be turned in. Like we had been like trying to schedule something with Chris Z for a while. It wasn't really coming together. And like, that was like a Hail Mary, like last minute, like literally the label’s waiting on the record and we're like, wait, we finally got the last piece two days before it’s due.
I'm glad Chris Z finally made another appearance on the world is record. Cause I love between bodies. I love that vibe. It was just really cool to hear him. And it's kind of like another Easter egg just to kind of bring him back so that’s really cool. And having have him lead off the final track with some spoken word and especially how it ends with the callback to “Getting Sodas”…. it's just so cool. And I don't know if it's supposed to be like a meta moment, but I always kind of smile when I hear David's saying, “it seems like the last 40 minutes were spent leading up to this” - that always just gets like a good chuckle out of me.
Oh yeah, when I first heard that I was like ….I think we adjusted some vocal there, but I was like, “we have to keep that line, whatever we do that one has to stay, that’s fucking sick. Just keep it.”
The first time I heard it, I was like, I can't believe a band has never done this before, but it's so fucking cool.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure Dave, like, you know, had his like whole reasoning to it and cause there's so much shit he’ll write. And I always end up on Google, like trying to figure out all this stuff, like even in the beginning of “Fewer Afraid,” I was like Googling it as I was listening to it to figure out what it was. Cuz it was so interesting to me. And like I only just the other day realized that the numbers in “Invading The World” meant … he has like these like numbers he repeats at that ending of the song and I was like, ‘oh, those are cool. I don't know. I'm just going to leave it’ And as we were like working on it, I was like, ‘you probably have some reason for it.’ Like I won't say anything. I thought it was a little odd, but I just was like, 'that's fine.’ But only the other day, like someone posted on Twitter and was like, ‘those are like coffin dimensions.’ I was like, “fuck, FUCK!" There was even something like, there was even something like Dave mentioned Waco and like a song. Um, I think he mentioned it in "From the Crow's Nest on Fire Street” on Death to New Years but he mentioned Waco and I like, I don't even know… it went over my head. He mentioned details about Waco. And then when Barely Civil - I was recording their LP like a year or two ago and I think their drummer, Isaac, mentioned it to me. And he was like, me and my friends ended up like looking that up and realizing what it was. I was like, “looking what up, what are you talking about?” He's like, “oh, the reference to Waco.” And I was like, "excuse me?” (Laughs) So like, there's a couple of little things I like to kind of gloss over and like go over my head. And then I realized, and I'm like, “holy shit.”
The way he writes is so awesome. Like going back to like, yeah, the 23 by 84 by 28. And the way that song ends, it's just like, like biting painful sarcasm where he goes, “or at least two days off in a row” like that just like just incredible writing. And like, it fits in like the theme, like the ongoing theme throughout the record with worker oppression and all that stuff too. It's just like, it's wild. And like the visuals for both of those songs absolutely evoke those lyrics and those vibes so well, like I love the two videos the band has released.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, those were actually, those were done by our people - Katie and her partner, Adam, and they have a video production team called Ottica Productions and they were like the first people we thought of to do the video, kind of like keep it almost internal in a way. Um, cuz like the whole record was such a process, but like keeping things kind of in like our group and always kind of yielded the best results overall for a lot of elements. So yeah, we trusted them with it and I was like really stoked on like what they did.
They’re so great. So to wrap up I just wanted to touch on something in the liner notes - I just love that you guys put, “We never broke up and we never will.” I love that attitude.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah. It's funny. Yeah. I it's just like stupid internet posts or, you know, like you see these stupid things and you're like, no, fuck you. I was glad that, that the band like came up with that. There was like, there was a thing I saw - as a side note - when Invading came out where like someone argued on a forum that I wasn't in the band when we did our first LP and was like, “oh, he only played trumpet.” And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about like, where does that come from? And I was like, so pissed. I'm like, I kind of viewed that, like, in the movie Jay and silent Bob strike back. They like find the people that, like, that, like talk shit about them on forums if I found them and beat the shit out of them. I mean I would never do that. (laughs) But I was like, man, I would love to tell this kid they're just wrong. It was like they were so happy with themselves about this “fact that wasn’t even real. But yeah…
Yeah of course, I just love that attitude - a middle finger of sorts towards the people who’ve been thinking that the demise of the band was coming for years now, just for whatever reasons. And it's just cool to see TWIABP still persevering and really thriving. Like this is the band’s best record. I love it.
Hey, thanks. I appreciate that. That's, that's awesome to hear. It's always like a little like nerve-racking, but doing the record, I was like, ‘yes, this is sick.’ And then we finished it and I was like, ‘oh no, what if people don't like it.’
I’ve always viewed TWIABP as one of the most established bands in our music community. And so I always really appreciate it when an established band continues to take the kind of risks that this record takes and not just resting on your laurels or redoing what might've been really successful nine years ago. And I always think that's so admirable and commendable and that's one of the main reasons why I love this record so much.
Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. I mean a lot of my favorite bands, they always have like progressions through their albums. So like for example - an easy one - Cave In, right? Like their records always feature some kind of change. And I always was like, that's awesome, like that’s sick. I can sit down and listen to like one record and kind of get my fill of that. And then the next one, and I'm like, it’s still Cave In but they changed it up instead of like doing what they did the first time and kind of like AC/DC-ing it.
Yeah, and that's why those type of bands stay our favorite bands because they evolve and they push their boundaries. And it's just really cool.
Absolutely.
Chris, I really appreciate you taking some time out of your afternoon to speak with me and yeah the record's awesome. Good luck on the release and hopefully fingers crossed that you have a really successful and safe tour this fall.
Thank you. Thank you. I really fucking appreciate that. Thank you for even doing this. I think it's awesome and if just one person's into it, then I'm happy.
Illusory Walls is out today via Epitaph Records - you can stream it anywhere and make sure you pick up a physical copy on vinyl or compact disc.