If everything had gone right at last year's Rockwave festival we would have been talking about a flattening appearance and performance from As I Lay Dying - (read our report here). However, the Americans return to take their revenge and on April 3, Athens will be the focus of the earthquake they are going to cause with their first headlining appearance in our country, finally in a "closed" concert venue!
Few days ago, we had the opportunity to speak with the group's imposing frontman Tim Lambesis, who is of Greek origin, and prepares us properly for their show in Athens, informing us as well about their very interesting plans.
Don't miss the chance to find yourself at a really energetic on-stage performance of As I Lay Dying, on Wednesday, April 3, 2024 at Gagarin!
RockOverdose: So Tim, welcome to Rock Overdose Greece. How are you?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): I’m doing good, still drinking my coffee over here, although it’s probably late in the night for you, I think we have a day apart from each other.
RockOverdose: Oh, yes, I’m drinking whiskey (laughter). So, what have you been doing lately and what is the situation on the As I Lay Dying camp at the moment?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): We’ve been mixing our new album, it’s coming along well. Things were quiet recently during the holidays, where everyone was focused on their families and stuff, but now we’re working pretty hard on finishing the album -more than half of it is mixed- and hopefully going to listen to the mixed product soon so I t can help us with which singles we should choose and have the album released later this year.
RockOverdose: We’re looking forward to it. We would like to focus a bit on “Shaped by Fire” as an album. It came out seven years after “Awakened”. How did it feel to come back after so many years how easy was it to adapt to the needs of the new ongoing circle of gigs?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): I think for me, making the album was pretty easy because we had so many ideas individually. Phil had dozens of songs he brought demos for, I had loads of songs and our previous bass player had some songs, so the three of us brought in a lot of different ideas and then we had to choose what our favorites were. The songwriting was easy in terms of adapting to live gigs again, although that was a little bit harder for me personally because it had been a while and I had a new set of emotions when I got on stage, but it felt different in an exciting way; it was like a rebirth, where I was going into a new chapter of life and I felt overwhelmed by the positivity many fans had because I thought we would never play music again for many years. So when I finally got back on stage, to have this kind of support and do what I love, it was just like a flood of positive emotions.
RockOverdose: It’s that flame inside, loving music. So, we had some changes in the band, with long-serving members leaving and new ones taking their place. On the other hand, these new members are quite experienced musicians. How easy was it to build a new chemistry and did it bring to the energy of your live shows?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): With the new guys, it’s very normal for us to work with Ken and Nick, because we spent so much time with them on tour. Unearth and As I Lay Dying, they launched on very similar time frames, we’ve both been around since essentially 2000 and twenty years later Ken and I have been such good friends. It’s strange that we never worked on any songs together before, because we’ve known each other for so long, so it felt normal and natural when Ken and I were exchanging ideas for the new concerts and stuff. That felt very good, and it felt like a second wind because when you look at the history of As I Lay Dying, most of the songs -not all of them- have been written by Phil and I, and especially in the early days of “Shadows Are Security” (the first album Phil and I wrote together) we were essentially the main songwriters back then, and then later Josh Gilbert, our bass player, came in and added to that experience. For Phil and I it wasn’t so different working on a new album because we were so used to working with each other just the two of us, but we changed one of our collaborators and instead of working with Josh we got the excitement of the new guys coming in and just having this newness, I believe it added that second wind, new passion and new excitement. I think when we are on stage it can be seen that we are having so much fun together.
RockOverdose: That’s great. I’ve been following you from the beginning, when “An Ocean Between Us” was released. I thought I was listening to another band, I still can’t believe the transition on this record and it remains one of the best albums of all time for me. Was this the moment for you when you thought you really hit the peak of your performance?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): I do think that “An Ocean Between Us” is the most diverse album in the As I Lay Dying catalogue because for the first time I brought the thrashier side, the songs and their structures I had written were very thrash-oriented, which was something new that I brought to the band even though I was writing all these songs previously and Phil brought all those melodic tracks, the actual title track “An Ocean Between Us” as an example brought the sense of melody to an even stronger and higher level, and then there was a ballad I never wanted. There is an incredible amount of diversity on that record, and I always used that in mind as the template of what As I Lay Dying is capable of from a ballad all the way to a thrash song.
RockOverdose: We were lucky to see you in Bulgaria with Amon Amarth and SepticFlesh -as you haven’t come to Greece since then- and we witnessed that you multiplied the album’s quality and energy by 100%. Do you have any stories to share with our Greek compatriots the accompanied you back then?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): An interesting thing about that tour is that, while we didn’t have the chance to officially go to Greece, we spent a month sharing a bus with a band from Greece, we came close to Greece but we never got to go, which is sad because we really wanted to go and SepticFlesh just kept telling us stories about what we should do over there. I have family background from Greece, and I realized that my family in America has been pronouncing our family name wrong all these years, which I found funny and interesting at the same time. My dad’s dad came over from Greece directly and I asked him why he started pronouncing our name differently and ha said: “Well, in America everything is so phonetic, so he said it in a way that was easy for everyone to say it, and that sort of stuck with us”. The SepticFlesh guys made me realise that we’ve been pronouncing our name wrong all these years, so it’s a pretty funny story. But yeah, we shared a bus and backstage rooms with those guys for a month, and hopefully I get to see them when we’ll be there in April.
RockOverdose: So your grandfather is Greek, but you never came to visit Greece all these years?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): Yes, because everyone from my dad’s side of the family passed away, so there were no living family members in Greece. I actually have this very interesting story: my dad’s biological grandfather and his adopted grandfather were both originally born in Greece, so no matter what bloodline he follows -either his biological or his adopted one-, my father comes from Greece.
RockOverdose: So, we are waiting for a new album from you. Do you have any information about it? For instance, a title or the number of songs or any release dates to share with us?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): Unfortunately, we haven’t got the slightest idea of what the title should be, so we’re going to keep on talking about it with the band. There are ten songs, but we may add an eleventh in it, since we have no interludes, no intros or anything like that, just ten full songs. I wish we came there a month later, so that we could have some of those songs ready for Greece but we’re just a little bit behind. I wish I could give you a preview, but I can’t share any more details, except from the fact that it will be out this year.
RockOverdose: I can respect that. But maybe we’ll hear at least one song in your live show?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): That’s not going to be the case, since we don’t want to play a live song before it is released, so that people can hear the live audio and the official audio, so if we can get it done in time we will, but right now it’s looking like we might miss it by a couple weeks.
RockOverdose: Ok, maybe next time then. So, you visited Greece for the first time alongside legends like Deep Purple and Saxon. What do you remember from this gig and how do you feel about coming back so soon again after missing for 22 years prior to this?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): I always look forward to going to Greece and after the festival we extended our stay a few extra days in Athens, then we went to Crete for a few days and just got a chance to enjoy Greece for a little bit but it still felt like a very short stay, so we look forward to being back. I remember in the festival -it wasn’t anybody’s fault- but we did have technical issues and there the vocals were missing for maybe four or five songs, but I look forward to coming back as a headliner with a full soundcheck and being able to not only play those songs, but also play additional songs with a lot more time.
RockOverdose: The band will have a full time show this time around. That was my next question actually; What should we expect from your live show here?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): As a headliner we get to play more songs, and because we’re flying from Germany to Greece we won’t be able to bring our entire backline but we will definitely have all of the equipment necessary to play a full set which I look forward to, just the intimacy of a headlining show compared to the festival. Even if everything went smooth in the festival, without the technical issues, there’s still a big difference between playing as a headliner in an intimate environment and a full-time festival. I personally enjoy the energy of everybody being in a smaller room, you can literally feel the energy of the people standing next to you.
RockOverdose: What would be your advice for new singers that want to follow their dream and what should they emphasize to, in order to sound special?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): That’s very interesting because there’s a lot of recent research on vocal technique, there are a lot of vocal coaches who are pushing vocal techniques to the top, and that’s very important when expanding a person’s sound, but I do think that one of the most important things for younger singers is finding your voice before focusing on a technique because I see that technique is the main focus for recent singers; they can do very intricate, low lows and high highs. Technically is very diverse but it sounds like a technique, it doesn’t sound like the person. There’s a sound coming out of a person that’s entirely separate from the technique itself; when a person speaks for example, you get a phone call from someone you know you recognize their voice before they even tell you their name, and I think having that voice come true is very important, and lately it’s being lost behind a wall of extreme vocal techniques.
RockOverdose: Who was the singer that inspired you to be a singer too?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): That’s an interesting story because I didn’t originally want to be a singer, I wanted to be a songwriter and a guitar/bass player. During 2000-2002 I was playing guitar for many different bands and I was also doing As I Lay Dying, and I was writing the As I Lay Dying songs hoping that I would find a different singer, I was only singing because I didn’t know any other singer at the time that was good, so I said “I’ll do this until I find somebody”. That was my mentality, but every time we tried somebody out, I felt like they weren’t doing a better job than I was, so I just kept doing it and 20 years later here I am, still singing.
RockOverdose: That’s great. So, would you like to send a message to your fans here in Greece?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): I’m thankful to be back for the second time, I’m also thankful that this show is going to bring us a lot closer and more personal experience with the fans, and if anyone wants to come around and say hi to me, feel free to tap me on my shoulder, have a picture with me or whatever, I’ll be just thankful for being there. Like I said, the coming of those new members brought to me a kind of a second wind and a renewed passion for music.
RockOverdose: We’re really looking forward to seeing you there. Anything else you would like to add before we close this interview?
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): I know that the focus is on the As I Lay Dying show as of now, but I should mention that my other band, Austrian Death Machine is releasing an album on February 23rd. That’s not related to the tour or anything, but it is very fresh and relevant in my life right now and it’s exciting; I haven’t done a record for Austrian Death Machine for ten years, so it would be the first one in a long time.
RockOverdose: So, thank you very much for your time and this interview, we can’t wait to see you in Greece this coming April!
Tim Lambesis (AS I LAY DYING): Thank you for taking the time to do this, I know it’s late in the night there, thank you for your effort. See you soon!
On behalf of RockOverdose:
Interview: Zisis Petkanas
Questions: Aggelos Katsouras
Photo credits: John Metalman Livanos Photography
As I Lay Dying - April 3, Gagarin 205 Athens!
opening act: Karma Violens!
tickets: https://www.more.com/music/as-i-lay-dying/
Comments
