As I Lay Dying shocked longtime fans with An Ocean Between Us, but their evolved sound has been earning raves on the road
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“We boil things down to their basic elements,” says self-assured As I Lay Dying front man Tim Lambesis. “We have the confidence that we’re doing things along the right lines. We just separate our way of thinking from what people want or don’t want.”
Depending on your side of the fence, opening week numbers compiled by companies such as SoundScan and Billboard are either the be-all and end-all of musical success or they’re utter bullshit. To some, if an album hasn’t blasted out of the gate during its initial weekend on store shelves, that artist’s career disappears faster than a line of cocaine at a Motorhead after-party.
Proof that the latter is clearly the case, As I Lay Dying’s fourth full-length effort, An Ocean Between Us, has only increased in popularity since its release last summer. Revered as a metalcore tour-de-force, the album’s intensified bouts of hardcore girth, metallic sheen and vocal forays that range from saccharine melodies to throat-shredding bellows are becoming continually more cherished by fans as the band continues to tour in its support.
“We’ve been all around the world in the past few months, and we still have the summer circuits to hit, like Warped Tour in America and some festivals in Europe,” Lambesis says, adding that while some are still picking up on An Ocean Between Us, longhorn fans are already baying for something new. “We’ll get a short break between albums to work on material, but once we have an album out, we dedicate a lot of time to touring. We won’t start working on a new album until after we’ve toured everywhere possible. We want to play this album as long as we can and get a chance to appreciate it.”
Lambesis says that the album’s unusual heaviness — at least for As I Lay Dying — and more progressive inflections took time for many fans to fully digest. While An Ocean Between Us wasn’t exactly an abrupt departure from the band’s previous work, even they were taken aback by its shift away from their previous toe-the-line metalcore. Both band and audience were initially shocked by the album’s forthright attitude and dominance, many reserving judgment until songs like “Within Destruction” and “The Sound of Truth” could fully sink in. Yet, as with all things avant-garde, once the general consciousness caught up, there was no denying how much these San Diego, California boys had evolved.
“We’re so close to [the album] that we figured it was different, but not extreme,” he shrugs. “When we released it, fans didn’t see the writing process, so they didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. They just heard a new album, so it was a bigger shock. You’re used to hearing the same albums from a band over and over, so when you’re waiting for their new music, you form your own idea of how it should sound. It did take some fans time to appreciate the record.”
Delving further into the process of creation, Lambesis’s enthusiasm is inescapable. He is proud of his band’s achievement, admitting that while undeniably heavy, An Ocean Between Us’s resolute lack of a clear influence is quite possibly its strongest attribute.
“The diversity of the album is exciting,” he says. “There are a handful of songs with different feels within the metal genre. I don’t listen to any music within our genre when we’re writing, so I can get away from everything. It stops us from sounding like other people or having too much of any one direct influence.”
