Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Haste the Day

Haste the Day, backing its superb new album, Pressure the Hinges, its first with new frontman Stephen Keech, has a packed touring schedule on its plate for the remainder of the year. After finishing a run on the Warped Tour, they’ll hit the road with Atreyu, then As I Lay Dying and even travel to Panama for show. As the Warped Tour rolled through Columbia, Md., at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Live-Metal.net’s Greg Maki caught up with Keech to discuss the new album, touring plans and more.

Stephen Keech: It actually just worked out. We had wanted to play the Warped Tour for a while. It’s great exposure, so many different kids than we usually play for. You have the kids that usually come to our shows and they go to shows regularly, and then the kids at Warped Tour, they go to one show a year and that’s Warped Tour, which is awesome. So it’s cool that we get to play for a lot of kids that aren’t used to being exposed to music.

Really good. We’re really excited about the way things are going. We’re on an awesome stage, the Smartpunk stage, and, yeah, kids are having fun every day. Every once in a while, we’ll hit a rough spot, but it always gets redeemed by—We played recently in North Carolina and that was insane for us. It was one of the best shows on the tour. It was awesome.

Oh yeah. Circa Survive is one of my favorite bands, and I’ve gotten to see them a few times. It’s awesome. They’re a very big inspiration on me, vocally. So it’s cool.

Pressure the Hinges is your first album with the band. You toured with the guys for a while, so what was it like actually writing and working with them in the studio?

It was great. I was nervous because in my old band I was really involved in the writing process, and I didn’t know how that was gonna pan out with a new group of guys. I didn’t know who did most of the writing and whatnot. I just told them that I had some songs kinda written on guitar. I’m sure they were kinda, like, scared to hear them because I would be, too, if some new guy in the band came in with songs. But I showed them to them, they liked them and I was able to contribute more than I thought to the writing process. Writing is a big part of my life. No matter what I’m doing, whether I’m in Haste the Day or whatever, I’m just sitting at home with my acoustic guitar, constantly writing music. So it was cool to be a part of that.

They saw me playing with my old band. We knew each other, but only by like, “Hey, my name is this. How’s it going?” Pretty much, that’s it. The whole trial period was that tour in Europe that we did, which was my first tour with the band.

I had never been to Europe, no. It was awesome, yeah.

Looking back at the other albums, how do you think the new one compares? Obviously, you’re looking from the outside at the old ones.

To me, I was a fan of the band before, so the band that I’m in now and the band that was then are two different bands. As weird as that sounds, I know kids kinda look at that as a bad thing, but I can’t separate it in my mind. I was not a part at all of what was the Haste the Day, and I am a part of what is now. And so, I don’t necessarily think it’s better or worse or anything like that, but it’s something that I’m a part of. So it’s just like something completely different. I can’t even describe to you how different I view the two. It’s very weird how that all panned out, ‘cause a lot of my friends were like, “Dude, this is one of your favorite bands. What are you gonna do? You’re not gonna be all weird or anything, are you?” I was like, “I don’t think so.” I met the band, and now they’re a totally different band to me.

HASTE THE DAY - 'Pressure the Hinges'

Very similarly to the other guys in the band, old Solid State bands like Zao, a little bit of Living Sacrifice and Stretch Arm Strong—stuff like that—were huge influences, vocally and musically for me. I wouldn’t have ever wanted to learn how to scream if it wasn’t for Zao. They were just the foundation of the music that I listen to now. I know a lot of people say you need to know your roots, like go back to Gorilla Biscuits or hardcore bands back in the day. But I mean, honestly, I’m only 20 years old, and I didn’t go to Earth Crisis shows or anything like that. I’m just a nerd who grew up on Christian hardcore, Christian hard rock.

I hear, especially on the new album, a pretty strong metal influence. Is there one person in the band that that comes from?

Well, I don’t know. I guess we wanted to have an overall darker feel. Also, Jason [Barnes], our guitar player, his main influences are like Def Leppard and straight-up ‘80s rock bands, like AC/DC and stuff like that. So a lot of the riffs he was writing were very rock n’ roll and metal, like ‘80s-metal sounding. So we were stoked on that, but at the same time, we were trying to have a darker overtone for the record.

Mostly just get sleep and I have to remember when we’re playing not to just go nuts. I’ll lose my voice faster if I’m talking, like if we were standing on the stage right now and there was a band playing and I was yelling, I would lose my voice faster that way. It’s funny ‘cause when I’m screaming, it’s actually about the same level as my talking voice. It’s not real loud or anything. People don’t really understand. They think that it’s this super-loud yelling, but it’s not.

Yeah. You’re using your false voice. It’s not even my real voice. It’s my false voice, like false chords and using those to make noise, and it’s not that loud.

Yeah. We don’t call ourselves a Christian band necessarily, but we are all Christians. We couldn’t separate our beliefs from our music if we tried. We all grew up in Christian homes, and it’s just such a major part of our life that whenever we write songs about our life, it just comes out.

People always give bands all kinds of different labels. What’s the strangest one you’ve heard for Haste the Day?

I don’t know if I can remember it. People call us screamo all the time just because we have screaming and singing. There was one funny that I can’t really remember exactly how it went, but it was something along the lines of super machine gun metal something—I don’t know. It was funny. We read it and we were just like, “What is that? Are we that? I don’t think so, but whatever.”

We’ve got one show in Panama , which we’re really excited about ‘cause we’ve never been to Panama before. So we’ll be there for about four days, just hanging out.

A promoter in Panama, who I think is a pastor at a church or something, contacted us and God provided for us to be able to go over there. And then we’ll have about a month off, and then we’ll be going out with Atreyu, which we’re really, really excited about. Just found out yesterday that that got confirmed, so we’re pretty excited about that. Then As I Lay Dying right after that. So we’ve got a very exciting lineup for the rest of the year.