Ohio band A Sense of Purpose brought in the crowd for the release show of their new EP, Mend. Applause and cheers broke out as they approached the stage to set up their gear. Kicking off, the band brought awesome energy and life to their new songs; they played some new tracks mixed with fan favorites. Throughout the set, the crowd was incredibly lively; jumping and moshing to the beats. I had the opportunity to sit down with the entire band for a conversation about the band and their new EP.
Why don’t you guys go around and introduce yourselves and your role in the band.
My name is Seth and I play bass.
I’m John, I’m the vocalist.
I’m Chris, I’m the guitarist and vocalist.
I’m Nick and I’m the drummer.
I’m Kyle and I play guitar and kind of yell at everyone I guess. Band dad.
How are you feeling about the reception for your EP Mend coming out?
Nick: Haven’t seen any trashy things yet haha.
Seth: Generally I feel like it’s been well received, but that’s just based off of like, social media posts or people just coming up and talking to you about it.
John: Yeah, I guess that remains to be seen. Maybe we’ll find out tonight; we’re playing a lot of these songs for the first time.
Kyle: It’s kind of hard to really build I guess a concrete set of expectations too; previous singles do kind of okay, but we don’t really know what to expect in any real sense. Anything that happens is just a good feeling at this point.
Seth: Yeah, all specific responses I’ve gotten on it so far have been generally very positive, so I think that’s a good sign.
Good! Everything I’ve seen has been really positive. So, congratulations on that guys!
All: Thank you!
Chris: Hey I own that hat [referring to the Sorry Mom hat I was wearing].
Haha, everybody owns this hat. It’s a fantastic hat. It’s funny because I’ve had multiple people come up to me, and when they don’t know the band they see ‘sorry mom’ written on the back and they’re like ahhhh thats hilarious! I’m like ha yeah… it’s actually a band though you should check them out… Well… was a band.
All: Yeah hahaha, RIP.
In writing this EP has there been any difference in your creative process from previous work to this new record?
Nick: We did drums last this time.
John: Seth wrote more lyrics, I think.
Seth: Yeah, maybe just lyrically I kind of chipped in a little bit to take the load off of Chris with the recording process.
Gotcha, so Chris you’re the primary writer?
Chris: Yeah. Writing this time around I tried to have a little more focus, direction, more cohesive song writing; a little less extravagant and progressive… Only a little haha. It still gets kind of proggy and technical, but I think the songs are just more focused, heavier emphasis on melody, more hooks, more singing than previous stuff. NO guitar solos, actually. We went from… a LOT of guitar solos to.. None.
Seth: Yeah haha, I think every track on our last record had one. All of them. Also no real breakdown-type parts on this record.
John: Yeah not really, it’s more groovy. It may come off as lighter to some people haha. Some kind of like, heavy purists have commented but like it’s all been positive.
Do you guys have any plans coming out for touring or have anything in the pipeline for future tours?
Seth: Well we just got picked up by Artery Global, and definitely they helped with booking. It’s our intent to put together a more aggressive touring schedule and agenda going forward; kind of build our resume.
John: As far as things actually booked, we’re doing a five day run with the release of Mend. It started last night in Columbus, and then tonight in Lakewood. Tomorrow we’re playing in Cincinnati, Monday is in Detroit, Tuesday is in the Chicago area. So it’s like the longest cohesive run that we’ve ever had haha. All the other ones have been broken up, they haven’t been consistent.
Kyle: It’s been kind of a tough break because the last tour we were supposed to go on the headliner ended up dropping because a lot of the shows were falling through. Through a variety of different factors I guess it was really unfortunate, but we were really excited about it.
John: It went from 12 days to 6 days to 4 days to like 3 days in the span of like a week and a half before it started.
Damn, yeah that’s rough.
John: Yeah like we requested off work and everything.
Nick: I lost my job for it hahaha.
John: Haha yeah so now we got like 3 days, only one of them is outside of Ohio. Shit happens.
I know some bands are typically more touring oriented vs studio-based. Do you guys have a preference?
Nick: I hate the studio because we’re paying for it.
All: Hahah yeah that sucks.
Haha ok yeah that’s fair.
John: Yeah it’s definitely a time crunch, at least our experience so far has been we haven’t had the luxury of writing in the studio or something like that. Most of the creativity is sort of precalculated, we do a lot of stuff outside of the actual studio to make sure that the time we spend in the studio is as efficient as it can be, just to keep costs down and stuff.
Chris: The recording process is really fun though and slightly challenging. I enjoy. Also, we haven’t spent a lot of time being a touring band, but I definitely think that’s our collective goal; to definitely be some road warriors for a while. We definitely want to get out as much as we can.
John: Playing live is such a different experience, obviously, for most bands instead of listening to a finished product. Listening to it in a live setting sets a completely different light.
Seth: It’s one thing to put music out there and have people listen to a recorded version and get response based on that. It’s another thing to be in the room with them playing the song and see the reaction.
John: It’s harder to fake too haha. We try but it’s harder to fake.
Something I always like to ask people because they hate this question; if you could have one superpower, what would it be and why?
Nick: Time traveling so I can win the lottery over and over.
Ok, I like it, but I feel like you would get flagged, like I feel like they would be like “this guy has won like 6 times… what’s going on here?
Kyle: I would do just teleportation. It would be so nice, you guys would leave and I’d be like “ok I’ll just see you later when you get there.”
John: Um… invisibility would be sick too, the standards, really.
Chris: I’d go with flying, honestly. It’s kind of like teleportation but fun.
John: Sounds dangerous haha.
Chris: Unless it’s like Harry Potter where you’re holding someone’s entire weight.
Kyle: Yeah you might have to work out a little to be able to do that haha.
Seth: I might have to go with Kyle on this, teleportation would be good. I just hate traffic so much.
I feel that so hard.
Kyle: It’s really telling of our character that we don’t have any nefarious purpose for teleporting, no its like “traffic fucking sucks, I want to teleport.”
Seth: Hahah yeah traffic is just the worst.
Nick: Yeah but no one in the band has to deal with traffic because I drive.
Seth: Ok so all four of us could teleport then Nick just has to drive.
All: Ahhh yes hahahah
Seth: Just by yourself with all of the gear.
Ok those are good haha. If you don’t mind, take me through your writing process. Do you guys write a lot of material before you get those few songs that are great?
John: Yeeeep. There’s more unheard music then there is that we’ve put out there.
Would you ever release any of those? Like a demo and b-side record?
John: Well, most of them are just working demos, not really worth releasing haha.
Seth: In our Drive I have probably like 50 or 60 songs, maybe 30 or so are completely written lyrically and arranged. Obviously they’d need some fine-tuning and stuff, but most of them are fully formed and demoed. Through funding the recording costs and trimming the fat we ended up with 6. For Mend we juggled around with what, 14 to 15 songs?
John: Yeah we easily had enough for a full-length and our manager pushed us to maybe pursue that, but in the self-funded realm without label support, its hard. When you’re funding it yourself you pay by like the song, generally.
Kyle: There’s definitely some songs that were around before this EP came out that I think we definitely still want to release.
John: Yeah absolutely. Songs that almost made the cut. We made some last minute changes right before we hit the studio.
Chris: When we were right about to go into the studio I wrote Numb. That song wasn’t even in our minds.
Nick: Yeah that song was written like a week and a half before we started recording.
Seth: I think Evergreen was pretty new too.
John: Oh yeah! I think with Evergreen and Numb, we were deciding on where to go. It changed the overall tone of the record. The songs we swapped out for those two were heavier.
Chris: Yeah we had a more progressive heavier sound, but when we added those we went with a more focused melodic sound.
Kyle: It’s kind of all over the place because Numb was very last minute, but by contrast we had the demo for Retrace in like, late 2016.
Chris: Yeah that song is old as fuck. Same thing with An Apparition.
Seth: Those are both the oldest songs.
Chris: Those are both from around September of 2016.
John: So that was post-Zoetic era. So our last record was like two years ago. Some of those songs are from around then. Yeah, there’s never a shortage of music haha.
Chris: …I write a lot…
I mean I feel like that’s how you do it. Do you have any specific shows that stand out as memorable? Either as awesome or horrific?
All: Ohhhhh we’ve got horror stories haha.
Ok hit me with one.
Chris: The senior center.
John: It was some hardcore festival, it was like 2 days and 20 bands or something like that.
Kyle: There was at least 10+ bands each day. But it was in some senior center in West Virginia.
John: It was in the absolute middle of fucking nowhere.
Seth: Hurricane, West Virginia.
Nick: We slept in a Walmart!
John: We got there so early so we could have a good parking spot. We got there hours before the promoters even showed up. The promoters ended up being like… teenagers.
Nick: It was a sick parking spot though.
John: That’s true, it was sick.
Nick: We sat there for like… 8 hours.
John: We got a bunch of alcohol and just killed time.
Kyle: It was some charity event, it was actually pretty impressive that some high school kids were able to put this together. We passed time just sitting there drinking Strawberry… something. Strawberita Bud-Light things.
Chris: AND it was in West Virginia so we got moonshine. It was fucking gross.
Helllll yeah!
John: They had like… old people rocking chairs in the space that we played. With pictures of old people on the walls and stuff. It was like some senior community center. We had to move all the chairs to the mess hall area, I think they all had those tennis balls on the legs and everything.
Wait… you didn’t like, play for a bunch of old people did you? Was it a younger crowd?
John: No! Not at all hahahah. It was a typical metal/hardcore crowd.
Oh ok good! Shit I was gonna say… Jesus I don’t think they would appreciate that genre very much haha.
John: Yeah it just happened to be IN a senior center.
Ok, I got you, I got you.
Chris: Yeah like Dorris broke her hip moshing too hard hahaha.
John: Yeah man, they throw down hard haha.
Seth: For all the gripes and grievances, as Kyle said, the people that put it together were teenagers. They actually did a solid job though.
All: Absolutely!
Seth: I mean when I was 15 I was like… putting my boogers underneath desks in science class and shit.
Chris: Just gettin high in graveyards, man!
Nick: The worst show was definitely Ruby Tuesdays in Columbus, though.
John: Noooo way.
Nick: I couldn’t hear myself at all! We got off time.
John: That was rough but it wasn’t that bad.
Kyle: My personal worst show was this house show in Akron where the basement that we played on, the floor or foundation was eroded or something. There was just dirt on the ground. As we were playing and jumping around it was kicking up into our faces. I was coughing and dirt was coming out of my nose.
John: We were blowing dirt out of our noses.
Chris: I was so drunk I didn’t even notice…
Nick: I actually almost puked because of all the dust.
Yeah that sounds absolutely awful.
John: We’ve done lots of basements, pizza shops, and basements of pizza shops.
Wrapping up, do you have anything you guys want to say? Now’s the time to freestyle.
Chris: Umm… my seventh grade reading teacher; Mrs. Caesar, she told me I read too fast. She can go fuck herself.
Nick: This is actually the best time to announce: Kyle you’re being replaced.
Kyle: Alright, peace.
John: So obviously, listen to Mend. We’re on all major streaming platforms. You can buy it if you want. It’s 5 bucks.
Okay! That’s all I got, thanks so much everyone!
All: Thank you!
