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As I Lay Dying Interview We recently caught up with As I Lay Dying frontman, Tim Lambesis, whilst they were touring the UK with Trivium. Following the release of their recent studio release, Awakened, the band are currently touring Europe with Florida metallers, Trivium. OMG: Summer 2012 had some pretty awesome highlights, namely the Mayhem Festival tour and playing Download 2012 in the UK, were there any other highlights that I've missed, and what was your favourite moment of this summer? TIM: It's all a blur because there's been so much travelling; it's hard to remember real specifics but the Mayhem Tour was a good experience for us because it's that festival atmosphere every day, but we get to re-live it 40 days in a row, so that was pretty exciting. OMG: So you've just released "Awakened," how do you write a song, do you have a specific method and process or is it different for every track? TIM: It's a little different for each track, the general idea is that five of us will start working on individual ideas and start emailing each other those ideas, for everybody in the band we'll program some basic drums, and start layering guitars over it. In some cases the ideas being emailed back and forth are pretty much completed songs, and in other cases they're just a collection of riffs that we finish as a band when we get together in a traditional rehearsal environment. Instrumentally when we're happy with the song, I start evaluating which of the lyrics I have written fit the feeling of the song, and start to match those together at that point. OMG: Did the process for "Awakened" differ from how you normally write a record or is it pretty much the same across the board? TIM: That didn't really start until "Shadows Are Security," which was when we started first demoing stuff with the drum machine before we practiced it acoustically in a rehearsal environment, and then of course modern recording got a little bit easier and easier, so each album became a little bit more developed as far as the overall ideas. Back when we wrote "Shadows Are Security" (2005) we had these incomplete songs and then we'd really need that time together to jam them out. By the time we wrote Awakened, all of us were so good at recording in our individual environments that the jamming process and rehearsing was more to make it feel alive and natural, but the actual creative part of the song writing was primarily done by that point. The other differing factor with "Awakened" is that (bassist) Josh Gilbert was a very big songwriter on this record. He joined the band at An Ocean Between Us, and by the time Awakened came round he wrote about half the record, instrumentally. OMG: "My Only Home" was beautifully written, and to me it sounds like quite a sand song. I know it's about touring and being away from home on a general scale isn't it? Are there any points where you really think, "I want to go back home to California"? TIM: ...Yeah, usually most days I miss home, and if there was a way to be home but still make a living playing music I would do that in a heartbeat, but the catch is that as a profession this is what I'm passionate about and then as my personal life what I'm passionate about is my loved ones back home, so those two are at a conflict with each other. The only thing I can do is find a balance where if I'm gone for a month on tour then I find a month to be home, and just even it out that way. OMG: Absolutely. So how did the recording experience go with Bill Stevenson, and how did it compare to recording "The Powerless Rise" with Adam D from Killswitch? TIM: With Adam and us we really agreed on a lot, we all have a similar background as far as our taste in the way that we like to write metal goes. When it came to working with Bill we wanted somebody who had a different background and maybe, even if they were bad ideas, throw different ideas our way. Bill definitely understands underground music; he gets the mentality that we have. He's not a metalhead through and through, he just appreciates it, so his ideas were big picture kind of things, he didn't care about really small intricacies of guitar parts, he cared more about how the song flowed as a whole. We have very concise and well-structured songs as a result of Bill. OMG: So what do you get up to when you're not on tour or in the studio? TIM: Besides just catching up with my loved ones back home I own a recording studio so I'm there a little bit. I'm (travelling so much that) I try to just get myself organized at home, so I lead as much of a boring life as possible, I know it sounds weird but that's what's exciting to me in contrast, compared to what I normally do. OMG: Did you ever think As I Lay Dying would get to where it is today from when you started out? TIM: No, I always viewed the music we played as pretty underground. When we first started we were, I guess, one of the earlier metalcore bands, and the combination of the heavy rhythmic parts with the metal riffing was pretty abrasive. To me it technically still is. To a completely mainstream audience, it's still a little too overbearing for them and I felt like it would always feel that way. And then the metal genre as a whole has had some changes and trends and we, with Killswitch Engage and a few other bands opened the door for a newer modern era of metal that seems to be pretty readily accepted now. I didn't view that happening when we started the band. OMG: What's your favourite song off "Awakened" and why? TIM: I think for me I enjoy listening to "Wasted Words," because it's not incredibly different, but it's enough of a different style of chorus, and a different style of song, that it has it's own identity for me. Leave A Comment  Search Social Media Message the Studio About One Media Group One Media Group is Staffordshire University's student managed media outlet, producing radio, television and online content. We are based on both Stoke and Stafford campuses and aim to cover everything uni-related, including news, events, music and entertainment.