Emmure

Having postponed their highly anticipated Australian tour in January, New York’s most notorious live metal band Emmure will finally return down under for their first ever headline tour. BBM’s IMOGEN HARGREAVES caught up with Jesse from the band to discuss.

You released the new album this year. It’s been a couple of years since you released Felony, how’s the response been?

The response has been good. We were super happy the whole time writing and performing it. We really couldn’t be more satisfied with what we’ve got going on.

Is it hard compiling the setlist now with the new material?

Actually, it’s not. We play about anything from four to six new tracks in a setlist and in our gigs coming up in Australia we’ll be playing songs we haven’t played live before, so that’s pretty good.

How does the vibe change when you go from a Warped Tour set to smaller shows like the Australian tour?

It’s amazing, the first Australian tour was epic and amazing, the crowds were great. A year and a half later we’ve got a new album and a new string of followers, it’s 200 to 600 capacity venues and everybody’s going to be going nuts right in front of us. It’s always a rewarding feeling playing for the dedicated fans.

Do the audiences dramatically change depending on whether you’re in the States, or Europe, or Australia, or are they pretty much the same deal?

You’ve got a little bit of both, you’ve got the crowds that are really extreme, screaming along no matter what language or what country you’re in.

Although lot’s of places are different, sometimes we stage dive a lot, and sometimes we don’t, or they’ll mosh, or in some places there’s an older crowd so they kind of stand there with their beards kind of head-banging a little bit. Australia has the same, so Australia has the people that hang out, people that mosh, people who jump up and down, and people that push each other around. Sometimes the crowds are smaller and sometimes they’re a lot more, and Australia definitely has a lot of different people so it’s good.

What’s the collaboration process like? Do you have some input in the lyrics and the songs and then obviously everybody else has inputs in each others parts or do you do everything separately and see what happens when you put everything together?

For the most part I spend a lot of time creating music on my computer and then sharing it with the band and they’ll suggest stuff for the songs, or I’ll call Frank and ask what he wants to do for the songs and then we’ll start putting lyrics on them and do the pre-production on my computer.

I usually don’t have to say much, he pretty much delivers what I’m feeling for most part and then sometimes he’ll deliver something completely different but that makes the part.

It’s pretty much, when we’re recording in the last few weeks is when the vocals really come into play, you know before that it’s just a bunch of riffs and when the vocals come up that’s when we really make the music happen and make the tracks longer or shorter, really mould it so it really comes together toward the very, very end.

Are you always kind of playing around on the computer trying to get new songs going or is there a set amount of time after the records released that you start thinking about what you want to tackle for the next one?

Well the reality is I’m always thinking of a riff, I’m always tapping stuff out, that’s the way I’ve been through middle school, and high school. I’m always thinking of something, now in 2010 and 2011 I have my Macbook 4 and I6 thing and I can pump out a few drums real quick and get the riff down and work on it and decide if I want to keep it. I’m usually writing stuff down or humming something into my phone, believe it or not, and then transcribing that from what I listen to on my phone into my computer.

Assorted Tour Dates:

June 10th: Gold Coast
June 11th: Brisbane

June 12th: Sydney
June 17th: Adelaide

June 18th: Melbourne (Early and Late Shows)

June 19th: Perth (Early and Late Shows)