HIGHLY SUSPECT
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HIGHLY SUSPECT

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“We didn’t want to work in the same studio, we needed to be in a completely different environment,” says drummer Ryan Meyer. “We worked with Joel Hamilton who was the producer we created the first album with. He has connections and works with several different people in Bogota, Columbia, so we thought, ‘hey we should go down there, just be completely out of the box’. It was a really good idea because we were completely separated from any distractions. We don’t know anyone in Bogota except for the engineers that we were working with and all we had to focus on was the album.”

 

“We had to write most of it [in Columbia], none of the songs were really completed yet, so it was a lot of work. Normally we’re very easily distracted by girls and drugs and bars and stuff like that, it’s very different down there. Not a lot of people speak English and our Spanish is elementary at best, so there weren’t a whole lot of distractions.”

 

Though The Boy Who Dies Wolf will come out only a year after Mister Asylum, the dramatic developments in the band’s style and sound are evident, as Meyer points out. “I would say it’s a little more diverse musically. It’s more dynamic, it’s not just rock all the way through. There are a lot of songs that are slower, there’s a song that doesn’t have any drums or bass on it at all, there’s a lot of different things happening there.”

 

They were able to take this different track on the second album because of the strong fan base that they’ve built, and the solid foundation of the debut album made sure that they drew those fans in further than just a first listen. “That was definitely the intention behind the first album. If one thing caught on, people that would look at the rest of the material would still be interested. That’s a very important thing to build on your debut album, to have congruency. When you get that oh-so-valuable first listen, and that person is actually interested and they go and check out the rest of your stuff, you really want to make sure you have something they’re going to like.”

 

An important part of the band’s identity is their quasi-motto ‘My Crew Is Dope’, which has become a very important part of their brand, and recently translated into a pop-up shop in Los Angeles selling MCID merch. “We were at a pool party in Cape Cod, just hanging out with all of our friends and I had recently got a tattoo on my leg from a friend of mine who was a rather novice tattoo artist, [but] I like him and I wanted to give him a chance to practice. So I had him do a tattoo on my leg, and then Johnny (Stevens, frontman) was like ‘I’ll have a tattoo too’ and had to think of something on the spot. He decided to get ‘My Crew Is Dope’ on his hand because all of our friends were at that party and he was like ‘my crew is so awesome, I love all my friends’ and so he got that. So that was the original, before it was even an acronym it was a sentence.”

 

“We’ve only done one [pop-up shop] so far, and that was pretty cool, but they’re really a big part of our vision. You know MCID (My Crew Is Dope), is our brand and we really want to keep developing that and doing the pop-up shops really helps. We’re hoping to do one in the southern hemisphere eventually.”

 

The band have come a long way from playing cover songs in bars around their hometown in Cape Cod, and have started to become pretty regular fixtures on the festival circuit, which is something they love doing. “Reading was awesome, I loved playing Reading. It’s funny that you mentioned Lollapalooza, because [those two] are my few favourite festivals that I’ve ever played, one of the first big festivals we played was Lollapalooza, and that was rad.”

 

Having toured here before, Meyer says that there are plans in the works for making the trip to Australia in early 2017, so fans can keep their fingers crossed for that.

 

The Boy Who Died Wolf is out now via Warner Music Australia.