Eric Vanlerberghe sat down to chat the new I Prevail record Violent Nature and how cool the Summer of Loud tour was. Kicking things off I asked him what the best part of that tour was and he said this.
‘To play in front of rock and metal fans, just fans, not like ‘Oh we’re opening up for this band or we’re the headliner and all these other bands have some shared fans,’ It felt genuinely like a festival where people have one or two bands they’re excited for and they’re there for the rest to see new music or see a band maybe they never gave a chance to. I think it was such a genius tour to be put together, and for us on the backside of it every band had a blast.’
When I asked if he thinks something like this could happen again and he said this.
‘I really hope the Summer Of Loud becomes an annual thing! It was the brain child of our late manager Dave Shapiro, who every night was dedicated to, but yea I hope the Summer of Loud can become a bigger and more grand thing that happens every year. If there was another opportunity to play that or something similar I definitely would be interested.’
Moving on to the record Violent Nature I asked him what the mentality was going into recording.
‘The big thing this time around was trim the fat. We’re going to put out 9, 10, 11 songs that all feel important to the record, that all feel like they can stand the test of time, and that it doesn’t feel like one song is cannibalizing another on the record…We’re gonna do a very concise very focused record sonically and instead of trying to squeeze the life out of some demos that felt fun or felt important, but didn’t feel perfect for the record…instead of trying to make those we shelfed those and that’ll give us inspiration for the next time around so we’re not back at it in 2 and a half years later and we’re just starting a new record…leave with some gas in the tank for the next thing to come.’
He continues saying he felt they may have missed on some prior songs with hooks and this time they focused on making those hooks stand out even more. The rest his says was straight from the heart, opening old wounds and taking time and introspection about things that have been eating at them for multiple years.
‘Every song’s got a very strong meaning or comes from a deep emotional place.’
We talk more about the songs on the record and how they have an intention. One song that stands out is ‘Into Hell’.
‘It was a song about a relationship…it was a testament to finding the one…and the hardships you’d go through to stay with them…The guys let me steer the ship for that one…It’s funny that song wasn’t intended to be a single…When we showed the label the record, which they were very patient about…they were like ‘This one, this one is going to be the single.’ Usually in the past when the label offer their pick for the single we were like ‘Ahhh no gahhh’, this time around we were like ‘We’re gonna trust you guys.’ And I’m glad we did.’
Everyone has asked Eric about his clean singing but I wanted to know about the crazy growls he pulls off on ‘God’ and ‘Stay Away’.
‘Stay Away was one of those songs that had a vibe to it, once we got into it I was like ‘Well I could just do some heavy screaming, some typical I Prevail type of screaming’ but I really wanted to push myself. I had been listening to a lot of black metal and I wanted to try some of that high fry vocals…Sonically it’s a little outside the I Prevail sound…that quickly became one of my favorite songs…And then going to ‘God’ (laughs) ‘God’ was fun…We just started writing some heavy thing and I remember thinking ‘What if we just did the heaviest thing…no chorus no line that repeats but let’s just keep the listener on their toes…what’s the next heavy thing we could do…ok let’s open it up…We can’t just do regular screaming on it…we gotta do some gutterals so it can stand on it’s on own…And I can say we put the first pig squeal, our first BREEE on the end…Who would have thought I Prevail would have a BREEE or a pig squeal on a song? No one but me! (laughs)’
The album is out now and it is one to listen to all the way through and then again…and perhaps one or two more times after that!
