Complacency is boring, and We Came As Romans are anything but. From back-to-back tours to toying with different genres and musical elements, the metalcore five-piece—unclean vocalist Dave Stephens, clean vocalist Kyle Pavone, lead guitarist Joshua Moore, rhythm guitarist Lou Cotton, and bassist Andy Glass—aim to continue constantly growing as a band and moving forward. Now on the heels of the release of their latest single “Wasted Age” and their current U.S. tour, Dave discusses progressing from past albums and what’s to come next.
I know the band had a little time off recently in between tours. What have you been up to?
Well I have a Jeep, so I’ve been doing some off-roading. And my girlfriend and I are both into wine so we’ve been visiting some wineries around here and just enjoying the last of our time!
You’re living on the West Coast now and the rest of the guys are still in Detroit. Has it been difficult adjusting to that as a band?
Sometimes it’s a little annoying, like I don’t have the convenience of going and meeting with my bandmates all the time. But technology makes things a little easier, and I still fly in early to Detroit for practices and songwriting. So all-in-all L.A. is only a four-hour flight from Detroit so I can always get there quick.
Oh that’s great! Now you’re about to head out on tour with Parkway Drive. What are you looking forward to about the tour?
We’ve toured with Parkway Drive, the whole world pretty much, except for America. We know the band really well and they’ve always kind of taken us under their wing. I feel like we have the presence we do in Europe because of them. You know, our very first tour ever was over there with them. We were playing a huge room, opening the tour in a country where no one had ever heard of us yet. They were with us in Australia when we got our feet down there and now we get to tour the States together, which is something that we’ve talked about and we’ll finally get to do it.
Last time we spoke was right before you released your self-titled album in 2015. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s coming next?
We’re actually about to go into writing/hibernation mode again, so hopefully we’ll make this record better than the last. That’s always the goal from record to record. And after that we’ll jump right back into touring again! We’re not a band that really takes too many breaks so we like to stay busy.
We have a pretty good idea right now of what we want to do (album wise) but we don’t want to announce anything yet. You know our last record we really pushed the boundaries and tried to do a lot of different things and it was a really cool learning process. We felt like it was a good time in our career to try something different. And it went over well and everything, but I think at the end of the day a lot of us kind of missed playing the heavier stuff. I think that’s something that we want to go a little back to, but with a new twist obviously.
Like I said, we learned so much about melody on the last record and we still want to incorporate a lot of melodies in our songs but you know, add in some of those metalcore elements we’ve been missing so badly.
Has there been any nervousness on how the music would be received while toying with these different elements?
Yeah, I mean it’s nerve-racking for us every record because like, we’re not the band to put out the same record twice ever. I hate when bands do that personally, and I know my bandmates feel the same way. So from record to record we always try something different and it’s always nerve-racking because you spend months creating it and it sucks when people don’t like it (laughs). You always hope that what you put out is what your fans want to hear and that it’s a good enough record to please as many people as possible. But at the end of the day you can’t please everybody. You just have to write the best songs that you can and hope that most of them like it.
Yeah, and it’d be pretty tedious to recreate the same album over and over.
I just feel like, what’s the point in that? It’s like, they already did that record so if you like it you can listen to it again. But you know as artists we like to try different things and push ourselves. Every time we try something different, we learn something different and become a better band because of it. And you know, a lot of people will say like, “I like To Plant A Seed by them. Why can’t they make that again?” But if we did that some people would be like, “This band sounds the same every single record! Why do they sound the same?”
You can never please everyone! Now before we go, is there anything you’d like to say to the fans coming to the NY and NJ shows?
I really do love playing in NY, especially PlayStation Theater. Every time we play there it’s awesome. And in NY it’s always crazy getting the bus in there, and getting off the bus, and then the bus has to move but at the end of the day it’s always worth it.
And NJ too! We’ve played some of our biggest shows of our career in NJ so that’s a show that we’re very much looking forward to.
We Came As Romans’ newest single “Wasted Age” is available for purchase now on iTunes. You can catch We Came As Romans performing at PlayStation Theater on Oct. 5 and at Starland Ballroom on Oct. 7. For more information, visit wecameasromans.com.
