Haste The Day | Raising The Bar Once Again
fter forming in 2001, Haste The Day has now pumped out their 5th album for Solid State Records! Raising the bar once again, proving their founding authority and musical craftsmanship. Haste The Day has struggled through the changing of the guard, as far as members go, and this new album has proven their worth and determination. The crew of HTD just doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. Pushing blindly through the darkness, they continue on bringing light to the depths. Forget the message boards and snobs saying that Haste The Day isn’t what is used to be and that the moniker no longer belongs to them. HTD is more than music, more than sound and breakdowns. There is no denying the talent that springs from this well every time out of the gate. Vocalist Stephen Keech spoke with us about the new release and struggling to keep the voice and mission behind Haste the Day.
What were some major influences for the Attack of the Wolf King album? And how have they changed since “Burning Bridges”?
Stephen Keech: The band started with influences like Living Sacrifice and Zao but more recently, influences for myself would include The Deftones, A Life Once Lost and bands like that.
What were some of the specific influences as far as what was going on in your life and the life of the band that ended up going into this record?
SK: Obviously the band went through a lot of changes around that time and we just kind of had to sit down and decide what our sound was going to be as a whole since obviously we had a lot of new members and a lot of new influences coming from different places. I can’t say what everybody’s influences were. We sat down and just pulled out what we were all best at. We wanted to make just the most beautiful most heavy epic record that we could possibly do.
Have you found writing/recording to be a process that gets easier over time/experience?
SK: It’s kind of brand new every time. At least in my experience over the past couple of years since I joined the band, on every record there is at least one change. So it (the process) kind of stayed the same because of the change, if that makes sense. We’re used to it but it’s new and exciting every time.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate a bit here and ask what you’ve probably heard a lot of times. With all the member changes and obviously a vocalist change, a lot of people make the argument that Haste the Day should’ve changed their name long ago because it has become such a different band. How do you respond to this?
SK: Haste the Day has never been about the music. Haste the Day has been about loving people who don’t usually get love and showing compassion and grace to people that have been basically kicked out of the Christian church and kind of bringing the definition of Christianity at least for ourselves back to what it actually is about and that is doing what Christ did and that was hanging out with people who were rejected by the church and loving them and showing compassion, love and grace to them. When that changes, Haste the Day will change their name.
When you first began with HTD, did you see HTD still pushing strong in 2010?
SK: For some reason I was thinking “Well this will at least get me through the next five or six years, that’ll be cool” but now it pleases me to see us still cranking out albums. It’s been almost five years and we’re still making music and having a good time on tour and doing what the band has always been about.
What are some things you see HTD doing in the next year? In the next 5 years?
SK: I’m not sure. Every day is a winding road (laughs). I had that song stuck in my head all day yesterday. You never know what’s going to happen. Five years ago I never knew that we’d have all new members now so you never know what’s going to happen.
What song off of the new album is your personal favorite to play?
SK: So far we’ve only really sat down and played through “Dog Like Vultures”, “Travesty”, “The Quiet, Deadly Ticking” and “Merit For Sadness”. We have all these working titles for songs but then I forget what the actual names are, even though I named them (laughs). I would have to say my favorite two songs on the record are deny and “White as Snow”. Deny encompasses everything about the record that I love. It just has the intense heavy angry part, catchy chorus and at the end it just has this part that makes me so excited, this huge epic singing part that I could hardly control myself and not like ball in the studio, it just means to much to me and to us. It’s just a very aggressive song all the way through. It might not be the most shreddiest song but it’s definitely the most important to me. I’m extremely influenced by The Deftones and you can probably tell when you listen to “White as Snow”. I just love that song as a whole because we’ve never done anything like it. It’s in drop A tuning which is lower than we’ve ever tuned and its just a really fun song.
What’s your favorite pass-time with your downtime on tour?
SK: I love reading. I never really read a book all the way through until after high school but then when I started touring I realized how great reading actually is because I can just do it in the van whenever to kill time.
What are you reading now?
SK: I’m reading a book called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s amazing, I love his writing style.
