Eidola interview done by Mike De Man. All questions answered by Andrew Wells [vocalist].
Eidola is quite the experiential band from Salt Lake City, Utah, and has recently been blowing up in the post hardcore and experimental rock scenes. With such an eclectic sound, what bands describe the roots of Eidola?
It’s hard to pin down the exact roots of Eidola because we all listen to different things that influence our writing. If I had to put all of our tastes in a Venn diagram, I would say Circa Survive, Thrice, Dredg, ISIS, Animals As Leaders, Dance Gavin Dance, Tool, Closure In Moscow and Black Sabbath reside at the center of that. Some of us enjoy really heavy doom metal and others enjoy jazz and classical, so all that tends to result in an eclectic sound no matter what.
Being part of the Blue Swan Records family definitely seems like it has done you guys very well as a band so far. How has your experience working with Will Swan been since the signing?
Will is the best dude on the planet. The overall experience with Blue Swan Records has been overwhelmingly positive since day one. Even when we were sitting there for months waiting for the album to be mixed Will was really supportive and helped us focus on proactive things we could be doing during that time. The relationship he and I have is really cool. Like, yeah he basically owns my life right now and shreds in one of the best bands I know, but we’re friends and colleagues so the respect is mutual and the experience is always really collaborative. BSR for life.
A few days ago, the band reached 7,000 Facebook likes and a post was put up concerning other bands and their striving for “likes”, even if they are fake. Do you think fake “likes” can ultimately make or break a band in the long run?
Personally, I just think it’s manipulative ego stroking for a band to pay to inflate their numbers using fake likes or fake views. There’s a difference between paying for proper advertising and paying a third party site to generate fake likes and content. I know a lot of bands that have seen a little bit of marginal success doing things like that, so now up-and-coming bands are starting to think “well, that’s just the way you do it. That’s the music industry”. No. That’s petty bullshit. Just because it became normalized doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do things. I’d like to think that eventually we’ll all get to a point where bands stop being so hyper-focused on the numbers game and start being hyper-focused on writing great music again. I think it’s definitely possible to get there, but it will take fans, labels, managers, publicists, and agents to stop buying into that garbage in order for the perception to change.
One thing I’ve noticed about the band that really stood out to me is the amount of crazy song titles you have. Almost every song name is really obscure, ranging from “Psuedomonarchia Daemonum”, “Jagannatha”, and my absolute favorite “A Night With Frank Sinatra, Two Tabs of Mescaline, and A French Tranny”. What makes the band come up with such names?
Hahahaha yeah, we have some weird ones. Both of our albums so far have been concept albums, so the titles always have some relevance to the story lines. Sometimes the titles start from an inside joke, sometimes I’ll come up with a title before I even write the song because it fits the album’s theme really well. Between the two albums we’ve written, the titles are always fleshed out to fit what we’re trying to convey in the album as well as what we’re trying to create historically as a band.
Eidola is about to branch out on a full US tour with Stolas and Artifex Pereo, which is really exciting. Is this your first national tour?
Yeah! We’ve done a lot of little weekend warriors and two week runs, but never something of this magnitude. This tour will be the longest we’ve ever been out on the road, and the most shows we’ve ever played consecutively across the states. We’re all pumped.
What are the thoughts running through your mind that a tour of this caliber is right around the corner?
Practice, practice, practice! That’s usually what runs through my head before every tour. How can we make this set flow better? How can we tighten up these parts? How can we adjust these tones to mirror what we put out on record? Things like that. With the scope of this tour we’ve had to put in a lot more prep work. Luckily we’ve got a local print shop that Matt works at here in Utah who are helping us with some new designs and staying stocked on the road. We also built out a nice little kitchenette area in our new trailer where we can cook fresh food to save us the money and self-loathing that comes with eating fast food every day.
Degeneraterra, your sophomore release, came out a few months ago and seems to be doing really well amongst your fans and anyone willing to listen. When it was still in the process of being recorded, did you think the response was going to be as well as it has been?
The album has been out for about seven weeks now and the response has been super positive. It seems like the more people share it the more people gravitate towards it almost immediately, which is really cool to see. When we were recording it I didn’t know what to expect because the album is lengthy and covers a lot of sonic ground. A pop artist will tell you that’s a recipe for failure because it’s not a three minute single in 4/4, but we don’t really care about monetary success as long as the album has an emotional/spiritual/mental impact on the listener. I’m just really grateful to all of the people out there still buying physical albums, caring about musical integrity, and getting more pleasure out of investing the time to truly feel an album’s nuances rather than go straight for the quick bubble gum fix. I think that people on a large scale are finally starting to see the similarities in all music generated by pop culture and most of those folks are getting bored with that. They want something with substance, and my biggest hope is that we can continue to offer a lot of substance in our releases moving forward.
Dating back a few years ago, you guys released The Great Glass Elephant in 2012. How much was Degeneraterra influenced by your past release?
Conceptually TGGE is supplementary to Degeneraterra, so a lot of that influence carried over. Sound wise we all grew so much between these releases. Our tastes changed, our abilities increased, and our mind sets matured, so to us Degeneraterra was a great natural progression from the last album.
This year seems to be the biggest one yet for Eidola. Are there any other awesome things your fans should expect for the second half of 2015?
Definitely! 2015 has been kind to us so far, and we’re just working hard to support this release throughout the rest of the year. Fans can expect more awesome tours, vinyl, tab books, and an acoustic EP this fall, as well as a myriad of rad new merch designs. We’re also about eight songs deep into a new Eidola album and the new songs are shaping up to be some of the most technical material we’ve ever written. Needless to say, there is a lot to look forward to, the future is bright, and we’re all excited to keep growing this family together.
