Mayday Parade are the band that just keep giving. It is hard to believe that it is now over a decade since their debut album, A Lesson In Romantics, put them on the map around the world. Since then the band have kept on bringing out great albums and have risen to the very top of the pop-punk genre.
From there the band has just gone from strength to strength attracting fans from all over the world, while a heavy touring schedule, including the Vans Warped Tour, has also seen them become a band that is known for its amazing live shows. Now in 2018 though we see the band with a brand new record label and the release of something new – Sunnyland. HEAVY Mag caught up with the band to find out all about the brand new album.
“I think when we did Black Lines it was a bit of a departure from our old or standard sound that the fans were used to, but this time I think we approached it with a balance between wanting to keep progressing and try new things and also returning back to some older elements of our musical style from the past,” says Alex Garcia. “And I think it just came out that way and I think we have been able to keep a pretty good balance, we didn’t want to depart too much because we still wanted to keep progressing as a band but we wanted to have that decent balance. As a band we talk a lot about things but it is always just somebody expressing their thoughts and then we just write the songs that we write and we pick the songs taht we pick, like it is never like where somebody says ‘well we like this song but it isn’t fitting with what we are trying to do right now’. At the end of the day the way our album comes out happens super organically with the band and that’s because we very much just say ‘well this is the best song or these are the best songs we have, these are the ones that we love the most’ and that’s how it works out. I mean Black Lines was much heavier but it really was the best of the best of what we were writing.”
The name of the album itself comes from a track called Sunnyland which sees the band reflect on their childhood. “The reason that it is Sunnyland,” says Garcia, “Is because in Tallahassee when we were growing up there was an abandoned mental hospital in the city and it was super creepy, it looked like it was ripped out of a horror movie but teenagers used to go there and used to hang out and explore it, it was like a real haunted house. Anyway Derek and Brooks used to go all the time, and we all went at least once,… it was just one of those things that local kids in a town do and it was a crucial time of our growing up… it’s about reflecting on that.”
Sunnyland from Mayday Parade is released on 15th June.
