Interview: August Burns Red

American metalcore band August Burns Red have dropped their new album Guardians on April 3, with two singles released, Defenders and Bones, previously giving us just a tiny taste of what the album has to offer. We got to chat with bassist Dustin Davidson about the album, their plans for the near future and had a bit of banter about the way I pronounce dates. Check it out right here, right now!

Currently two singles have been released so far from the upcoming album Guardians, Defenders and Bones, what has the reception been like?

The receptions been great, we’re very happy. I think it’s hard to please fans if you’re in a band for so long. So many different albums, so many different songs, people get attached to certain ideas that we’ve had before and overall, it’s been great seeing great reception for both Bones and Defender 

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Can you tell us a little bit more about Bones, the most recent release of the two?

Sure! Bones is…I would say it’s a bigger idea of a song and has a completely different feeling. Whereas Defenders is simplistic and all out heavy and the lyrics are kind of aggressive. With Bones, the lyrics go in a different direction, not as aggressive, the song itself is still heavy but has different elements that’s more melodic I would say which is what separates it most from Defender. 

Guardians was released April 3, how are you feeling about the release and how long has this album been in the works for?

(Laughs) First of all I like how you guys say April three instead of April Third.

That might just be a ‘me’ thing

I love it, anyway, yeah about the process! It was a super unique recording process, we started in April of 2019 and we knew that year was going to be busy for us because we were doing our ten-year anniversary tour for our album “Constellations”.  This recording process was unique in the sense that it was the first time we had to split up recording the album. We went in the studio and recorded eight tracks on guitars, leads, overdubs and put programmed drums on those eight songs so we could listen to them for a while and then we went on tour for the summer for the “Constellations” ten-year anniversary and came back in the fall and then recorded the rest of the album, recorded the drums and vocals and tidied it all up together. 

It was a unique process for us because in the past we would roll into the studio for a few months and we’d have all our songs already written and just record them and this time we tracked eight songs and then left for the summer. So, we had eight songs and the songwriters, being JB and myself could ask ourselves ‘what do we have to add to the album? What is the album missing?’ so then we could write more songs and come back and complete the album. I liked that most about the process, just being able to hear most of the album and ask yourself what else do we need to put into it. I think that was really cool and what gives the album its identity.

Was there an overarching main theme for the album or was it a bunch of things all spliced together?

It’s a bunch of little themes spliced together, we don’t want to limit ourselves to one theme, we don’t want to make all the songs sound the same so there’s a lot of little themes sprinkled throughout. 

And due to the whole global pandemic going on you’ve had to postpone upcoming tour dates which must be tough for you guys, even though it’s the right thing to do

Yeah, we know it’s the right thing to do and it sucks, it’s a strange time that we’re living in. We’d been off the whole year and just started the tour with Killswitch Engage so we were really looking forward to getting back on the road to play some shows again. We decided we had to listen to our public officials and people in the medical industry and trust them that we’re doing the right thing here, and hopefully get back to it sooner rather than later. 

What are some of your hopes to achieve for the upcoming months or rest of the year?

That’s a great question, well I hope we can go out and play shows again soon (laughs), and I’m going to take this time off, since we’re supposed to be on tour, to take time to focus on learning new stuff musically and writing more and then I hope we can get back out. We’re supposed to go on tour again in June to Europe so I hope that works out and we can get over there to start supporting “Guardians” because we’ve been sitting on this album for a while and I’m really excited to release it and start playing some new songs.

Are there any plans to make it back to Australia in the near future?

Yeah definitely working on some plans, nothing in writing yet but Australia’s always on mind I’ll tell you that!

Guardians is available here