Late last year Story Of The Year broke a self-imposed exile of seven years with the release of ‘Wolves’, an album that emphatically catapulted them back to the top of the post-hardcore scene and ensured that the band would be back out on the road, with a stopover in Australia firmly in their sights.
In the current musical climate where new bands and music are accessible at the literal touch of a button, drummer for Story of the Year Josh Wills admits that the band did have some concerns as to whether the band or their music would still be relevant in an ever-changing society.
“I think you always have that fear, especially the way things are nowadays with how social media has led to people having short attention spans,” he agreed. “Everybody wants stuff now, now, now and if you don’t have it right when they want it then they move onto something else. I feel like that fear was there but all you can do is put out the best record you can with the best rad content you can and hope for the best and thankfully our fans came out in droves and showed they haven’t forgotten about us. I’m sure we’ve lost people along the way as every band does but in general, I feel like they came out in full force and supported us.”
When Story of the Year first started back in 2000 Wills says that the musical climate was vastly different to that of today and that in order to stand out and be noticed the young musicians made a vow to be themselves and commit to putting on the best live performance they possibly could each and every time they ventured on stage.
“We were just friends who skateboarded together and made music and hung out,” he recalled. “I don’t know that there was a vision as such. I know we wanted to have a super bad ass live show! That was something we always wanted. There was a time period where bands you went and saw just stood up there and looked sad and looked at their shoelaces and didn’t do anything on stage. We grew up going to see bands like Deftones that gave you a show. It wasn’t just playing live versions of the songs. We wanted people to come to our show and have a fucken rad time and look at our show. If you don’t have a giant package or LED screen nowadays… it’s looked on as boring. We always wanted to be all over the place and energetic and not slow down during the set and just go off. That was the main goal of the band. Obviously, you wanna get signed and that’s always the dream but we were just having fun.”
To hear more about Wolves as well as where Story of the Year fit in in today’s music climate and what to expect from the band on their upcoming tour, tune in to the audio interview below.
STORY OF THE YEAR AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
Tuesday 1 May – Capitol, Perth – 18+
Thursday 3 May – The Triffid, Brisbane – 18+
Saturday 5 May – Metro Theatre, Sydney – 18+
Sunday 6 May – 170 Russell, Melbourne – 18+
www.tickets.destroyalllines.com
