Senses Fail

It seems hardly possible that Still Searching, the latest offering from cerebral New Jersey rock outfit Senses Fail, is only the band’s second bona fide full-length. After all, in the four years since their debut EP, From the Depths of Dreams, hit the streets, the band has gone on to be one of the most loved, hated and imitated bands on the melodic hardcore circuit, this despite only releasing one other record, 2004’s incendiary Let It Enfold You.
    During this time, however, the band has toured relentlessly, logging thousands of miles and circling the globe on their own and as part of both the Taste of Chaos and Warped tours, building a dedicated, if slightly obsessive fanbase, and playing their entire catalog into submission. Thus the band — frontman Buddy Nielsen, bassist Michael Glita, drummer Dan Trapp, guitarist and Garrett Zablocki and semi-permanent guest member, ex-Midtown guitarist Heath Saraceno — seems justifiably happy to be giving some of the songs off Still Searching a test run on their stint as headliners of the 2006 Warped Tour. The band is also noticably excited about the addition of Saraceno, whose vocal and guitar work, the band agrees, make even the older SF material sound better than it ever had and helps make Still Searching arguably the band’s strongest work to date.
    Nevertheless, Senses Fail still stand as the Warped Tour scene’s equivalent to black licorice: people either really like them or really hate them. Either way, it would be hard to argue that Senses Fail aren’t poised to take themselves to the next level with the release of the much-anticipated Still Searching and the ensuing tour itinerary. We sat down with the band to discuss the long process behind the new record as well as their recent personnel changes.  

Is there a meaning behind the record’s title, Still Searching?
Buddy Nielsen: Yeah, there are a few themes to the record: faith, lack of faith, a lot of depression, family stuff. The message is very dark.

Are those things all coming from a first-person point of view?
BN: It’s all first-person, the whole record. It was hard to find a name. We had a bunch of names and all of them either just didn’t sit right with everyone, or were used already so I don’t know…I just have the tattoo [points to tattoo that reads, “Still Searching”]. I got this tattoo four years ago, and I was just like, “You know what, that makes a lot of sense.” The record isn’t optimistic at all, but after finishing the record, I feel optimistic that I got it off my chest.

So is it dark, musically speaking as well?
BN: Yeah it’s probably the darkest we’ve done.
Dan Trapp: It’s dark, but not in a depressing kind of way, though.
BN: I don’t know. I find it depressing, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I find it really heavy, but not in the “chug chug” way…
Garrett Zablocki: Yeah, not in like, the nü-metal way.
Mike Glita: What would be a good way to say…it’s like a good-sounding kind of depressing? Like sometimes you listen to a record and you know it’s depressing but it makes you feel good.

Therapeutic?
MG: Yeah. Like Smashing Pumpkins, a lot of their stuff is dark, but it’s therapeutic to listen to. It’s kind of like that.

You guys worked with Brian McTernan on the record. Was there any sort of  searching process involved in finding a producer, or was it pretty much clear that he was the one?
BN: There was definitely a searching process. We definitely went through a ton of other people, and that was a real shitfest.

Why?
BN: Nobody wanted to work with us. No one wanted to do our record. Straight up. We went for the A-list producers, because that’s where we wanted to go.
DT: We were shooting for unattainable things.
BN: I don’t think that they didn’t like the music, I just think that they were like, “You know, the band’s not on a major label, they’ve only sold this amount of records, I’m not that interested.”

So it was kind of a status thing?
Everyone: Yeah.

How did that make you guys feel?
DT: I didn’t really care. It wasn’t that devastating for me, because I knew that if they didn’t want to do it, then they obviously weren’t the right people to do it. And it just worked out with Brian, that he was free and he was really into the stuff and he came up to New Jersey where we’re from and met with us and stayed for practice and you could just tell…
BN: He’s the only person who made an effort.
Heath Saraceno: He really came to the table. We approached him and he was like, “I want to do this record. I’m going to be the producer for your new record.”
BN: He actually had to move a lot of stuff and do a lot of different things. We didn’t want to do it in LA, we didn’t want to do it in New York City, we wanted to do it somewhere else, in the middle of nowhere, and he was totally into that. We wanted to get someone else to mix it and he was totally into that.
DT: He has his own studio that he does pretty much all of his stuff at, and we were like, “Nothing against your studio but we just don’t want to do it there, we want to do it somewhere else,” and he was like, “Great, sounds like a good idea.” He was just really up for anything.

It that why this record seemed to take a little longer than you guys had planned?
BN: Nah, I mean, it didn’t really take any longer than it was supposed to. Maybe a month.
GZ: I think once we started writing, we realized that we needed to take as much time as we possibly could writing.
DT: We definitely didn’t want to rush anything.
GZ: We spent like three-and-a-half, maybe four months just writing.
DT: We took about four months to just write and relax. Well maybe not relax, but just clear our heads a little bit and get into the frame of mind for writing and recording.
GZ: We had enough time to demo the songs, do as much work as possible writing, sit on the songs for a little while, then make even
more changes…
DT: And write more songs.
GZ: So when it came to time to work with a producer, a lot of work was already done and it also opened up the door to kind of experiment.
BN: It was like, “We basically know how this is gonna sound, because we’ve had it for four months and it’s not gonna change.” So we got a chance to work on some other songs, to try to make the songs we didn’t like better and some of them turned out pretty cool.    

So you guys have had some membership changes? What’s the story on that one?
GZ: The guy wasn’t pulling his weight.
DT: It wasn’t working out anymore. It just wasn’t happening.
BN: We traded, for Heath.

So are you  part of the band, just a fill-in? Are you outside of the band?
HS: I’m inside of the band.

Inside of the band?
BN: I wouldn’t say he’s in the band. He’s inside of the band.
HS: That’s a good way to put it from now on.

How does it feel, playing some of the older songs, with a new element in the band?
BN: It sounds a lot better.
GZ: It makes it a lot more fun. We’re finally playing the songs the way we always wanted to, with everything, vocals and stuff, being performed live.

So it finally sounds like it should have?
GZ: Yeah exactly.
BN: [In a contemplative tone] Sounds like it should have…



Senses Fail: now sounds like it should have! That’s a pretty hot tagline.
BN: That’s a good one.    

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