Shadows Fall
Never Better
2007-12-14
Increase Font Size
Decrease Font Size
Shadows Fall: Metal that resonates with listeners in a way that guarantees they’ll be leaving the concert with big smiles on their busted-ass faces. If you don’t believe it, you haven’t heard it. Aggressive and gimmick-free (no umlauted, hyphenated prefixes here), this particular flavor of metal defies anyone who fails to see art in the heavier side of rock. Frontman Brian Fair is proud of his band’s accomplishments, not the least of which includes a recent Grammy nod for “Best Metal Performance.” Add to that guitarists Matthew Bachand and Jonathan Donais being voted Guitar World’s “Best New Talent” and Drummer Jason Bittner being voted Modern Drummer’s top “Up and Coming Drummer” and you can see why Fair’s so excited to talk about what his band has in the works for this year.
Your latest album, Fallout from the War, was released in June. Did the writing process for this record differ from the last one?
Yeah. This time around, we’ve been doing more jamming than we’ve done before which has been a lot of fun. It takes away some of the rigidness which can be a part of metal. You can get stuck in a formula and start cutting and pasting riffs together sometimes. Jamming more allowed us to work on transitions and getting the songs to flow in a natural way. This has definitely been our most organic writing process to date.
Does jamming make it more difficult to put the lyrics together?
Actually, I’ll usually wait until the song is finished before I come up with the lyrics, just to make sure that the vocals don’t fight anything that ends up becoming part of the song.
How did you feel when you first got news of the Grammy nod?
It was very unexpected. We’re on an independent label [Century Media] so to get recognized by the powers that be was pretty mindblowing. We were lucky that a lot of our friends were nominated as well—the guys from Slipknot and Mudvayne. So for us, the Grammys were just another chance to party in LA with a bunch of our friends. And for me, it was also a chance to try to meet Gwen Stefani, which didn’t work out, but at least I saw her from a distance.
Was there anything about the Grammys that disappointed you?
The only thing was that they don’t have food or beer there. What kind of party is that? We actually left a little bit early, because I was starving. I was like, “Okay, I’ll miss the Kanye West performance to get some burritos and beer.”
What else do you hope to accomplish in the near future?
At this point, we just want to blow everyone’s mind and take the music to a whole new level. But, who knows, we may fall flat on our face. That’s the beauty of art. You never know how it’s going to be perceived by other people so all you can do is put 100 percent of yourself into it.
Your latest album, Fallout from the War, was released in June. Did the writing process for this record differ from the last one?
Yeah. This time around, we’ve been doing more jamming than we’ve done before which has been a lot of fun. It takes away some of the rigidness which can be a part of metal. You can get stuck in a formula and start cutting and pasting riffs together sometimes. Jamming more allowed us to work on transitions and getting the songs to flow in a natural way. This has definitely been our most organic writing process to date.
Does jamming make it more difficult to put the lyrics together?
Actually, I’ll usually wait until the song is finished before I come up with the lyrics, just to make sure that the vocals don’t fight anything that ends up becoming part of the song.
How did you feel when you first got news of the Grammy nod?
It was very unexpected. We’re on an independent label [Century Media] so to get recognized by the powers that be was pretty mindblowing. We were lucky that a lot of our friends were nominated as well—the guys from Slipknot and Mudvayne. So for us, the Grammys were just another chance to party in LA with a bunch of our friends. And for me, it was also a chance to try to meet Gwen Stefani, which didn’t work out, but at least I saw her from a distance.
Was there anything about the Grammys that disappointed you?
The only thing was that they don’t have food or beer there. What kind of party is that? We actually left a little bit early, because I was starving. I was like, “Okay, I’ll miss the Kanye West performance to get some burritos and beer.”
What else do you hope to accomplish in the near future?
At this point, we just want to blow everyone’s mind and take the music to a whole new level. But, who knows, we may fall flat on our face. That’s the beauty of art. You never know how it’s going to be perceived by other people so all you can do is put 100 percent of yourself into it.
Bookmark: 
