Interview: A Day To Remember Frontman Jeremy McKinnon on New Song “Violence (Enough Is Enough)” and Their Next Album

A Day to Remember just premiered their new song, “Violence (Enough Is Enough),” which you can listen to here. Revolver got the exclusive interview with vocalist Jeremy McKinnon about the song and their highly anticipated new album due out next year.

REVOLVER: What’s “Violence (Enough Is Enough)” about?
JEREMY McKINNON: I was just trying to talk about different perspectives from the world and why people do terrible things to each other. It started out, to me, feeling like you’re helpless. It felt like everything is so much bigger than you–there are people above you no matter where you go. That kind of control of what you can and can’t do. It’s really not meant to be political as it might sound–that’s just never been our band. But it’s that feeling that things are out of your hands. I wanted it to have this dark, ominous feeling.

The Ke$ha song “Die Young” got pulled from radio stations earlier today due to the recentness of the school shooting in Connecticut. Considering the title of your new song, did you worry at all about how people would take it?
It really sucks. I was really upset with what happened the past week. It is really, really terrible timing and I’m worried sick that people are gonna read too much into things in this song. It’s terrible because I was really, really leaning on the music video to tie it all together. We were hoping we could have gotten the video shot and released the same day, but it just didn’t turn out that way. It’s been rough. We’re trying to get things done as fast as possible, but it just hasn’t been working out.

Let’s talk about something more positive. You’ve been doing some vocal recordings in your room. How is the new album coming along?
Yeah, we’re wrapping things up right now. I built a studio. We self-funded the entire record. It’s been a ride. I can’t really touch on the whole story because there are legal problems involved. [The band is in a legal battle with its former record label, Victory Records]. When this is said and done, it’s gonna be one hell of a story. It’s very hard. Really the only income we have is from playing shows. So no income for half the year. That will definitely drain your funds. But I always thought the sky’s the limit. I think this record is gonna show what this band is capable of. I feel like, honestly, we’ve figured it out–how to write really, really heavy parts.

This song sounds definitely more metal-influenced than a lot of your other songs.
We haven’t really had a huge metal influence since [2007’s] For Those Who Have Heart. I understand growing up listening to heavy music, a lot of bands when they get popular, they tend to drop the whole heavier portion of their music. It’s almost like the people who like that music are just waiting to pounce on you the second you do it. We’re gonna have more heavier songs than on the past two records together. But with A Day To Remember, it’s not that simple because A Day To Remember isn’t one band.

We are trying to be your favorite band. Period. We’re trying to play all of your favorite styles of music and not have to switch CDs because I want to hear a pop-punk song or a hardcore song or an acoustic rock ballad. I think us doing all these different genres and doing them better makes us stand out. You can see that with us going on tour. We go on tour with straight-up metal acts, straight-up hardcore acts, then we’ll come home and go on a straight pop tour. Show me another band that can do that.