propertyofzack:

PropertyOfZack spoke with Andrew Wetzel of Attack Attack! just the other week for a great interview. Andrew and I discussed the band’s new album and that they have already written 22 new songs and recorded 10 new songs for another album that could be out fairly soon. Wetzel also confirmed that the band is no longer signed to Rise Records and will most likely release their next album on their own. Read the full interview below!

For the record, could you state your name and role in Attack Attack!?
I’m Wetzel from Attack Attack! and I play drums.

So you guys have kicked off 2012 pretty fast and strongly with the release of a new album and the tour in support of the album. Can you just discuss the first leg of the tour so far?
Yeah, the tour has been killer and the album’s been doing great. It landed at number 11 on Billboard. Every night of the tour has been sold out except for like two. You know, it’s pretty killer.

The Billboard thing was kind of huge. We’ve seen bands in this kind of scene or genre sell a nice amount of albums, but seeing the name Attack Attack! and Rise Record in the top 15 on the Billboard charts was shocking to a lot of people. Can you talk about the feeling that gave you guys?
We were really stoked. The only thing that was kind of a bummer about it was I think there was either 160 or 600, I don’t remember which one, but It was a couple hundred record difference between 11 and 10 and so we were super fucking close to being top 10. But whatever, we’ll take it, we’ll take what we can get. I mean just seeing that chart, seeing this record, this concept album that we just sort of took on, self-produced, did it in our own studio, totally just went out on a whim here and did our own thing. Seeing it be that successful and have that big of a response was insanely gratifying and we were very, very, very excited to see that happen. 

This album, like you mentioned, is a change for the band, and you guys did go about it a little differently from the norm. Can you talk about the decision to switch it up like that?
We’ve never really been ones to take the easy road, in any sense. We’re always constantly looking for new ways to continue to freshen our sound. We’re always doing what we can to make what it is we do better, or bigger, or cooler, or whatever. This whole situation with Caleb doing all the singing now and the screaming is really awesome because he has a much different voice than our other singer did. So it really gave us this whole new set of tools to just write all kinds of different types of music that we hadn’t been able to before yet. So it was like we were deciding, “How crazy do we want to get? How far do we want to go? How far do we want to reach?” And we ended up with This Means War.

Fans obviously bought it first week, but have they been stoked on the changes and progression?
Yeah, everything has continued to be amazing. The response has just stayed up, like the intensity of the sales; everything has been pretty consistently awesome. So we’re really excited, we think we’ve definitely got the green light on this one. 

With all those changes in terms of production and the concept, was it kind of like turning a new page for the band? The album certainly seems to be more mature and thought out. Was it kind of exciting and exhilarating to do that at the same time?
Yeah, definitely. It’s really nice to have this definite new chapter in our career as a band and to be accepted so warmly. It’s really nice to know that people are really stoked to see that we’re doing our best to push forward and maturing in our sound like what we want to write and all that stuff. It’s nice to that those two things are going hand in hand.

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