Red Interview

HEY ANTHONY THANKS FOR TALKING WITH ME. WHAT ARE YOU UP TO TODAY?
I’m getting ready to leave again for the weekend. I’m doing laundry.

YOU GUYS ARE ON TOUR.
Yes, we are on the Winter Jam Tour for the next three months. It’s every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the next three months until April.

YEAH, HOW IS THAT GOING?
Amazing, the shows are gigantic. I think the biggest crowd we played for was 18,000 and the smallest was probably 10,000.It’s all just arena shows and it’s all really cool.

ON FEBRUARY 1, 2011 YOU WILL BE RELEASING YOUR THIRD ALBUM TITLED UNTIL WE HAVE FACES.
Really? (Laughing) I haven’t thought about that, no just kidding.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE OVERALL THEME OR VIBE OF THIS NEW ALBUM?
Well, this is another project for Red where we spent the last two years really paying attention and being vigilant with our fans. I think one of the things we noticed a lot is that these kids out here don’t know who they are, they don’t know what they are here for and a lot of them are struggling with their identity. I think this record is all about that. It’s all about creating some sort of anthemic vibe for those people that are searching for themselves. The world is basically jamming down there throat “You need to be this, you need to do this and you need to own this.” We are helping them focus on creating their own life.

I LISTENED TO THE ALBUM AND I LOVE IT.
You have to say that though.

NO, I REALLY DON’T, (LAUGHING) I REALLY DO LOVE IT. THIS IS YOUR HEAVIEST ALBUM TO DATE. WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO GO IN THAT DIRECTION?
I wouldn’t say overall as a project it’s the heaviest, but I would definitely say a couple of the heaviest songs we have ever written are on this record. We always have that righteous anger, that angst about the situations that we see or get ourselves into. I think the very first track on the record “Feed the Machine” is about that. It’s about the world. It’s about when is everybody just going to start getting it out of their system and create a life of their own rather than let the world seep its way in and make everything so bad.

THAT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SONGS ON THE ALBUM. WHAT I REALLY LIKE ABOUT IT IS THAT IT PACKS A PUNCH AT THE BEGINNING, BUT THEN AT THE END IT BECOMES DRAMATIC.
Yeah, it was really cool for us too, because we did the whole Children’s Choir at the very end. It is kind of going back to that innocent vibe where children are young and impressionable. It gets really creepy at the very end where you hear this nasty scream and then it’s like a digital black out. It’s like “What the heck just happened to me?”

WHICH SONG IS CLOSEST TO YOU HEART ON THE NEW ALBUM?
I would definitely say “Feed the Machine.” There are a few tracks on this record that are my favorite that we’ve ever written. I think “Faceless” is amazing too. There is also a song called “The Outside”, which is track number eight. I like the heavy stuff.

I DO TOO. DO YOU PREFER PLAYING HEAVIER SONGS OR BALLADS?
It honestly doesn’t matter. I think it’s cool because it creates a dynamic during the live show to play both extremes. I think you need both extremes. You can’t just be “balls to the wall” 24 hours a day. You need some sort of release and some sort of sobering moment. I think that is the part of the show where you’re sweating, crazy and getting all bruised up and then there is this epic ballad that is making you think and making you focus. After that you can go back to being crazy, so it’s cool.

DID YOU EXPERIMENT WITH NEW SOUNDS OR INSTRUMENTS THIS TIME AROUND?
Yeah, I think that definitely the Children’s Choir was a new sound for us. We always do some cool, creepy stuff. We try to stay ahead of the game with the whole digital thing, like the new things coming out for us to use at recording sessions and things like that. It was just basically the formula of demoing, writing songs, big huge guitars, really tight beats and vocal layering. Michael’s voice is changing and I think it’s changing for the better. His voice is an instrument, so I feel like that was definitely a change for us too.

THE TITLE WAS INSPIRED BY C.S. LEWIS’S BOOK WITH THE SIMILAR TITLE ‘TILL WE HAVE FACES.’ WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THAT BOOK THAT INSPIRED YOU?
I would definitely say it was something about the book and not the book in general. The book is actually about Greek mythology, so we didn’t really write about Cupid and Zeus. There was a passage out of there that talks about how no human being can receive a message from any divine spirit until they understand themselves and know who they are. I think that is what we thought was really cool because we all believe in God and have a relationship with God. Our identities reveal through our belief. We know ourselves so we can better understand what his plan is for us. Without being over spiritual, that is the direction it went for, anybody that is a believer to know that the plan is more perfect when you understand who you are as a person and what God has for you. It’s definitely a universal record though, we don’t care if you believe or not, we are music makers and we leave the hook in the water more or less.

CLINT LOWERY OF SEVENDUST COLLABORATED ON THE SONG “WATCH YOU CRAWL.” WHAT DID HE CONTRIBUTE?
Yes he did, we always like writing with other people because I feel like it makes the songs not be redundant and predictable. Clint is a great friend of ours and we have always been fans of each other s work. We were picking his brain and asked what he was working on and he said he had a couple demos he was working on that he was pretty excited about. He asked us if we wanted to hear them and he sent them to us. We were like “Dude, we love the chorus and the riff in this. Do you mind if we use it and work on a song together?” He was like “Absolutely, let’s do it.” It is track number seven on the record. It is pretty sick! He wrote the whole chorus to that song. It is a very epic, cinematic and it is a huge sonic landscape with that chorus. We just loved it.

THE SONG “FACELESS” HAS ALREADY GONE TO RADIO. HOW IS IT DOING SO FAR AND HOW ARE THE FANS RESPONDING TO IT?
I only know a few stats because I try not to pay too much attention to it. I feel like I’d go crazy. We are always watching the numbers and the bottom line. You get to the point where you ask “What’s more important? The fact that the music is out there or the fact that it’s doing cool things?” It’s kind of a toss up. The only thing I do know is that we released pre-orders yesterday on ITunes and the record went to #3 right away on the first day and it was #18 overall on ITunes in all genres. The pre-orders are going really well. The only song you can download is “Faceless.” We check in on our viral stuff to see what the kids are saying on YouTube because a lot of people made music videos already. They are trying to do guitar demos and it’s always great because it’s not anywhere near how it’s supposed to be played. I know it’s doing well, so that’s good.

HAVE YOU OR WILL YOU BE MAKING A VIDEO FOR THE SINGLE "FACELESS?"
I don’t know because I don’t think it’s going to be our mainstream single. I think our mainstream single is going to be “Feed the Machine.” That song has such a story to it and I think it lends itself to the imagery that a video can bring. We have already had amazing video ideas for “Feed the Machine.” We are pretty adamant about doing one for that song.

YOU WILL BE OUT ON THE ROAD UNTIL APRIL, WHAT ARE THE PLANS AFTER THAT? WILL YOU CONTINUE TO TOUR THROUGHOUT THE REST OF THE YEAR?
Oh yeah, we will take a little time off, maybe a couple of weeks to get settled in, but it will be in vain because we are going to be touring really hard this year. We have two booking agents now and it’s just a matter of getting on some great tours. I think there are some really cool opportunities this year. Last year everybody was making records and nobody was really touring because the economy sucked. We tried to stay as busy as we could doing some headlining stuff. I think we will definitely tour with this record, do a headlining run with this record, but I also think we will be in support of some really great bands.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE INTERVIEW ANTHONY. IT WAS GREAT TALKING WITH YOU AND I WISH THE VERY BEST FOR YOU. WAS THERE ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO ADD OR SAY?
Check out www.redmusiconline.com because we run it. We are very entrepreneurish if that makes any sense. We run every facet of Red Enterprises. We run our websites, so if you’re on Twitter talking to us, you are talking to the guys in the band. The only reason we are out there able to do this is because our fans are excited about our music. We try to keep ourselves as available as we can.

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Tags:  Red, Anthony Armstrong , Anthony Armstrong - guitars, interviews

Shauna O'Donnell    January 20, 2011