INTERVIEW: ISLANDER

Islander, the quartet from Greenville, South Carolina, are no strangers in awakening the nerves in your rock and roll bones and are set to kick off the 2014 Aftershock Festival in Sacramento, California on it’s opening day with their cutting edge, raw, emotionally charged energy. Chris Doot of Islander takes a few moments with RockRevolt Magazine to discuss the Aftershock Festival as well as recording their latest album, Violence & Destruction, and many more topics.

Band Origin: Greenville, SC

Label: Victory Records

Most Recent EP/Album: Violence & Destruction (July 2014)

Music Genre(s): Christian metal, nu metal, post-hardcore, rap metal

Band Members:

Andrew Murphy - Guitar

Mikey Carvajal - Vocals

Eric Frazier - Drums

Chris Doot - Bass

Chris, how are you doing today?

I am awesome man, I am just driving back from Columbia my girlfriend lives in Columbia, I’ll spend a couple of days here before we leave again.

Islander is fresh off of the 2014 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. How was the festival overall for you and Islander?

That festival was incredible. It is like the biggest tour we have ever done. We have never done something like that with the bigger bands and we were really nervous coming into this being a young band. We just like to get everything down you know? But everybody, like that worked in all the bands were incredibly hyped, like nicer than I could have ever imagined. So the tour was just incredible for us, it was amazing exposure. We got to play in front of tons of people who we would never play in front of. We couldn’t have asked for anything better.

A lot of the bands in the 2014 Mayhem Festival described this year’s Mayhem Festival as having a strong family vibe. Would you agree with that?

I heard the word camaraderie used a lot for this tour. As far as people saying so much about camaraderie and it’s a family vibe and so on, I kept hearing it and hearing it, but it wasn’t like this last year, it wasn’t this close. Everybody got along really well.

What have you guys been doing since Mayhem?

We haven’t done much. We have played one local show at home and we have just been practicing. We are leaving again soon, our next tour starts on Friday, so we will be leaving on Thursday. So we just have pretty much had our down time practicing for the next tour coming up and just hanging out with family really.

Islander is playing on the opening day of the 2014 Aftershock Festival in Sacramento. Is this your first time performing at Aftershock? What are you looking forward to for this year’s Aftershock Festival?

Yes it is our first time performing there. Like it is so big, I don’t even know what to look forward to right now (laughs). But there are so many bands that I would want to see and I won’t be able to see them all. I’ve never been to Aftershock, so I don’t know what to expect.

Looks like you guys kick off the first day of Aftershock and as one of the first bands on Main Stage 3. Are you guys pumped that you get to kick off the whole party and weekend for rock fans?

Yes, we are pretty excited by that. We play pretty early and at first we were like, oh yeah, we’re playing early you know, but it’s a festival, people come all day and watch every single band. No matter what time, or what slot you have at a festival to play, there will be people excited to see you.

What can fans at Aftershock that have not seen Islander perform expect from your set or performance?

We really thrive on the fact that we don’t use backing tracks and stuff like that. Everything we play is us, there are no backing tracks, it’s just us. When we have a good show, we have like a really good show. If we happen to have a bad show, it’s just a bad show, but like we are just a real rock and roll band. We just thrive on the fact that it’s just raw music and raw passion and go all out. There’s no gimmick to us.

Where does the rest of the tour take you after Aftershock?

I believe it starts in Wisconsin, then California, then the east coast I believe, but I just learned to go with the wave and flow and stuff and not worry about everything.

With the recent release of Violence & Destruction as a follow up to Pains, can fans hear more of the new material in your live set?

Yeah, we’re playing stuff mostly off of Violence & Destruction, and like 1 or 2 songs off of Pains, I mean’s it’s only a 4 song EP, and we only play like 2 songs off of it when we do play it. But yeah, everything else will be off of Violence & Destruction.

The latest video for the track “Coconut Dracula” (see the video below) off of Violence & Destruction is one of my favorites. I’m assuming that one is on the setlist, but are there any other surprises, cover songs or treats for fans that you can elaborate on during the upcoming shows?

I don’t know if I’m allowed to say (laughs) anything about it all. But we are a heavy band live and we just play the heavier songs off the record. Coconut Dracula is probably the most softest song we’re gonna play. We all come from backgrounds of heavier music, you know, metal, hardcore and stuff like that so, when we play a live show we’re really energetic and we like the heavy stuff. It’ll be the heavier parts of the album or EP that you hear live.

Both Pains and Violence & Destruction were released under Victory Records. How has it been working with Victory?

It has been incredible. You know I was 24 or 25 when we signed, we only signed about a year ago. I was always nervous like you know, like you always hear the bad things about labels, I mean you never really hear much of the good things just because I don’t know if people think of the good things. But our time with Victory has been incredible. They have been such like a good family, they welcomed us, they have helped us when we needed it, it is just amazing. I was not expecting it to be that close like that well fit between the band and the label. They gave us tons of creative freedom like when we went to record, they did not tell us anything, they just told us go and record and like with Pains, we did that you know on our own, and they were like just do another thing like that, that’s a good EP. So we had all the freedom we needed, we know what they want, we know what they like and I think they put a lot of trust in us.

Did that creative freedom also flow into making the videos for tracks like Coconut Dracula?

Yes, that was Eric Richter, the guy that shot the video and our singer Mikey. Mikey is really creative, so he thinks of a ton of stuff because his brain is very creative and they went back and forth talking about the video. It came out awesome.

Looking ahead into 2015, what does Islander’s calendar look like?

I am not really sure, we had not planned anything about like recording since this album is so new and we are a young band, so we really have to like push this album right now. I’m really eager to get into the studio again, but we have to tour this record like crazy into 2015. So 2015 will probably just be us on the road most of the year I think with this record.

Any festivals or overseas tours planned?

We are in the talks with a pretty big tour promoter right now actually, but I can’t really say anything about it, but it will be a huge door for us. So yes, there are good things coming soon and going on, we are not backing down any time now.

Last question Chris, and we’ll wrap this up. What or who influenced you to play in a band and play the bass guitar?

I started playing bass when I was in eighth grade, I think twelve or something like that. I saw Incubus then and I was on the side of the bass player, their old bass player at the time, and it was like the most powerful thing I have ever seen. I haven’t seen them since, but that was like my first real concert, so I was kind of nervous. But the show was just like so awesome, the bass player was just playing the bass like so hard and I think that kind of flipped the switch for me during that show.

That is awesome, well thank you so much for taking some time today to catch us up Chris. I hope you guys have a killer time at Aftershock and the rest of the tour, and I will catch up with you soon.