FOUR YEAR STRONG
Interview with Alan Day (vocals/guitar)
By Bobby Olivier
If music itself could be boxed up and packaged, it’s safe to say that previous albums from FOUR YEAR STRONG have been wrapped in brightly-colored musical cellophane. The guitar riffs have been bouncy, the breakdowns just heavy enough to warrant a sustainable mosh, and the poppy synth backing the sharp-tongued and spirited vocals of guitarists/vocalists Dan O’Connor and Alan Day. All of it was housed in a CD sleeve depicting a wizard riding a giant squid along the cratered surface of moon, or the gang from Worcester, Mass. standing atop a pile of skulls with Day drawn as a machine gun-wielding mythical centaur.
Those days are over. The group’s latest album art is more subtle indie-rock than sense-blasting punk. Synth is in FYS’s rear view, along with Josh Lyford, the band’s former keyboardist. But not to fret, although the image was scaled down a bit, the volume was turned up – til the knob snapped off its amplifier — in recording the group’s newest, and most risky endeavor, In Some Way, Shape or Form. The new album’s uncharted hard rock edge may throw some loyal fans for a disappointing loop, but underneath the raunchier riffs are the same driving melodies and empowering lyrics that FYS has become known for. And to the fans who will undoubtedly cry “radio rock!” after a quick listen: You wish your radio played rock like this: explosive choruses supporting a tightly wound vocal intensity will leave you chanting along, against what may have seemed your better pop-punk judgment. Casual listeners may not understand the new path, but diehards may just want to give FYS a kiss on its bearded cheek for making the wait for fresh tunes worthwhile.
What was it like working with producer David Bendeth (PARAMORE, PAPA ROACH, DROWNING POOL) for the first time?
It was cool, and different than anything we have done before. More than anything else, he pushed us to be the best songwriters and performers that we could be. He wasn’t just a yes man. If something wasn’t good, he told us.
There has been plenty of talk about how different this album is from past works. What makes it different?
Yeah, this album is completely different. We knew that we wanted to do something new and different from the beginning, but that is how we always go about things. We always want to make something different and try new things. We don’t want to make the same record more than once because it’s boring for us and boring for the fans. I think we went a little bit further this time, but while we were taking risks, we were keeping our fans in mind. We think that these songs are going to be some of the best songs to play live – that’s kind of the way we’ve always looked at writing music. We’ve gotten a lot of different opinions on the songs from a lot of different people, and it seems like a lot of the fans feel betrayed, and they think we are just doing it for the money and trying to get big and famous, but that’s not it at all. We are just trying to make music that we want to make. And some people are saying it sounds like radio rock, but even it were radio rock, wouldn’t you want the band you grew up listening to and liked for a long time to be on the radio?
Why the change in album art? Tired of mechanical sharks and giant squid?
It was a combination of things. We have always done illustrations, so we knew we wanted to do photography this time and once we came to that conclusion, we thought it would be cool to have a bunch of items on the record that were personal items. All of the things you see on the cover are all things we grabbed from our houses. It wasn’t just random stuff. We all wanted to have things that reflected our personality or that were important to us in some way, like things that were given to us. One of the things is a lyric book that we have used forever that has a bunch of Enemy of the World original lyrics in it. It all has meaning to us.
Which items did you contribute?
I brought in the mandolin, the candy canes and the Christmas ornaments, the big wooden X, and a bunch of other stuff too.
How do you feel about some people calling FOUR YEAR STRONG a “beardcore” band?
We’ve heard that for a long time now and I don’t even know what that means. I think people think that we coined that term, but we have never called ourselves “beardcore” before. We had nothing to do with that. And we have never called ourselves “happy hardcore” either. We never called ourselves any names like that and I think that is why a lot of people are upset about the new record. People thought we were coming out and saying “we are making a rock record,” as if we were saying “screw everything else, we are making a rock record.” What we were saying more in that situation was more along the lines that we have never considered ourselves to be “beardcore” or “happy hardcore” or any of those micro-genres: emo, pop-punk, hardcore, whatever, but all of those fall under the umbrella that is rock, and we wanted to get back to that. We grew up listening to GREEN DAY and NIRVANA, and those bands were great not because of the genre but for what they did.
If you could swap beards with any man (or woman) from history, who would it be?
That’s a tough one. I was thinking Abraham Lincoln, but he didn’t have the mustache and I don’t like the no-mustache thing. Chuck Norris has a good beard. I’ll go with Chuck Norris.
Do you ever find it difficult to keep up with the onslaught of social media that bands need to maintain to survive in today’s world?
Yeah, it’s definitely hard to keep up with. People all over the world are commenting on this and that every five seconds, so it’s tough, especially for someone like me who kind of has ADD. It’s hard to keep track of things in general, let alone all the messages that come in. Every once in a while I try to sit down and catch up with everything and keep contact with friends on Facebook and respond to people’s Twitter. It’s a lot to deal with, but that’s today’s music. It used to be that musicians were looked at more as rock stars. Back in the day, do you think you could write a letter to Jimmy Page and have him write back? That kind of stuff didn’t happen. There was more of the immortal, hero essence of musicians and that doesn’t happen anymore. Now, people want that personal connection.
Anything else?
We always like to have a sense of humor with everything that we do. Obviously, we take our careers and our music seriously, but we still like to have fun with it. So, give our new record a chance. It’s something that we worked really hard on, and we love it and think that the fans will love it if they give it a real shot.
