Earlier this year while We Came As Romans were on their tour of the UK, Rock Sins were lucky enough to have a chat with some of the band before their headline show in London, as well as this you can see our photo gallery of the night here. We caught up with guitarist Josh Moore and bassist Andy Glass, talking all things from their newest album, to this years festival season, to superheros! Here’s what the guys had to say:
Rocksins: So firstly, how has the tour been?
Josh: It’s been good, it’s been short but good. Been doing a lot of press, I guess just trying to build our name here, because well we haven’t been coming to Europe too long, probably about three and a half years, but we’ve been a band for like almost nine years, so the majority of our career has not been over here in the UK or Europe so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do compared to the states.
Rocksins: Out of anything whatsoever, what been the highlight for you?
Josh: Well today Andy bought a hat!
Andy (Laughs) Yeah I bought this really stupid hat, it makes me look so weird.
Josh: (Laughs) I think tonight will be the highlight though actually, I’ve been really looking forward to the show for a while, since we played the Warped date in London really, which was insane.
Andy: (In an outrageous British accent) It was “completely mental” as you would say over here.
Rocksins: How has it been being on the road with The Color Moral, Chunk, No Captain Chunk and Palm Reader?
Andy: It’s been awesome, we just did a US headliner, the Tracing Back Roots tour and Chunk, No Captain Chunk and The Color Moral were on it so it’s kind of just like we picked up where we left off, and erm we played a festival with the guys in Palm Reader where we got to hang out for a little bit, and now we’ve wound up on tour with them and they’ve been really nice guys, everyone on this tour has been really cool, really laid back and relaxed, there’s no pressure and everything’s run smoothly so it’s been good.
Rocksins: It’s a pretty diverse line up on this tour, do you think that has impacted the atmosphere in the crowd compared to say your headline shows?
Andy: I think it’s seemed like the kids are just here for music, like they don’t really care that we don’t necessarily sound like Palm Reader at all, they’re really like thrashy and even like The Color Moral have their more trashy parts so they kind of mash with Palm Reader, then we’re more like The Color Moral so it’s kind of like this big Venn Diagram!
Josh: Yeah, now that I think about it all of the bands are really different.
Andy: Just think of it like a big Venn diagram!! Like where every band has their slight similarities and there’s just one in the middle, for those of you who don’t know it’s the thing with the circles, look it up! “Venn” two N’s.
Rocksins: A lot of that diversity seems to come from the fact this tours been put on by Rock Sound and Impericon, these annual tours put on by magazines and companies have almost become their own mini festivals in a way, do you think it’s important tours like this keep their place in the scene and give bands real coverage?
Josh: Yeah totally, this tours been really awesome, we’ve been able to do like another branded tour before that Impericon do called Never Say Die and especially over here in Europe, the branding of a tour seems to be really successful and really helps out the bands that are on it, so yeah I’m all for it!
Andy: It is nice to just have like some I guess like security, with it being branded by some other company or label or whatever it may be that are going to help push your tour and get the word out
Josh: Yeah Rock Sound’s been awesome with ads and promoting the tour in general, it’s been really good of them.
Rocksins: This is your first full UK tour since your album Tracing Back Roots was released last year, has this meant the setlist for this tour has been quite heavily drawn from that album?
Josh: Yeah! We’ve got erm like 12 songs and only 4 aren’t , so yeah it’s a good 66% Tracing Back Roots.
Andy: And that’s the smartest decision we’ve done.
Josh: (Laughs) It’s just what we want to play, I mean everyone in the band really loves the album. We love playing the album, we love writing and recording the album, just all of it, it’s been like a new thing for us, a new style I guess, trying to figure out a way to literally stay true to our roots and how we started as a band but also move forward and I feel we really did that on Tracing Back Roots, so I think we all personally just really believe in that album and what it’s about, so I think that really translates in our set because on stage you can just see that we’re all really passionate about what we’re doing. I’m not going to lie, sometimes we play some old songs and it’s like “this is boring! I’ve played this song every day for four years”
Andy: I was trying to think how many times I’ve actually heard To Plant a Seed (laughs)
Josh: Yeah, To Plant a Seed and a song call Roads off our first CD, we’ve probably played those songs about 250 times a year for four years.
Andy: We’ve definitely played those songs a good thousand times.
Rocksins: Do you have a favourite track off the new album to play live?
Andy: Ghosts.
Josh: I Survive and Ghosts.
Andy: Actually yeah I Survive is pretty cool now, at first we kind of didn’t know what to do because it’s like a slower song, it’s such a new style for us, like we’re used to just headbanging and rocking out but this one’s kind of like groovy, we’ve kind of got the hang of it though.
Josh: Nah we have, it’s been awesome I mean this tour especially I survive has seemed to really catch on, Ghost is always just fun because it’s super high energy and really crowd involving, it’s the same with opening with Tracing Back Roots, I think we’ve done that every show since we’ve released the CD and that song is so awesome just because of the energy it brings to the crowd and being on stage feeding off that energy just makes it that much more fun.
Rocksins: So staying with the new album, there was a clear shift to a more melodic sound, especially with David’s vocals. What made you want to do this?
Andy: We flipped a coin.
(Laughs)
Josh: Dave sang when the band first started nine years ago and then we were like ‘ahh we should probably quit that’ and then when Kyle joined by way of Andy, back in the day we needed another vocalist about five years ago and Andy was like ‘I know this kid named Kyle, he’s kind of crazy but it’ll be fine!’, we were like ‘okay’ so then Kyle joined and yeah he is crazy, but it turned out to be fine (laughs). So then Kyle started singing and Dave was only screaming, so it’s always been in the back of our heads that Dave could sing and as Dave’s voice really matured screaming wise, like if you listen to our EP or To Plant A Seed compared to Tracing Back Roots, you can really tell in his voice how much it’s like matured and grown and this was just a CD where we were like ‘well Dave can sing, why can’t Dave sing on the CD?’. Yeah and John too, John Feldman (album producer) was really great too in helping Dave find like his style I guess, yeah his style and the way that he wanted to sing, something that would set him apart but wasn’t forced.
Josh: Yeah ‘cause David can do it all, just John helped to shape and mould his voice, John helped him find the character. I really think this shows on the CD, like Dave and Kyle have two completely different voices, I think a lot of our fans noticed that and I think a lot of our fans really liked it.
Andy: It’s almost like Linkin Park, you’ve got a rapper…
Josh: (Laughs) yeah almost like that, if only we could be them! Seriously though if only we could be them, I love Linkin Park, we both do.
Rocksins: With them in mind, it’s been announced that you’ll be back over here in the summer for Download festival, this is your first major UK summer festival, what are you guys expecting download to be like?
Josh: Hmm well Andy got some unfortunate news, the day that we play, on the stage that we play, Andy’s favourite band In Flames were supposed to play and I guess well they’ve dropped out, so Andy’s heartbroken but the rest of us are stoked because it’s just going to be huge and it’s going to be awesome. I love playing festivals, I love being given the opportunity to prove ourselves to people that would have never listened to us before, there will be a ton of people that are only watching us because they’ve paid for the ticket and we just happen to be playing on a stage they like. Just being given the opportunity to play to tons of people that will have never heard our band, it’s kind of giving me anxiety a little bit but at the same time I think it makes us all perform just that much better, so hopefully we win over a lot of new fans.
Rocksins: Considering you’ve played both UK and US Warped Tour, how do you think Download will be in comparison?
Andy: I feel kind of like Download will be that but on a much larger scale, obviously the headliner’s at Warped were Billy Talent and Parkway Drive, two awesome bands which I love but then Aerosmith is just a whole different animal because it’s just Aerosmith you know what I mean? (Laughs) It’s all almost a bit more of a well-known scale. Warped Tour is awesome though, we love it, last year we did every single day there was, Australia as well, so yeah we love Warped Tour and I hope Warped Tour loves us (laughs).
Rocksins: So after this tour, you’re heading back to the US pretty soon for some shows and a tour with Asking Alexandria, can you talk to us about any other things you’ve got planned for this year?
Josh: Well around Download we’re doing a bunch of festivals around mainland Europe, we’ll probably be overseas for quite a while. Not all of the festivals are announced yet, some are, we kind of just announce them as they go, obviously it’s on their schedule not ours. So for anyone reading this interview who may not be from the UK or may be travelling to Europe come see us because we’ll be hanging out at a lot of different festivals and that’ll be really cool.
Rocksins: Last couple of questions, looking back, last year was a huge year for you guys, give us one way that you’ll make this year top it.
Andy: Get naked and just post pictures on the internet (laughs), that’s probably the biggest buzz right now yeah?
Josh: (Laughs) well either Andy’s going to get naked and post it on Instagram
Andy: Where it will probably get swiftly removed, I mean they’ve got that on lock!
Josh: They do, we’ve tried it before.
Andy: So either that or we’re just going to continue to work really really hard like we’ve always done and just hope we can make it somewhere, I mean there’s been a few years in the nine that we’ve been a band and not caught any breaks and there’s been years that we’ve worked hard and caught some really good breaks, so I figure we might as well just keep doing as much as we can and hope that it keeps working out because so far it’s been great. As long as we keep writing and creating music that we like, then I’m cool with whatever happens.
Rocksins: And finally, if the band were the Avengers, who would each of you be?
Andy: Ah man, Dave would be Captain America.
Josh: I would be Iron Man.
Andy: Nah think about personality wise though.
Josh: Yeah that’s true, he’s pretty smart.
Andy: Exactly and he’s snarky (laughs), erm I would be Thor, who else is there?
Josh: There’s more, who’s the Shield guy?
Andy: Samuel L Jackson? He’s not really an Avenger! There’s the girl, Black Widow! That can be Eric (laughs).
Josh: Andy would be that Shield agent who just dies.
Andy: Yeah, I can do that. Actually no, let me be the bad guy! Loki! I saw Thor 2 and he was pretty good in it. I liked it, superhero movies always tend to have this kind of corny vibe to them, but Thor 2 didn’t, I liked it, it was cool (laughs) but yeah! That would be us as the Avengers!
As mentioned the band will be appearing at this year’s Download Festival and just announced they will also be playing at Leeds & Reading festivals at the end of the summer! To find out more you can follow the band on twitter at @wecameasromans
