Music, Style & Culture

Defeater: ‘We Wanted To Keep Outdoing Ourselves’

DIY delves deep into the concepts of Defeater's latest effort 'Empty Days and Sleepless Nights'.

To most, Defeater may look and sound like just another stereotypical noisy hardcore band. However, look a little deeper and you'll discover more than you ever could've anticipated. Releasing their second full-length album 'Empty Days and Sleepless Nights' back in March saw the Boston quintet unveil one of the most eloquent and profound melodic hardcore albums of the past decade. Constantly focusing on pushing boundaries, the band found themselves exploring the deeply disturbing concept of one brother's journey amidst the death and destruction of his family within a post-World War II society; a concept that intrinsically links all of their previous musical works.

Throw in an included acoustic EP, a final track that cuts out half way through (and manages to scare you half to death in the process) and the most absolute representation of catharsis throughout and what you have is one of the most intriguingly creative records in modern heavy music.

When the band visited the UK last month, we were lucky enough to sit down with vocalist Derek Archambault to discuss just some of the thoughts that we couldn't help but want to explore.

Tonight's the first night of your UK tour and this is the first time you'll be properly touring here on this album. Are you excited?
Yeah! The last tour that we did in Europe, the record came out while we were on that tour and we only did three UK dates I think, so it's nice to do a proper run over here.

And obviously, you're in with such an insane mix of bands.
Yeah, I mean, getting to tour with Every Time I Die and Trash Talk is amazing. Spycatcher fucking rule too. These are bigger shows than we've ever played in the UK too, so that's a little intimidating. Nothing's really sunk in yet.

Earlier this year, you released your second full-length 'Empty Days and Sleepless Nights', What did you want to aim to do with this album? It's notorious that typically, the second album is the hardest for a band, so how did it come together?
It was definitely a weird process, writing it. The first record… It's a long story, but I came into the picture after that record was already written instrumentally. Mikey [Poulin], who plays bass for us, used to be the singer for the band but he moved to Hawaii. Then Jay [Maas] and I met a couple of times, and I came down to the studio, we talked about the concept and it went from there. So, that record was already written; I just had to put the lyrics to it.
With this one, it was a much longer process, where Jay and Andy [Reitz] were writing back and forth for a long time. We actually went on tour in the middle of writing - Jay went and recorded in Australia in the middle of writing - so everything took a bit longer, but it was a good process. Lyrically and instrumentally, we just wanted to do something different. I wrote this record in the second person, which is… strange.

So, you'd agree that challenging yourself as a writer is important to you?
Yeah, always. I just constantly want to do something different to challenge myself. Jay does the same thing instrumentally. He wants to constantly reinvent what he's already done.

In terms of the concept of the album, was it important to make it such a clear continuation of the first album?
Oh yeah, everything is tied in; even the EP 'Lost Ground' is tied in.

Is it ever daunting to think that you've gotten yourself so far into such an elaborate concept now?
Yeah, it's going to be a huge pain in my ass to keep it going. But, from the first time that me and Jay talked about doing the concept, we were just like, "That's what we're going to do." Like you said, we've already pigeonholed ourselves, so we might as well keep it going!

Do you think that certain things will always reoccur, for example, the two characters meeting at the end of a record?
That was definitely something that I came up with during 'Lost Ground' but wanted to keep for 'Empty Days…'

How do you even come up with a concept like this?
I drank a lot? I drank a lot. I mean, a lot of it comes from family stories, or little things that have gone on in all of our lives. We throw around ideas before I sit and commit it to paper but yeah… I'm just a crazy person [laughs].

When it comes to 'White Oak Doors', the ending is obviously so abrupt and you've talked quite a lot about the build-up lyrically, indicating that it's going to happen. What was it like to plan that though? Was it just a curveball you wanted to throw listeners?
Yeah, we just wanted to do something strange. It was like putting the acoustic part at the end of 'Lost Ground', just to give an idea of - if you're really paying attention - maybe you can put it together that these characters are meeting. We wanted to do the same thing with 'Empty Days…' and throw a curveball; just be pretentious little assholes for a second.

You also have a lot of themes repeated throughout your albums, even some of the lyrics are repeated throughout. Why was that an important aspect to include?
It was just to make it feel a little more real. Taking the two records, it's not the same story, but it's two perspectives on two people's lives together and where the veered off from each other. I did it to remind people of 'Travels' and to… I don't know! [laughs]

You also released the album as a full deluxe version, complete with a vinyl and a full coloured 64-page book detailing the concept. What were the thoughts behind that?
We just wanted to keep outdoing ourselves. When the idea of the book came… Michael who does all of our photography, he and I just usually go around and get people to model. It's all based in the town that I live in, but fictiitously, and we had so many photos that just wrote up another thing - like in the 'Lost Ground' EP - to try and piece it all together so it's not just songs. If you don't know the concept or you don't like the concept, and you only like the songs, maybe it'll help piece it altogether a little bit for you.

So, what do you have planned for next year?
We're gonna take some time off at the beginning of the year - everybody has their own thing that they do. Then, we broke down on our tour with Bane about a month and a half ago and missed six dates, so we're going to do make up dates for those in the States. We're talking about coming back to Europe in Spring or Summer - soonish! Maybe do some West Coast stuff in the States, go back to Australia… But we eventually have to buckle down and write more.

You did only release the album this year! It does feel like quite a while ago now though.
Yeah, it feels like it's been out for a year and a half, but it only got released in March.

There was also the whole leak issue.
Yeah, we knew that was gonna happen though. The second we took it on that tour, we knew it was going to leak. It's just part of it. You can't put a download out without it winding up on the internet.

At least it shows that people are listening and are excited though.
Exactly, that's all we care about. We don't even care if everybody downloads the record. The fact is people are at our shows and singing along and that's what matters.

Derek also performed 'Brothers' - taken from the acoustic half of their album 'Sleepless Nights' - for us, and you can watch that below.