As I Lay Dying Interview: Jordan Mancino is Spicing Up a New Generation of Metal--with Punk Sugar
In 2007, As I Lay Dying rose with meteoric vengeance from the densely packed California metalcore scene with the release of An Ocean Before Us which debuted at #8 on Billboard's Top 200 and at #1 on the Top Rock chart.
It was an amazing year of breakthroughs for the San Diego band who had been honing their craft since their formation in 2001. They won the 'Ultimate Metal God' award from MTV and received a Grammy nomination for the song, "Nothing Left."
They continued to break ground playing major festivals across America and Europe including Wacken, Soundwave and Ozzfest and releasing albums that featured a mix of originals, previously recorded material and cover nods to the bands who were responsible in influencing their thrash tinged metalcore sound.
As I Lay Dying's cover of Judas Priest's "Hellion" & "Electric Eye" from the album Decas
For their up-coming album, Awakened, set for release September 25, 2012 on Metalblade records, As I Lay Dying brought in veteran punk producer Bill Stevenson. Backstage at Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival 2012, I talked to drummer and founding member Jordan Mancino about the new generation of metal bands and how they're bringing the genre full circle, harkening back to the original roots of heavy, aggressive music like hardcore and heavy metal, as well as the new direction As I Lay Dying is taking on the forth-coming, Awakened.
AS I LAY DYING Live Interview - Jordan Mancino - Mayhem Festival
With this new record we wanted to change things up a bit I think. Our relationship, the recording process, the writing process, picking a producer: pretty much everything under the sun. You know, we've been a band for over ten years now and I think we're at that point where it's time to change things up--not necessarily like... we're unhappy with where we are, because that's definitely not the case. But just trying to look for something to spice things up a bit.
I guess for starters, we were looking at different producers for this record and tryng to find someone that was a little 'outside of the box' for our genre and for us.
So it was a little bit of a tedious process because there are a lot of bands that, at this point in their career, they decide to work with someone 'outside of the box' and find someone too far outside and kind of shoot themselves in the foot. They get someone that doesn't even really understand where they came from and just how aggressive music really works.
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