The Devil Wears Prada Interview
On November 30, 2013, Hardcore frontrunners, The Devil Wears Prada stormed Club Nokia in Los Angeles, California on their 8:18 tour with a whole slew of openers. The Ghost Inside, Volumes, and Texas In July rounded out the rest of the show. This set of relatively new bands brought all sorts of people together to mosh, and let out some aggression. These self-proclaimed nerds with a message sure know how to put on an energetic and entertaining show. When The Devil Wears Prada aren’t playing dungeons and dragons on the tour bus, they’re putting out albums with dark underlying messages, with all the intensity people have come to expect from the band paying homage to the punk bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat that had paved the way for the genre. The Devil Wears Prada may steer clear of the flashy gimmicks of new and old school metal bands, but if you’re looking for a show that prides itself on integrity and heartfelt lyrics you’ve come to the right place. All the bands on the 8:18 tour represent a small fraction of bands that don’t let their image take over. Before the show Eric Walden met up with Andy Trick and Jeremy DePoyster for a backstage interview.
Eric: What’s your favorite song to perform?
Andy: I got a lot of flack for this recently, for saying Dead Throne a wile ago, it came up like a month ago and since then, every day we play it. This guy right here (points at Jeremy) has to call me out on it but I think now with the newer stuff. First Sights is coming up there to beat it out.
Jeremy: I like First Sight too. I think… What did I think mine was? (To Andy) Remember I told you and you were like really?
Andy: I forget what that was.
Jeremy: It was Danger. I like playing Danger, it’s very easy but everyone likes it. I like playing songs everybody likes.
Eric: How do you know everyone likes it? Do you check your message boards, Facebook or…
Jeremy: Na, crowd reaction. You just see them going a little crazier.
Eric: I’ve seen you guy in Germany, Chicago, down here in LA. Where do you guys think you have the most energetic fan-base?
Jeremy: It depends show to show and crowd to crowd. You said Germany, that Southside Festival was a different crowd then maybe like our headlining show here. And then if we do like Warped Tour and Mayhem those are going to be totally different crowds. I think for us we try and just make a show that no matter what kind of stuff you’re into you’ll be entertained by it. I really don’t care whether anybody is going off the wall throwing things, or just sitting there taking in the light show so it’s hard for us to gage.
Andy: It’s always fun when people are way into it going crazy and stuff but then I’ll think of like if Jeremy and I went to a show we would just sit in the back.
Jeremy: We would not mosh.
Eric: Talking about going to shows, are there any bands you think people need to hear about?
Jeremy: Up and coming bands?
Eric: Sure
Jeremy: Mike’s really up on new stuff. We’re probably the worst two because we just listen to the same stuff year after year.
Andy: Since high school for me.
Eric: Then what is some old stuff people need to hear?
Andy: Jeremy gets mad at me every time I say this…
Jeremy: New Toromokotail? The vocals aren’t my favorite. We like that, We like Interpol and I don’t know… We kinda came up on Black Flag, Minor Threat, Misfits, and Dead Kennedy’s and all that punk stuff. And old hardcore stuff which kinda gave us the vibe of how things used to be so I think that spirit could be translated into stuff now more than it is.
Eric: I definitely see that punk spirit in your music. I’ve seen you at several festivals, like you said Mayhem, and I’ve talked to fans who specifically said they came out for you. They’re not there for the headliners, they’re there for you. What do you think was the point that catapulted you to where you are now?
Jeremy: I Think we just have a legitimate show, and especially album, but I think more so now than ever show because it’s so easy to make a decent sounding album. Like technology is so accessible and you can have one guy make an entire bands worth of stuff and play every part. He would sing it, program the drums and stuff like that so I think the way to judge bands is from a live show so I think we’ve always tried to be as good as we can live and as time goes on we get better and better, and try and make the show better, and just put so much emphasis into that all the time I think maybe that. I’ve talked to people well not that often I guess who say “I don’t like the new album but I really want to see you guys live.” I just made that up but…
Andy: As he was saying we’ve been a band for eight years now so we have always tried to keep the integrity of doing what we think is awesome, rad, and what we want to see at a show.
Jeremy: Not a bunch of gimmicks and stuff.
Andy: Exactly
Eric: When you’re making an album, what gets the ball rolling? Do you start with an acoustic track, do you start with backbeats on the drums or… ?
Jeremy: Chris, our other guitar player, just has like a sketch pad on his computer where he just writes these demos and things all the time, so by the time we go to start working on a record he already has probably four, five, six songs so we’ll get together in a room and jam ‘em out and add stuff to them, change ‘em. A lot of them He’ll only write around two and half minutes of and then we’ll try and finish it out or some stuff we’ll just start jamming and that’ll turn into a song and different things like that so it just depends. It’s kind of across a board now a days but that’s generally where it starts from.
Eric: Once you guys make albums like that, you head out on tour kill it live. What is your favorite tour memory?
Andy: Just because he’s in the room I’ll say when our tour manager Ben jumped into a dirty river in Switzerland for forty Euros I think
Jeremy: Forty euros stripped down and jumped in a river.
Ben (Tour Manager): It was like a hundred euros.
Jeremy: It might have been a hundred euros.
Ben: Forty euros, you kidding me?
(Laughs)
Jeremy: Anything like that. We’re just a goofy bunch of guys, and we generally have the same crew tour after tour, so we’re kinda like a big family. We’re not the friendliest bunch maybe to everyone outside, but it’s just because we’re so good of friends together that we just… I don’t know. Its chaos on our bus a lot of the time. People throwing things through the ally ways and just dance parties, and hurting each other for fun. Like our one guitar tech right now seems to like spearing people. What is it the gold burg spear or something.
Andy: Ya, or blow horn and run through the bunk ally-way and just take anyone out, that’s there
Jeremy: And our other guitar tech is British and he’ll just yell about it in his funny little accent.
Eric: You guys sound like you have a crazy tour. What is the funniest moment you’ve had on tour? Do you guys do tour pranks?
Jeremy: Ya we used to but now we just prank each other all the time.
Andy: Recently though I had a privet rock gig in my bunk. I tend to go to sleep early before everyone else, so I was in my bunk reading about to pass out and out of nowhere I just here guitar blaring, and I open my curtain and Mike is holding a guitar amp and our tech is rocking in the ally, and everyone’s improv-ing a song about me.
Jeremy: For about fifteen minutes. It was pretty sweet. It was really loud too. I think the amp was turned up all the way.
Eric: You guys sound like you’re having an awesome time on tour, but what’s the hardest part about being on tour?
Jeremy: Leaving your family, your friends, your city, and real life. The older we get, the more of an adult life we have and you just have a community and you have, you know, I’m married, he has a girlfriend, we all have dogs, and Chris is married. It just gets really hard to leave those people and live a normal life because it gets harder to relate to people who tour, but at the same time there are so many benefits.
Eric: Talking about leaving family, Thanksgiving was last Thursday. How did you guys celebrate Thanksgiving?
Andy: We thankfully were at an old friend’s house down in San Diego, and he had a nice family dinner. We split it with that and our booking agent had the entire tour over so two family dinners was nice.
Eric: That’s a lot of turkeys
Jeremy: Ya, we were very fat that day.
Eric: You guys decided to take a darker tone with the new album 8:18, what was the inspiration for that?
Andy: It’s just kind of the way things came out. We knew going in we wanted it to be that way and it’s what excites us. A lot of it comes from the keyboard undertones and stuff like that. We all just worked together, with John the writer, and got that dark, kind of eerie dimension. We just get so exhausted with hearing a lot of stuff come out has nothing to do with… like heavy music is just kind of like this blippy weird dance musicy kind of thing and it’s just a gimmick of “Pause, huge swear word” you know what I’m saying? Not that we don’t swear, but why listen to that? We really try to make atmospheres and textures and things like that and dark is just a lot more fun than um well… happy. Maybe we’re just depressed.
Eric: Why do you guys think playing dark music is the most fun? Hardcore fans get so much negativity from fans of other genres
Jeremy: It’s relatable. Like why does anybody watch the movie Seven? That movie is so depressing and so dark but sometimes you just in the mood for that. That’s a cool part of this community. For me when I listen to stuff I don’t want happy. Most of the time I just want depressing.
Andy: Ya, even if not metal.
Jeremy: Even if I’m in the best mood I just want music to bring me down.
Eric: What are you guys listening to right now?
Jeremy: Kanye [West]. I like the new album even though I’m not real keen on what’s going on right now.
Ben: you mean Yezzus?
Jeremy: (laughs) I like a lot of production on that album.
Andy: Same stuff since high school for me.
Jeremy: New Drake too.
Andy: (Laughs)
Jeremy: Tell me I’m wrong.
Andy: I haven’t heard enough of it.
Jeremy: That is what I listen to
Ben: That’s legitimately what he listens too. Andy, who’s Drake?
Andy: I’ve heard of him…
Jeremy: Who is this Drake?
Andy: Not a dragon like I thought.
(Laughs)
Jeremy: He’s a huge D and D player.
Andy: All of us have been playing it lately. We all have the mindset.
Jeremy: Except for Mike, he’s…
Andy: Oh ya Mike hates it.
Jeremy: Mike is real life cool, we’re all huge nerds. He’s way too cool for that stuff.
Andy: We’re cool in the D and D realm.
Jeremy: We’re really un-cool. In real life Mike is a legitimately cool person. And we’re just losers.
Eric: So besides D and D how do you guys nerd out?
Jeremy: Andy and I just played Magic the Gathering.
Andy: Plenty of video games on the bus.
Jeremy: Well we play a lot of sports games. We’re kind of like a combination of nerds and jocks because we love football. We’ve had football on all day, and basketball. My computer right now I have basketball and hockey going at the same time, so we just play sports games.
Eric: The LA Kings are playing right across the street, are you guys going to hop over?
Jeremy: I know man! I wanna go but we gotta do that whole rock gig thing. It gets in the way. Frustrating
(Laughs)
Jeremy: That would have been fun though. We love hockey.
Eric: I was researching some of the original inspiration behind your band name, and you guys were talking about making a new meaning for the phrase “The Devil Wears Prada” What meaning do you think you have accomplished as of now?
Jeremy: We never really think about the name anymore. For us some of it still applies because the more Mike goes into exploratory feels of anti adultery and Dead Throne, knowing him so well, and knowing what he stands for in life, it is just very anti heroes, and anti idols, and not holding those things up, but holding God up above all else. That’s still the direction we are going in. It’s not that every single brand in the world is evil and horrible and everything like that, and just wear blank T-Shirts every day. Just don’t put those things as your highest priority. I think most people can agree that’s just an empty road.
Eric: Was that taken from the punk movement?
Jeremy: Maybe a little bit, and especially now more than ever. The more we see stuff transform, the more we just want to go against it.
Eric: Transform how?
Jeremy: Just turning back into the Eighties with the whole glam metal thing, and that’s just not us. That’s not to say we don’t have a great show. I love Nine Inch Nails, I love Trent. He has a massively big show, and I love everything he does, but there’s still this punk element in there. It’s just different.
Eric: How are you guys keeping the punk element in your show?
Jeremy: Well we have Mike so…
Andy: That does a lot of it.
Jeremy: We just play as much as we can, and just have a fun energetic show. It should be about the show. It shouldn’t be about “look at me, look at us, we’re so cool.”
Eric: What’s the most difficult song to perform?
Jeremy: Any new one until you get it. They’re all muscle memory at this point, even the new ones.
Andy: When you start playing a song for the first time
Jeremy: I’m a really bad guitar player so nothing’s really difficult for me. All my parts are very simple.
(Laughs)
Jeremy: Except for a few things that Chris makes me play that I’m not that good at.
(Laughs)
Eric: If you Guys had to pick one band that inspired you the most, who would it be?
Andy: Black Flag
Jeremy: The Cure, and Depeche Mode. They did the same thing for me at the same time. Both bands in their own way at the same time.
Eric: Why are you so against the glam movement if they were the ones that inspired you?
Jeremy: Well they were more Goth but maybe I shouldn’t say glam, maybe I should just say hair metal. I just can’t deal with the hair metal. I like the make up and the black clothes and everything like that, but still good music behind it. For me I don’t care what people look like, I don’t care what they do. I don’t care how extravagant everything is, as long as there is good music behind it. And I think that a lot of the focus has shifted away into everything else.
Eric: Everything else like?
Jeremy: The look, the tweet, the shirt, the video, the pause for the yelling thing. All that stuff is just not writing good songs. There is no point in you being a band and standing up in front of people if you don’t write a good song, regardless of genre. It doesn’t matter if it’s metal, or rap, or pop or country or anything like that. A good song is a good song.
