States-based moshers Currents certainly take their cues from some of the greats, but they’re anything but your standard cookie-cutter metalcore band.
“There’s so much variety around us – bands like Fit For A King, Miss May I, Northlane….all these sweet dudes that we’ve been able to learn off on the road. We’ve been dealt such a good hand getting that insider info,” says frontman Brian Wille, speaking to Blunt about where his group is taking their creative direction from.
“There’s pressure, there’s people watching, and this groundwork that we’ve laid that we have to expand on…but the biggest thing for us is that we expect more of ourselves, so we wanted to come out swinging with this new record and making stuff that’s really special and not lacking when it’s held up to the incredible talent that we’re surrounded with.”
For a band on the cusp of releasing their second full-length album, The Way It Ends on June 5th via SharpTone Records, they’ve certainly fallen in with some good company, touring across both Europe and the US with the cream of the ‘core crop.
So why then does their new record talk about wrapping things up, when it appears that the wheels are beginning to really spin for the group?
“We knew people were gonna think that we were breaking up,” laughs Brian. “It’s a link to our last EP I Let The Devil In, so it ties this new album with our last chapter as a band, and it’s all about falling into the depths, which is the theme that we’re gonna explore with this album.”
“I Let The Devil In was released because we wanted to strike while the iron was hot and get people’s attention while we had it in the first place. So we decided to take songs we already felt good with, give them a trial run and it came out super good. So we have no regrets at all about taking that little stepping stone at first.”
“ I thought that I was going to be leaving home two or three days from now, but now I’m starting on a summer vacation…”
Unlike many other new(ish) bands, Currents’ upcoming release, which combines the speed and technicality of death-metal musical elements with classic metalcore structures, was recorded with the members apart from each other, with email acting as the forum for feedback on ideas and mixes.
“We did the studio thing with our first record, and that was our real first foray into the studio world as a band – but ever since then it hasn’t made sense for our situation given how we work as a group,” says Brian.
“We feel comfortable letting Chris [Wiseman, guitarist] record his own parts, because he does producing anyway, and his stuff sounds really great. So we spent a bit more budget and time making sure the vocals came together properly, so that involved hooking up with Ricky Armellino from Ice Nine Kills.”
“It made more sense for us financially to do it that way and just do as much as we could ourselves – we’re really flexible about the way that we go about working on our stuff.”
The results are explosive, with The Way It Ends set to be one of the more interesting metalcore releases of the year.
It’s a huge achievement for the band who have only landed themselves in the big leagues, touring-wise, in the past few years – and now they have the time to take stock of it too!
“We had the entire year planned out, and it’s no longer a thing – I thought that I was going to be leaving home two or three days from now, but now I’m starting on a summer vacation, so that’s nice!”
