AS I LAY DYING
Mixed messages, says frontman Tim Lambesis, have no place on his band's upcoming disc
By Dan Epstein
Photo by Robin Laananen
It’s a busy lunchtime at Santana’s, a 24-hour Mexican joint in the rapidly expanding city of San Marcos, California. The restaurant’s fragrant air is thick with the sound of diners placing their orders, greeting old friends, and generally getting their grub on. Every once in a while, the corner jukebox randomly kicks on and adds to the hubbub.
“Is this Elton John?” asks As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis, as the classic Seventies ballad “Your Song” wafts across the room. “It’s really settin’ the mood!” he laughs, digging in to a massive burrito. “Actually, Elton John’s Greatest Hits is a guilty pleasure of mine—I have to say I listen to it at least two or three times a year.”
Which makes perfect sense, in a way. Though Lambesis’ Christian metalcore outfit is justifiably renowned for their skin-flaying musical attack, they’re also well versed in the art of writing melodic hooks that stay with you for days. “I’ve always been drawn towards aggressive music,” Lambesis says. “But the more I see how many bands are involved in the genre, I’m like, Give me something I can remember! Our goal is that, if you listen to 10 songs in a row by metalcore bands, you’re going to forget eight or nine of those songs—but you’ll remember ours.”
Lambesis, guitarists Nick Hipa and Phil Sgrosso, and drummer Jordan Mancino are currently readying their next volley of memorable metalcore in Lambesis’ new home studio. (Bassist Clint Norris recently left the band to concentrate on married life; as of press time, his replacement hadn’t been announced.) According to Lambesis, As I Lay Dying’s follow-up to 2005’s massive Shadows Are Security was already supposed to be finished by now, but their headlining stint on last year’s Sounds of the Underground tour pushed everything back.
“Our plan was to write our record last summer, but then we got the offer to headline Sounds of the Underground, with bands like Cannibal Corpse and In Flames supporting,” he explains. “It was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing, you know? It was too big an honor to turn down.”
REVOLVER So when can we expect another As I Lay Dying record?
TIM LAMBESIS My best guess and hope is to have it out in July. I don’t think we’re really looking to do any of the big summer tours this year, like Ozzfest or Sounds of the Underground. We’ve done all those tours, so this year we kind of want to make our own rules—take bands out on tour that we want to take out on tour, all that kind of stuff. I think our record will be ready by July. But if we don’t do any of those tours, we might actually save it for another month, just to avoid that summer traffic.
REVOLVER How far along are you in the writing process?
LAMBESIS We have four songs that we really like. We did preproduction for them, and they’re keepers. We recorded a couple other songs that have gotten thrown away already, and we’ve gone through a handful of ideas that never actually became songs—we threw ’em away before they got to that point.
REVOLVER How do you know when a song or an idea isn’t cutting it?
LAMBESIS Because we’ve self-produced all our records, we’ve had to take charge a little bit more than most bands. Most bands come up with as many ideas as they can, and they rely on the producer to sort it out. But we’re so used to relying on ourselves, we’re able to do a lot of that editing beforehand. This record will actually be our first time working with an outside producer.
REVOLVER Who’s producing it?
LAMBESIS We’re pretty sure that Andy Sneap, who mixed our last record, is gonna be involved. But he’s really busy right now, and we’re not positive whether he’s gonna do the entire record, or if we’re gonna get someone else to come in and produce the vocals.
REVOLVER You’ve gotten so good at producing your own records—why bring someone else in now?
LAMBESIS From record to record, I’ve learned a lot from a production standpoint. I would be able to make the next record a little bit better, but I don’t think it would be drastically different enough. I really want to keep people on their toes with every record, and I think the only way to really accomplish that with this one is by using an outside producer.
REVOLVER Have you started writing any lyrics yet?
LAMBESIS I have two songs that we’re done with, lyrically. And then I have a batch of other lyrics that I’m just waiting to find the right song for. The lyrics are quite a bit more straightforward than on our other albums, because there are so many bands right now that have great music, but when I look through the lyric book, I’m like, What’s he trying to say? If you don’t know what the lyrics mean until you read an interview, it kind of loses its impact by that point. A lot of the lyrics I wrote in Shadows Are Security were very personal, but they were also meant to have quite a bit of social impact, as far as challenging people to live their lives and not be so concerned with materialistic things. But people would come up to me at shows and say, “I love the lyrics to this song, but I’m not exactly sure what it’s about.” And that made me feel like the message somehow got lost.
REVOLVER Like you didn’t do your job as well as you could have?
LAMBESIS Yeah. I think there’s a way to still have a very poetic and descriptive sense, but still use metaphors and all that. But where the chorus hits or the key line of the song hits, I really want to spell it out. Being Christians and being in a metal band, there are so many people who have different ideas about how to do that. So many people [in Christian metal bands] are like, “I don’t want to come across too preachy.” Never in our career have we ever even remotely come across as a preachy band. I think we’ve established that we’re here because we love the music, and we don’t have a hidden agenda. But at the same time, I don’t want to wait until our career is over to finally stand up for what I believe in.
REVOLVER What are some of the topics you’re writing about?
LAMBESIS One of the songs is about how life is short, and you have to stand up for what you believe in while you’re here. Not even from the perspective of a Christian, but just from the perspective of whatever you believe in. It’s a theme that would be almost stereotypical within the hardcore scene, but within the current metal scene, people are trying so hard to write lyrics that are personal and relationship-oriented. Or you have the older bands that are just about fantasy lyrics. Or you get the brutal lyrics from the death-metal bands. So it’s an old idea, but I think it’s kind of fresh within the scene that’s going on right now. And the other one I’ve finished is about giving up on the dreams and the expectations of happiness that have been handed down to us through our schools and churches, and chasing our own dreams and thinking for ourselves instead. In the song, the person’s waiting on shore for a ship to set sail and come save him, and he realizes that the ship never set sail. The imagery I’m using is of watching one hopeless wave crashing upon another.
REVOLVER Do you think today’s kids are often looking in the wrong place for happiness?
LAMBESIS Yeah. It’s like, a lot of kids that come to heavier shows come for some form of acceptance. I definitely remember going to hardcore shows when I was younger and thinking that it really felt like home for me, because there were a lot of people there who shared a similar passion for music and a similar style of music. But there’s so much expectation being put on the music itself, or the scene, or the style and the way people dress—they have to have all the right facial piercings, or all the right tattoos, or all the right clothes. I have a lot of tattoos, but I don’t think they in any way make me happier or make me a better musician or songwriter. It’s the process I enjoy. It’s not like, I have two full sleeves—now I can be happy! It seems simple and obvious—you would assume that most people at a show would be there because of their love for the music. But a lot of times, it seems like we need to be reminded of that.
