InVisions, a staple name in the British metalcore scene, a band that we’ve been working with since they’ve formed and we are so happy to see these guys pushing the boundaries with each release they’re putting out and it is evident that InVisions continue their upward swing with their latest release ‘Deadlock’. In today’s interview, our aim is to dig a little deeper into the process of creating their third full-length album and how the band has grown since forming in 2016.
First off, congrats on the release guys, I can tell this is one that will be active in my arsenal for the foreseeable future. Do you mind giving us an inside scoop on the writing process for this album? Did the band approach it any differently since it’s harder to get the whole band in a practice space and write music collectively?
Thank you! Stoked that you’re into it!! To be honest it didn’t really change the writing process a great deal as we’ve always worked more independently and remotely as opposed to writing “in the room” in a more traditional manner. It usually starts off with myself or Alex working on a demo to which we’ll get it 90% of the way there before sending it out to everyone and getting everyone’s thoughts and flavour!
Particularly with this record we really wanted to make sure it pushed us as musicians and that the tracks were great as instrumentals before even introducing vocals. That way we would never be going to be leaning on vocals to compensate for a half-cut instrumental. So, writing in this way definitely helped as sometimes you could spend almost a week just obsessing over a riff before it saw the light of day!
To my understanding, this album is self-produced by the band as well? How was that for you guys?
I think self-producing the record was a natural step for us as over our career we’ve got more and more hands-on in the post-production stage that by the time it came to recording this album we had such a clear vision as to exactly how we wanted everything to be! It definitely added a lot of stress for me personally as I was doing a lot of the tracking, editing, and post-production but the removal of a deadline really allowed us to dig a bit deeper and create the best record we can!
We also approached the recording a little differently by committing to track in real-time as we were writing them. We definitely still went back and tweaked a hell of a lot, but I think this method allowed us to close the door on sections and keep momentum with the writing!
Was there anything you knew you wanted to do going into this record, either lyrically or musically?
I’d say the biggest change with this record is notably the lyrics and clean vocal style! After we introduced a bit more of the pushed clean vocals in Gold Blooded it felt like it just took our music to a completely different level. Ben’s SUPER dynamic and the ability to have these really emotive and raw clean vocals felt like we could finally match the intensity of choruses with the heavier parts of the songs. Smoothing out the contrast between that traditional scream verse and super clean chorus I think can remove that “jarring” feeling that you can sometimes get with metalcore. When it goes from Satan’s tomb to Disneycore!
Lyrically it’s been a massive switch up for us. We’ve all changed massively over the past couple of years and with 2 years locked up at home with nothing but your thoughts it’s hard to not get into your own head and let those looming questions start to fester. We never planned for the record to be a concept album but as soon as live music was taken away from us we realized how much it plays into being a huge part of our identity, when you lose a big part of your identity it can be hard to figure out who you are without that and everything seemed to just lead back to that feeling.
With a few full-lengths under the belt, have you found the process of writing and recording gets easier with time and experience?
It’s 100% a double-edged blade! We were lucky in this scenario that covid gave us a bit more time to work and create a record we’re really proud of! But I think it can get a little bit harder to write and easier to record as you’re more seasoned in that sense! We’re all perfectionists and we’re always trying to top anything we have ever done before so getting an idea through from inception to actually committed can be a challenge as our standard has increased over the years!
Collectively as a band, has Deadlock lived up to your expectations thus far since its release in regards to the reception from your fans and industry professionals?
Without a doubt. It’s absolutely surpassed anything we could have expected already! I think it’s the first time we’ve had a bit more of universally positive feedback from a record in terms of across our fan base, bringing new fans to the fold and from critics!
By no means was this album written to be a “crowd-pleaser” or anything along those lines but I think because it’s a personal story of the struggle we have experienced over the past few years that even if it’s not 100% your thing, you can respect it and relate to it in some manner!
How do you guys go about incorporating new music into your set list for upcoming shows, are you beginning to cycle out older tracks from your previous releases? Must be quite a hard task?
It’s crazy, we’ve released over 40 songs in 6 years! Some bands don’t even do that in their whole career! It does get hard but we’re trying to incorporate a lot more of the new record into our live shows as they’re songs we’re just really excited to play! We’ll definitely keep some old tracks in there but I think the new record will become the staple and we’ll be able to mix it up with our favs from the previous records. We’ve just gotta find the perfect balance for both us and our fans!
I’ve seen comments online surfacing from your fans claiming that Deadlock is already their album of the year. Is that surreal to hear since we’re only at the beginning of 2022?
It’s honestly so humbling! It’s still very early doors, but the fact that people are already scoping it for AOTY is insane! Let’s just hope it stays that way later in the year! BMTH will definitely drop something this year that will likely destroy everyone else’s chance at AOTY… and I can’t wait!
Do you guys have a developing bucket list of bands you want to tour the new album with or maybe new countries you’d like to visit?
We’d love to tour with Bring Me, Architects, Wage War, Asking, Bullet, and the list goes on! We’re still at a bit of a stage where we are yet to tour with a lot of the bands we listen to so we’re hoping that this record is the one to open those doors! We definitely want to get over to the US & AUS ASAP as they’ve been on our personal bucket lists as a band since day one.
This is probably a rhetorical question since an album is viewed as a body of work and one tend to be proud of it as a product as a whole, but is there any tracks on there that is a personal favourite and why?
It is hard to pick a favourite as like you mentioned, it feels like a cohesive piece of work! Each song adds a different weight and gravity to the journey! But if I had to pick one, it would currently be ‘Half Life’. The guitar work in that song has some of the coolest riffs we have ever written and I’ve got a love/hate relationship with the chorus as it took so many different versions to nail!
We wish you guys all the success with the new album and we hope you have an amazing time touring this release. Thanks so much for the time. Stream DEADLOCK here.