Interview: In Eyes Chat About Their Latest Single, ‘Tripwire’

Gold Coast alt-metal trio, In Eyes have recently shared their latest high energy and encapsulating single, Tripwire. With a bout of strong singles under their belt already, Tripwire explores the toxicity and naivety of a past relationship and learning to grow from that.

We caught up with vocalist Rosie Jacobson to chat about Tripwire, an unsuspected friendship with Jonothan Vigil (The Ghost Inside) and DnD.

Hey Rosie, nice to speak to you again, the last time was back in 2020, but now we’re here to talk about the brand new single, Tripwire. How has the response been so far?

It’s actually been nothing but positive. You know every so often you’ll put out an art piece and there’s always a couple people who’ll hate on it just for the sake of it. But so far absolutely no hate whatsoever, it’s only positivity across the board so it’s really awesome.

And it is such a great track, can you take us through the meaning behind this track and why it was written?

I think during the pandemic everybody had the time to sit back and consider their mental health and their journeys as to where we are now and I was reminiscing about my highschool days and thinking a lot about a particular relationship I had. It was my first time that I fell in love and looking back at it now so many years later realising that was actually a really toxic and manipulative relationship. Being sixteen and naive and falling in love for the first time and I didn’t really understand what was happening. I didnt just want to write a song that was like “fuck you, you were terrible” or anything like that. I really liked the perspective of writing a breakup song about what I’ve learned from that. Basically, it outlines that naivety in that situation and how I’ve learnt to spot it nowadays.

What’s the usual way you go about creating a song, from the writing to the production to the final product. What’s the process like for you guys?

Kris, who’s our drummer, he’s a fantastic songwriter and has such a diverse sort of music taste that he can pull references from. He’s a drummer, a guitarist, a singer, a bassist and a producer and everything, he’s wonderful. He will generally first come up with an instrumental of some sort. Once I get the demo, I’ll write lyrics and melody on top of it, that normally comes pretty quickly to me, I’m quite fast with lyrics and melody. Then we just workshop that back and forth until we’re really happy with what we have. Then we’ll take it to the studio and do all the fine tweaks there like adding extra layers and changing little things like a bar at a time to make it a little more fun and exciting and a little more unique and more like us.

I recall last time we spoke, that you’ve been in bands for a long time. What’s something really cool that’s happened to you over the years, or a favourite memory of being in the scene for as long as you have?

Some highlights for me personally, in my previous band I got to open for Neck Deep and Tonight Alive on two separate occasions, that was really awesome. This band, we got to open for The Brave which was really cool at the start of 2020.

There’s been a lot of highlights but I think getting recognition from bands that we love and look up to is just really, really awesome. Recently I’ve sort of befriended Jonathan Vigil from The Ghost Inside and now he’s like an In Eyesstan, it’s crazy. He streams on twitch and I watch him play video games and whatever because I’ve been a Ghost Inside fan for over a decade. I was just in his stream as a fan and talking in the chat and we struck up this friendship and he found out I do music and he’s been promoting Tripwire on his stream. It’s been really weird but awesome.

And have you always been Gold Coast based?

Born and bred. I was born in Southport at the old hospital that I don’t think is actually there anymore and I’ve lived on the Gold Coast ever since, I’m smack bang in the middle.

What do you think of the Gold Coast scene now and how it’s evolved during your time here over the years?

The Gold Coast music scene is really interesting and diverse. Almost every musician I meet is in a different genre, has a different background and is multi-talented across the board. The only thing that’s a shame is that over the past few years we’ve seen a lot of venue closures. I used to go to hardcore shows groing up and now theres like one venue that’ll host hardcore here and its more of a punk-centric venue, Vinnies Dive Bar. They’re amazing but its a really small venue and its awesome to have that but there used to be five, six, seven venues that would do hard rock, punk, hardcore music.

The gigs that are being given out frequently here are for busking, or four hour pub sets, or cover bands. While there’s still opportunity, and I know our council is working hard to integrate live music more into the foundations of the city, theres definitely been more of a focus on the pop and indie side of things rather than the hardcore side of things which is a shame.

I read that you love Dungeons and Dragons, ESports, all that fun stuff. If you could have your music or your likeness featured in a game which would it be?

Listen, listen, the things I would do to be on Critical Role is insane. For those who don’t know, Critical Role is a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that’s streamed live on twitch every Thursday in the USA and Friday for us. It’s hosted by Matt Mercer who’s a world famous voice actor across anime and video games. Everybody that plays at the table are also world famous voice actors. With the likes of Ashley Johnson, most famous for being Ellie in The Last Of Us, and Laura Bailey and Travis Willingham and all these amazing people and it’s just the most immersive and incredible roleplaying and storytelling. Like I spend about five hours every Friday watching every single episode like crying and laughing, you get really invested into these things. I would do so much to just sit down at that table for a day and play DnD with them.

What’s on the cards for you guys this year, any more new music, gigs, a tour?

Yeah we’re hoping for all of it! Tripwire, fun fact, was on our cards for February 2021. It was supposed to come out four months after The Dreamer, but with the pandemic we just weren’t able to get into the studio. Then when our studio was able to be open, his backlog was just full. We’ve been sitting on a lot of songs for a while and we’re really hoping to put out an EP this year so that’s what we’re gonna start working on next. We’ve got a couple shows coming up which haven’t been announced but will be very soon. Gonna be writing a lot and playing as much as we possibly can cause we miss it so much.