Where are you guys at today?

We’re in Fort Lauderdale right now.

You guys played at the Freebird last night, right?

Yeah we were at the Freebird with Lostprophets and Midtown.

How was that show?

Amazing. We were just in Jacksonville about a month ago. We did our own show. We had an offdate that we did by ourselves at a really small club called the Imperial. That was a great show too. But this time was just amazing. A lot of those kids came back. Our new record wasn’t out at the time we played that show. Now it’s out and it’s been out for a while so I think that a lot of those kids wanted to come see the new songs. There was quite a few singing along to the new material and it just made for an all around great time, especially with all the new kids that aren’t used to hearing Eighteen Visions or don’t know who we are. They were all really, really receptive. It was just a great show all around.

You just got done with a stint on the Warped Tour and like you said, you’re touring with Lostprophets, how’s the road treating you? How’s the touring been?

The road treats us poorly, I would say (laughs). Touring’s awesome. The road treats us poorly. We’ve had a few problems. We had a problem the day before the Warped Tour was supposed to start in Houston, actually the first day ended up getting canceled because of a severe rain storm. But, the night before that, one of our roadies accidentally ran our trailer into a pole and our trailer hitch snapped. We broke an axle on the trailer, so we had to leave it in Houston for like two weeks while they fixed it, and we rented a trailer from this mom and pop store, trailer rental place. It was kind of sketchy but we didn’t really have many options, so we went with that one. Then after a show in San Francisco, we’re driving down to Vegas to make the next show and then one of the bearings burned out on our trailer, so we had to get that fixed. We tried to put a spare tire on, so the spare tire was not the right size. The guy gave us the totally wrong tire. We ended up just staying overnight somewhere in Northern California and had somebody fix it during the day, so we spent our Fourth of July in the middle of nowhere. Came home, missed a show in Vegas, had a day off at home. On the way out, we finished the rest of the Warped Tour, on our way out to Lostprophets, about six hours after we left in Phoenix, the other bearing burned out on the trailer and totally destroyed the axle. So we here with a rental trailer with two bad bearings, a tire that doesn’t sit and now another broken axle. So we spent a day and a half in Arizona, about 50 miles outside of Phoenix getting that repaired. We just barely made it in time back to Houston to pick up our own trailer, and had to drop the rental trailer off. It was just a total mess. We’ve had problems in the past before, but not really like this, at least recently, where it’s been like a reoccurring thing. The road’s been treating us poor, but the show’s and the touring have been great.

That sucks man.

Yeah.

As you’re traveling from city to city and trying to make the venue without breaking down, what kinds of reactions are you getting from the crowd now that you’re playing the new stuff from “Obsession?”

They’re awesome. This tour that we’re on particularly with the Lostprophets and Midtown, gives us a chance to play some of the songs on the record that are more, I guess that have a little popier side to ‘em. And like more like melody and more rock feel to it, rather than just play the heavier stuff that we’re normally used to playing because it’s a tour that we’re doing. Doing a tour like this gives us the opportunity to play some of the songs that we normally wouldn’t play on a tour so, I don’t know I think these kids so far on this tour have been awesome and totally have been getting what we’ve been doing. On the Warped Tour it was great. We had a ton of kids come out to see us everyday. We were on a smaller side stage, so you don’t really know what to expect. But, we were, I guess one of the bigger draws on Thunder Row on that stage. We had so many kids watching us every day. A lot of ‘em knew who we were and a lot of them didn’t. Because a lot of them didn’t know who we were, we sold a lot of records at the show, so that was great too. I think that the last couple tours that we’ve done have been totally successful for us. We can really, really see, especially with kids that already have the record singing along and responding to it live. And then kids that don’t have the record, responding to the music live and going out and buying the record. So I think it’s been great.

What did you guys do on this album that maybe was different than what you have done in the past?

We just took everything that we’re normally used to doing, and kind of like intensified it and stepped it up. Magnified each part. You know the heavier parts got heavier and the more melodic parts got more melodic and because of that, vocally there’s a lot more range. There’s a lot more singing, there’s a lot more melodies and harmonies than you’ll find on our previous record. It was just something that … we like the parts on the old record that were like the rock parts, the really heavy parts, the melodic parts. We liked all those parts, so we’re like, you know lets focus on those and lets make those kinds of parts better and spend more time on parts like that, ‘cause that’s what we really like to do. As far as all the metal stuff went, I don’t know, we just felt like our time had come for writing metal. It was up. It didn’t feel like it was fitting with the music that we were writing. We didn’t feel it musically either.

Strangely enough I’ve had a chance to talk to the guys from Atreyu, Bleeding Through and Throwdown this summer. I asked them all about the Orange County music scene and now I gotta ask you. What’s the big deal with Orange County all of a sudden this year?

I don’t know. I think coincidentally … it’s a great place to play regardless of all the bands coming out of it. Due to the fact that there’s a show just about every night of the week at one venue or another. Every show is pretty much packed or there’s a decent amount of kids there. I think that Orange County, because there’s so many different venues and so many different shows going on, it gives bands an opportunity to grow a lot faster then some other markets in the US. I think coincidentally, some of the bands you named off along with Avenge Sevenfold and Static Lullaby, just coincidentally were all from the same area. We just ended up writing similar style of music, they’re different but similar in some aspect. Due to that fact, we were playing shows together and kind of helped build the Orange County scene. Now it’s really awesome to see all these bands from that area that we just talked about, going off and touring and selling 50,000-100,000 records. It’s amazing.

You guys have been around for nearly a decade now. It seems like you’re ready to break through to the masses finally. Do you feel like this is your time? Like this album is going to be your album and this is going to be the time when you look back and say this is when we broke through?

I think so. I’m starting to feel it. I kind of felt it when we were recording the record. It was just one of those things where we’d done so many records in the past and this record, we spent so much time on it. We had the songs written on it for quite some time, for years and it was a real record. We went into the studio with about 20 songs and we were really focused on what we were doing. As the songs dwindled down to 15 songs that we were going to choose, and down to 14 and then down to 13, I felt it coming together and I felt something special with this record. Something that I haven’t felt in the past. I think that if we keep doing what we’re doing and playing these shows and touring and touring with the bands that we’re touring with, and touring with different bands, I think that this will definitely be a record that I look back on and say, ‘yeah, it did break us through.’ Maybe not necessarily to the mainstream because I can’t see that far, but definitely it’ll solidify us as a band that’s able to go out and tour and draw kids and sell records.

Tell me a little bit about what you’ve gone through to get to where you are today.

Oh wow. A ton of member changes. From day one, when we started off as a heavy metal band. We were going through member changes from day one before we were playing shows really. Just trying to find the right people to play with. Once we did have the four or five people that we wanted to play with, we had the biggest pain in the ass trying to play shows, because the scene wasn’t what it is today and there wasn’t a show every week and every day. It was a lot harder and it was more like one of those things of who you know. And when you’re 15, 16 years old, you don’t know that many people, especially in bands that have people that are much older than you. Getting the shows is the really hard part, and once you start getting into the shows, it seemed like keeping members was a hard part. We’d gone through a few different guitar players and a couple bass players and finally we had a solid five-piece and then we parted ways with our bass player and we got Vick. And then we parted ways with Brandon, our old guitar player and we were a four-piece again for another couple of years. This record kind of changed all that. We felt like it was time to become a five-piece again. There’s a lot of stuff that’s on the record that we didn’t want to leave off the record because it wasn’t gonna be like able to play live, or wouldn’t sound good live. There was a lot of stuff on the record that it’s like, we want to put it on the record, but if there’s only four of us, or there’s a guitar missing, we don’t want to leave out those parts. We wanted to put them on the record because it was gonna sound great. We just decided the best thing to do was to move Ken to guitar since he wrote half of the music and then go ahead and get another drummer.

What do you think of the music industry now compared to when you started?

I think personally with our experiences, it’s a lot more open. Seeing all the other bands doing what they’re doing with the records on independent labels and bands on independent labels moving to majors, I think the music industry’s open to different types of music and a lot more open to looking and digging in the underground to find bands and sell them some more records. Thursday was one of the first bands I saw make the jump and it seemed to be proven very successful for them. They’re doing great tours and selling a ton of records. And if I was in their shoes, I’d be totally happy with what’s going on. I’m totally happy with what’s going on in our case as well. All in all I think the music industry seems to be willing to take more of a chance on bands coming from the underground.

If you could share the stage with any bands past or present, which bands would you choose?

I’d say if I could share a stage with a couple of bands from the past, I’d say Guns ‘N Roses, Stone Temple Pilots and Nirvana and Alice In Chains would be my first picks. The Beatles would be rad too just because they’re legendary. Present, I’d definitely say Velvet Revolver.

That’s a killer album.

The record’s amazing and there’s so much charisma on that stage. I haven’t been able to see them live, but I know who’s in the band and I know what they did in their previous bands. I know it’s gonna be an amazing rock show. I’ve had friends go see ‘em and tell me it was amazing. So I’m sure nothing above that.

James. Thanks for chatting with me.

No problem.

Appreciate it. Hope things get better on the road.

Yeah. They will. We got our trailer back, so we won’t run into any poles.

Good luck.

Thanks. Take care.