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New album - Misery Made Me, Podcasts
and Slam Dunk 2022!
Photo by Wyatt Clough
Taking a well-earned day off whilst on tour with Beartooth in the US Darkus magazine caught up with Shane Told of Silverstein to get the latest on how things are going and the release of their new album Misery Made Me.
‘We're just wrapping up a tour but we got about a week left it's been a lot of fun, we’re very, very close friends since 2015, when we took them out you know opening for us, and now you know they've exploded in popularity and repaying the favour now with us supporting. That itself, it's a beautiful thing, it's come full circle and you know of course, our bands together form super group Silvertooth, ….Silvertooth lives right here! and the proof is in the pudding’ Shane laughs.
Already cited as having some of the ‘heaviest, saddest, catchiest and most emotional songs’ Misery Made Me certainly provides a rollercoaster for the listener and demonstrates the limitless creativity that continues to exist within the band which has been together for over twenty years.
‘It was really written at a time when we all in a very dark place emotionally. In Canada our lock was very tough and serious. It led to us spending a lot of time…. me personally in my basement cranking up the amp, tuning guitars really low and loud, getting angry you know, and getting some frustration out and making some cathartic music that I needed you know for myself, which you know that didn't happen the last album last album. Everything was good, great in the world, yeah there's like love songs on that album, there's no love songs on this album, that was not in the cards, that would not have been honest and the honest truth was that we needed to make a record with songs like Die Alone and Bankrupt and The Altar you know, three of the heaviest songs we've ever done because that's what was inside us and that's what we needed to get out.’
Talking about the track ‘The Altar’ with it’s opening riffs that eventually morphs into a wonderful synthwave, electronica experience…..’ that song is one of the most unorthodox songs we've ever done, but it's also been in some ways the most unorthodox time we've ever lived in’
With the new album ‘Misery Made Me’ released I wondered if they were concerned that the previous album ‘A Beautiful Place To Drown’ hadn’t been given it’s ‘just rewards’ in the sense of being able to tour and play songs off the album liv over the past 18 months or so…’ beautiful place to drown, you know, I think we released the record at the worst time in human history for an album, just one week before the pandemic and we were really worried about exactly what you said not having that record you know, giving it a chance because we weren't able to tour on it, a lot of peoples minds were elsewhere, they were distracted with the news and their own jobs, their own health but we were actually surprised that this album did resonate with people and streamed really well. A lot of people listen to this, and now playing some of the songs live for the first time, like the first track Bad Habits everyone knows every word to the song so I guess in some ways, maybe it worked out because a lot of people were you know sitting around with not much to do, and they, for some reason they were listening to maybe more music or more of our music so it seemed like it was the worst time but maybe it wasn't as bad as we think, judging from you know the reaction we've gotten to those songs specially live’.
There’s a fascination for us with album titles and how they connect or relate to the tracks on the album, not necessarily in a conceptual way so I asked Shane where did the album title ‘Misery Made Me’ come from?
‘Our guitarist Paul Mark wrote the first track ‘Our Song’ which contains the lyric ‘ misery made me nothing can break me’ and completely without speaking to each other, I wrote the final track that's called ‘Misery’ with the line ‘I can find my peace in misery’ and what I found really interesting about both those lyrics is they’re both kind of uplifting even though they're using very negative words and they were, ‘misery made me nothing can break me’ is a pretty strong take and I can find my peace and misery is something that we almost all had to do, during this time you know with all the horrible things that happened to people and we went through, so when we sort of started discussing it we found that misery was maybe a good word to describe it all but we wanted to put that little bit of that twist on it and those songs happened to bookend the record as well so it really just seemed to work out.’
Shane starts laughing as he says ’What I will say Steve, is it is open to interpretation, if people interpret it better than I do, then I'm just going to use their story and pretend that that's what we meant to do right,?‘
Laughing he goes on ‘It’s something I like to do like, a record we released along time ago now called ‘The shipwreck in the sand’ which was a very very thick concept album and story; and there was a few times where people went ‘oh so like in this story is this like the part where this is happening because of this’ and I had never thought of it and I’d be like, yes you're exactly right that's what I meant and then I started to say that in interviews after that cause I was like hey, that's a good idea I didn't mean to do that but I'm going to take credit for it yeah’
Set for a return to the UK and playing Slam Dunk 2022 I ask Shane about the UK and previous appearances at Slam Dunk Festival and 20th anniversary dates.
‘ it was probably 2019 a slam dunk yeah and then we did two nights at the Angel Academy back in early 2020 that was a part of the 20th anniversary tour right before ‘A beautiful place to Drown’ was coming out yeah, and man those were beautiful, those were like two sold out shows in London… just awesome and I'm really excited to come back. I mean we haven't been we haven't been back you know over the pond since that, so it's going to be over two years we're finally back and we really missed you guys so it’s going to be exciting’
Silverstein have recently started their own Podcast series ‘SILVERSTEIN: The Podcast’ taking a deep dive into the stories and history of the band and their albums over the years, including the making of Misery Made Me. You can check it out across DSP’s.
Silverstein are appearing at Slam Dunk Festival 2022
Silverstein -Misery Made Me is out now.
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