is a rarity in the music industry. The San Diego metal band has been at the forefront of their genre for a full decade, and they have found success being anything but mainstream.
The band’s latest offering is the music video for “Anodyne Sea” from 2010’s “Powerless Rise” (directed by McFarland and Pecci of Killswitch Productions). It’s a groundbreaking piece of art that makes music videos seem relevant again.
Vocalist Tim Lambesis, who is violently executed at the end of the video, explains the story behind “Anodyne Sea” and why you might want to buy your tickets fast if you want to catch them on the upcoming tour.
Q: You guys are making a point in 2011 to hit smaller cities and smaller venues. Why?
A: We wanted to make sure that we play for all of our fans. Most bands are striving for an arena to get the biggest crowd possible—we’re actually more comfortable playing multiple small shows. For me, particularly as a singer, there’s big barricades at some of the large venues and even if the crowd is singing along I can’t feel the energy.
Fort Collins is the first stop on this run. What is the first show like on a tour for you?
You know, the first night of the tour is a little bit more spontaneous than all the other nights. Not to say that we’re ingenuine later on the tour, but sometimes we do go through the motions a bit. Itap just kind of the nature of getting your routines down. I think the first night has just a real honest energy to it.
Warning: This video contains graphic content
Where did the concept and the emotion behind the lyrics for “Anodyne Sea” come from?
Itap hard to explain every nuance of how the lyrics and the video tie together, but I think the most obvious is what we said during the chorus: that if you stand on your conviction or stand up for what you believe in, there are, of course, consequences for that.
The song fits in the album after the opening track, which talks about looking beyond our own problems and the selfless mentality, maybe even a rejection in some ways of materialism or a lot of things that are very popular in our culture. In wealthy societies like the U.S., the consequences for going out of your way to live differently aren’t all that bad—nobody actually dies for what they believe in, or at least not that often. For the sake of the video we wanted to take the point we were making even further. I think thatap the beauty of being able to exaggerate things in art.
Music videos aren’t getting the same play that they used to. Is there a reason that AILD has put so much thought and effort into them?
We decided at one point that itap still an art form that we are passionate about. We wanted to move away from doing a typical promotional video where a metal band rents out a dark looking room and ya know…rocks out. People can come see us live and see that kind of energy.
Are you planning anything special around the 10 year anniversary?
We do have some ideas planned. We don’t have a release date or anything but we definitely have some material we are collecting—some special unreleased stuff. We didn’t want to put together a bunch of junk so we really went out of our way to make sure we have some quality new stuff for our fans. It will definitely come out before the end of the year.
As I Lay Dying plays the in Fort Collins this Saturday, Feb. 12 and in Colorado Springs on March 12.
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Paige Montgomery is a Denver-based freelance writer. Check out more of her work on .
