INTERVIEW – Adam De Micco of Lorna Shore

New Jersey-based deathcore outfit, Lorna Shore, has been raging on stages across the country for seven years now. With their gritty, powerful sound and lyrics that are darkly haunting with a hint of uplifting, they are capturing the aggressive sound of metal in ways that others have yet to master. On tour now with their headlining Beg For Death Tour, they are surely heading to an area near you. 

We had a chance to talk with Adam De Micco from Lorna Shore about their sound, their tour, and how it feels to be able to hear accolades from fans he’s never expecting to hear. We are definitely going to be keeping our eyes pasted onto these guys; with an energy like they have, we don’t want to miss a minute. 

Heya, Adam. How are you?

Good, how are you?

Great. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to talk with me. I know you’re gearing up to head out on tour and probably have a million things to do.

Yes, yes we do. (laughs)

I am so sad I won’t be able to make it to the Cleveland show. So, tell me and everyone else who has not seen you live what they can expect from the Lorna Shore live experience?

I don’t know. I think the best way to say it is that we try to put on a performance that kind of matches our recorded sound, if that makes sense. We try to be, performance-wise, as tight as we possibly can. And we want to sound as close to the record as we possibly can; that’s our standard. We try to make it as entertaining and visually enjoyable as well.

No matter what size stage we are playing on, we always try to capture the essence of what we think the sound of our band is visually. That’s what you can expect. If you are wanting to see the band, you will at least capture an authentic sound. We hold ourselves to a very high standard to make sure we play our parts as accurate to the record as possible.

Nothing would bum me out more than going to see a band live that I enjoy and they can’t play to their record – they change stuff up or mess stuff up. So, I try to make sure it’s authentic to the record as possible and visually close to what you would think of when listening to it. That’s the best way I can describe our live show.

Well, that sounds great. I have talked to other artists, and the consensus seems to be that it’s really great when a band can sound on their record the same way they sound live.

Yeah, that’s what we try to do, and even if a band wasn’t that awesome looking live, as long as they sound as close to the songs that I listen to on a daily basis for me, that is enough. So, that’s what I try to do when it comes to our band.

I like it; I think fans can appreciate it who are used to hearing a certain thing and expect to hear that in front of them as well.

Yeah, exactly.

I listened to Flesh Coffin the other day, and some of the songs are so heavy, both lyrically and sonically. So, tell me, what message are you guys hoping the listeners come away with from Flesh Coffin? The lyrics match the sound well. They make sense together to me. You guys match across the board in terms of that, which is good.

We’re trying to capture this aggressive sort of sound, while also making it pleasing so that it’s digestable, you know? We just want to be interesting to the point where someone who doesn’t listen to our style of music or isn’t familiar with it can find something to grab onto.

And at the same time, we have this aggressive, super high energy sound because that’s more captivating than being more slower paced, and it makes more sense for us to be in your face and aggressive. We don’t want to be too gritty to where it hurts; we want it to be digestable and enjoyable, even melodic because there is a sense of melody and change in dynamics. There are parts that are more emotional – either dark and dreary or uplifting and triumphant.

We try to change and mess with the emotions a little more, especially on this record. Instead of just being one pace, we really wanted to be more dynamic and answer to the emotions in the sound. We were like, what does this part feel like? In the past, we never thought about that; we just kind of did what we did. This time around, we want to gauge what kind of emotions things evoke and make sure it was what we wanted to evoke.

We blended and melted some different sounds and styles into this record so that it’s more appealing to the listener instead of going in one direction. We captured a bunch of different feelings so that someone who hasn’t heard of our sound could find something interesting in it.

I like it that you’re authentic to who you are, while at the same time pushing the aggression without being too overbearing. I think you struck a nice balance of those elements in this album.

Awesome, thank you. What we’re trying to do is be a little more emotionally captivating and more sonically interesting and have a broad stroke of what could be more interesting. Some people might want to hear something heavier, and we have those parts. Some people might want to listen to something that causes them to feel a little bit more, and that is on there as well.

Everybody has different tastes, and we’re trying to cater to the broad audience. We also have different tastes as artists as well, and all of the members of the band bring different tastes with them onto the record. What we are trying to put it all out there, and the hard part is making it flow. That’s essentially what we are trying to do with each record.

Well, it worked for me, so I think you did a good job. So, congratulations. (laughs)

(laughs) Why, thank you.

Speaking of lyrics and message, what is the writing process like for you guys? Is it a collaboration, or does one person do most of it?

I do the majority of the writing essentially. So, a lot of the music is done through me. Lyrics are written by our vocalist, Tom (Barber). He’s been writing lyrics for the band since forever. And it’s always kind of been one of those things where he always kind of had the ideas, and we are there to give him inspiration and change the dialog when he gets kind of stuck. So, the editing phase is more collaborative.

I’d say about 95% of the lyrics are all on him, and we are there for that 5% to give him some input. When I write parts, I have an idea of what I’d like the vocals to sound like. So, I kind of have that mindset when I am writing. But he usually hits the mark all the time on what I am thinking or looking for in certain parts. More or less, there is just that 5 or 10 percent where we are just kind of editing and making changes, but predominantly, it’s all him on the lyrics.

How do you know what’s going to stick around and what’s going in the trash?

The way we did this record was that we could hear everything that he was doing, every single day. So, we’d have the songs finished, then we’d hear the vocals, and we’d discuss like, “Aaaah, I’m not really feeling this or maybe we can adjust this.” So, we had the time and luxury to be able to mess around with certain things. So, it was really, really easy in that regard.

We just use what we think is fitting, and we aren’t strangers to getting rid of stuff that we don’t want, if that makes sense. We don’t use stuff cuz we have it; we try to be a little more editorial about stuff and mindful of what we are trying to do. Just because we have a thought or a lyric, it doesn’t mean we have to use it just because we have it. If it makes sense, then it makes sense, and that’s the overall idea. Sometimes we have a lot less stuff, and it makes us work harder. And sometimes we have a lot more stuff, and we have to get rid of stuff. It all varies.

Right, you don’t want to keep everything just because you made it. It’s like keeping all of your kid’s artwork. Sometimes, as a parent, it’s like, “I CANNOT KEEP ONE MORE DRAWING DONE WITH CRAYONS! AAAH!” Ya know? I get that.

(laughs) Yeah, you’re 100% right. You have to make the executive decision to be like, “Yeah, this is not what we’re trying to do.” There were times when I was writing the songs when I would say, “This doesn’t fit the song,” and that would spawn another song I liked even more.

That does happen from time to time. Just because I have an idea for a certain part in a song, it doesn’t always work, but I can use it and recycle it and put it somewhere else. It might fit another idea way better than what I wanted originally. We are all about making the better decisions for the music and what makes sense, and not just using every single resource that we have.

That makes sense from a standpoint of being around for as long as you have. You’ve been around for seven years, so you have learned about what works and what doesn’t work for you guys. After seven years in this business, you guys seem to have a pretty solid fanbase that grows almost daily by looking at your social media accounts. How do you feel that social media is helping you in terms of outreach and accessibility to the fans? How does it hurt the industry, in your opinion?

I feel like it’s one of those things where it is a gift and a curse at the same time. I think you can reach more people now on social media because people are so connected all the time. So, if you are constantly pumping that sort of stuff, then you have more of an opportunity to reach that. I feel like sometimes I find myself doing something for the sake of social media. And I do not want to be unauthentic, so I kind of think about it and stop.

It gets me thinking about social media and promoting that because I think about the old school times where we could just be a band, ya know? Be a band and not worry about that stuff. I know you have to adapt to survive, and that’s okay. But, I feel that what some people do and what some bands do is doing certain things for the sake of social media, and it doesn’t feel authentic. We want to be as authentic as possible. But, it’s definitely really good because you can reach different fanbases and bigger fanbases.

There are bands out there who strictly live on the Internet and create a fanbase from being on there all the time. They have grown to be a bigger band that way. It’s definitely possible and plausible. It’s definitely about balancing it out and having the right ratio. You don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket. As you know, all of those things at some point die out and are nonexistent. If you put all of your eggs into worrying about Facebook and social media promotion, you never know tomorrow if it will exist. Then you kind of wasted that and have nothing else. It’s definitely useful, but we make sure to balance it out.

A lot more people get to see us as human beings as opposed to being performers, which is always interesting. I think it’s good, but I think it can definitely be abused. It can become a little more of the forefront than it should be, I guess.

Oh, for sure. Now, you’ve gone from a metalcore sound pretty seamlessly into deathcore, and the heavier progressive stuff seems to be your wheelhouse. So, who or what are your influences in terms of sound?

I guess, for the band, our influences are always growing. Since we’ve started the band, there are bands that we used to like that we aren’t really driven by anymore. We are driven more by the more extreme kind of metal, like Whitechapel and the Faceless. We just got off a tour with the band Fallujah, which we are really inspired by.

We are into a lot of the extreme sound and anything that pushes our boundaries, ya know? Since we have been listening to the extreme music for as long as we have, our threshold for the tolerance has grown, so we need to keep going deeper and deeper into it. That’s kind of where we are at influence-wise, that sort of more aggressive metal, deathmetal sound.

It’s good that you have people you can turn to for influence in that sort of sound, especially with the progression your own band has made in terms of sound. It’s good to look at someone and say, “Wow, you did this, and we can, too. And we’ll do it in our own way.”

Yeah, yeah, that’s basically what we try to do. I feel like everyone is kind of doing their own thing on heavy metal. I don’t think there are these super niche subgenres. I think everyone just puts out their interpretation of what a bigger spectrum it is. That’s kind of how I see it, anyway. We’re all underneath the blanket of heavy metal, and everyone does their version of what heavy metal is. So, that’s what we do, too – our own version of what heavier music is.

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I kind of wish there was a real heavy metal blanket because I would totally want to snuggle with it. (laughs)

(laughs) I know, right? That’d be great.

I know from watching on social media, you have a pretty solid fanbase, as I mentioned before. And they, like, LOVE you guys… It’s kind of great to see.

Yah, it’s really cool to see it. It’s kind of shocking because when we are at home, we don’t really see it. And it’s just crazy to have people come out to the shows and kind of see us that way. We extend that admiration back to the fans; we try to be as humble and as open with the fans as we would want our favorite bands to be. When I go see a band, I’d love to be able to have a conversation with them for a period of time and not just say hi.

And for some people, that’s okay. But, for me, I want to have a conversation with some people I look up to. Back home, no one wants to talk to us about what we are doing. So the fact that out there in some random city we’ve never been to, there is someone who cares about what we are doing, we might as well give them the time of day because that is more important than anything else we could ever do. We try to be as welcoming and open to anything.

And that’s good that you have that mentality because some artists don’t have that about them. You guys are like, “Nope, we’re just four normal guys just doing what we love.”

Yes! That’s exactly who we are! We love having conversations with anybody, so it doesn’t matter who you are, whether you bought a ticket to see a show or you bought merch or are working with us out on tour. It doesn’t matter the person or the situation they are in, we want to surround ourselves with people we enjoy being around.

Speaking of touring, in terms of tour partners, you guys have some pretty good ones lined up for this run. Everyone I have seen talking about it has a favorite band they seem to be dying to see! How do you pick who you want to play with? Do you get a say, or is it a label decision? It has to be hard to choose with so many acts out today!

When we go on supporting tours where someone else is taking us out, it’s usually another band wants us out with them, so we do that. It’s through our manager or booking agent who fixes us to that tour. So, it’s not really as much of our own personal decision as to who, it’s more like what tours do we want to go on.

There are a bunch of tours coming up, and someone will ask us if we want to, so we do have somewhat of a say in those aspects. Overall, the other bands want us to be on that tour. Now, if we’re headlining a tour like this one we are on now, we kind of have a pick and a say on who comes out with us. We have control on that end, including how long we want to be out for and where we want to go on this tour. It all depends on our position in the tour, so it varies.

That’s good because you get to see new people and new faces while also taking along some of your old friends as well.

Yeah, definitely! That’s what we get to do. It works well for us.

In these times when music can be therapy and concerts are a place for people to let go and just get rid of drama in their lives, do you feel a certain responsibility to your fans to give them the experiences that help them have those moments in your crowd?

Yeah! Why not! (laughs). I think as a society, we are so tightly wound, working 40 hours a week or 24/7, that it’s good for your mental health to step away for a short period of time as opposed to being so wrapped up. It’s mentally healing to be somewhere else and leave it all behind for a couple hours. It’s better for us as humans. It’s good to be away instead of just constantly at it all the time.

I like that, and I know myself I find concerts to be that. So, I definitely want that experience. It’s nice to see bands who give that effort and try to be that for the crowd. Even just eye contact during a song or something where you know that everybody is feeling it from all sides… you know then that it’s all going to be okay.

(laughs) Yeah, totally. Exactly. Sometimes it’s good to be separated. Even just in taking the time to listen to an album, it’s good to be separated and take that time away from real life for a bit and get lost in the music. It’s good to get disconnected form the world sometimes, especially nowadays when everyone is so connected, to pull away and get away. It’s good to do things that you don’t have to think.

Music has saved many lives time and again, my own included. Have you had experiences where music was the only thing that made sense? Have you had fans share similar experiences with you about your own music? How did that feel?

Yeah, I mean, it’s crazy to hear that because we have always been listening to music, and music is definitely the background to what we’ve been doing all this time. It’s cool to hear that we are that soundtrack to what they’re going through at that time or whatever. It’s crazy to hear because we have been fans of music and other bands have been that for us, so to be able to do that for someone else is surreal. It’s humbling, for sure. We don’t see ourselves in that way for sure.

What else would you like to add for the fans? Anything we didn’t cover?

We’ve covered just about everything I could think of to cover. (laughs) We’ll be out on tour in the next few weeks, come out. Hang out with us because it’s going to be fun, and we want to see everyone out there.

Interview by Devon Anderson, RockRevolt Managing Editor

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