interview by: Roberto Martinelli

It's common that bands of the harder, heavier genres try to add some dynamics to their albums by throwing in acoustic tracks or some kind of quiet to prevent losing the listener's interest. Generally, this means that you'll get harsh and brutal that comes to a full stop, followed by pretty and melancholic that also comes to a full stop. Many times, these individual tracks are good, but there isn't much cohesion between them.

Hopesfall's unique brand of mixing technical hardcore with mellow, melodic breakdowns and vocals is seamless. It's a refreshing thing to hear a group make not only music that is outstanding in creating music whose individual parts are exemplary for their particular genre, but also mesh so well together, in turn creating a signature style all its own. I talked to Josh Brigham, guitarist of this young Charlotte, North Carolina band about Hopesfall's wonderful new record, The Satellite YearsThe Satellite Years.

Maelstrom: You play guitar. Do you also do vocals?

Josh Brigham: No. Jay, our lead singer, does the majority of the vocals.

Maelstrom: The melodic and hardcore vocals are from the same person?

Josh Brigham: There's a couple (vocals) from our old guitarist Ryan, but the majority of it is Jay.

Maelstrom: Have you ever heard of a band called Aerogramme?

Josh Brigham: Aerogramme? No, I haven't.

Maelstrom: You guys remind me a lot of them.

Josh Brigham: Where are they from?

Maelstrom: I think they're from England. They're not a hardcore band at all. They sort of sound like the Smashing Pumpkins - not that you guys sound like that, but you sound like Aerogramme, but hardcore.

Josh Brigham: It's funny that you brought up the Pumpkins, 'cause that's like probably one of my favorite bands of all time.

Maelstrom: Yeah, I like them too. I don't know about the last couple records (to be fair, I'm counting the second to last record, Adore, as the last couple records. - Roberto )

Josh Brigham: Oh, come on, dude, Machina was great.

Maelstrom: I gave up on them after Adore.

Josh Brigham: Really? Oh, man, is like one of my favorite ones. I'm a diehard Pumpkins fan. Siamese Dream was one of the first records I ever got on my own. To this day, like, when me an' my friends are driving around, we call it "old faithful": it doesn't matter what mood you're in or where you are or what you're doin', when you put that record in, you're gonna enjoy it.

Maelstrom: Why is your album called The Satellite Years?

Josh Brigham: We kind of had a lot of themes that we were dealing with that we thought were dealing with space and separation - kind of like being suspended. Honestly, we trying to think of names for the record, and we couldn't think of anything that we liked. I was asking one of my friends, "what should we call it?" I tried to explain to him what we were covering, and the first thing that came out of his mouth was, "why don't you call it The Satellite Years?" And I was like, "oh, that's awesome." So I went back and told everybody, "hey, I thought of a great title for the record: The Satellite Years!" I admitted to it later that I didn't really think of it. I figured I'd better claim responsibility for it initially 'cause I wanted everybody to like it, 'cause they were all really skeptical about taking suggestions from other people.

Maelstrom: It all falls into place really marvelously: the name of the album, and then you have this blue color all over the booklet; the blue - and there's something about the record: Whenever I listen to it, it just makes me think about…have you ever been to California?

Josh Brigham: Yes, I have.

Maelstrom: Have you ever driven up Highway 1?

Josh Brigham: Uh, no. I've driven up Interstate 5.

Maelstrom: Oh, that's the worst one. That's the ugly one.

Josh Brigham: Yeah, I have some stories about Interstate 5.

Maelstrom: Oh, ok. Tell me about that in a minute. Highway 1 is the one that goes along the coast.

Josh Brigham: I haven't had a chance to do that yet. We were on a tight schedule: we had to drive from LA to Sacramento.

Maelstrom: Yeah. Anyway, Highway 1 goes along the coast and it's really beautiful. Listening to your record and thinking about the blue makes me think of the sky and driving along the ocean and the breeze, and having this really wonderful feeling from all the melody you have in your record. It's just really free and really great. It just ties together in with the whole concept. I don't know if that was intentional, but you did a great job with it.

Josh Brigham: I would honestly say thank you very much, because that's a great compliment. You would have no way of knowing this, but the guy who designed our record, Chandler Owen, lives in Costa Mesa, California. He's one of my good friends; I grew up with him. Some of the very first art that he sent me were pictures of the hills of Pomona, overlooking the ocean. I told him that I liked all the blues and the vibe of that, but I wanted to do something more space oriented. He came up with all of that. He's totally inspired by the exact same things that you just mentioned. Our first EP, No Wings to Speak of , I don't know if you've ever seen that, the artwork is the California Hills and the skyline.

Maelstrom: Wow. I gotta get it. Is it like The Satellite Years?

Josh Brigham: What Chandler did for the art (of Satellite...) was he took a bunch of pictures of buildings in California. Those little pictures of spaceships are actually pictures of those buildings: one of 'em is a sewage plant, one of 'em is a high school. He cut 'em up in a collage. If you look at it, you can see building pieces. The other one (No Wings...) is all pictures of hills.

Maelstrom: In terms of what it sounds like, is it the same in terms of style?

Josh Brigham: I think The Satellite Years is definitely a progression.

Maelstrom: This new record is definitely going to make my top five; I really like it a lot.

Josh Brigham: Well, thank you.

Maelstrom: You're welcome. It's just so seamless: the way you have the hardcore parts and how it drifts into these mellow, quiet parts. There's no seam between the two parts. I don't know if you've heard the new Zao? I thought that was terrible: they tried to go quiet, but they didn't change their sound. They kept the same vocals, they kept the same production, and it sounds really bad.

Josh Brigham: Yeah…I'm kind of friends with those dudes, so I don't want to make a comment about it. I can see where you're coming from. When we were writing the songs, it was really important for us to have good bridges and make it flow. Like some of the bands I really admire, like Drowning Man and Botch, those bands have great transition work. That's something that I've always been inspired to have. Fluidity is very important. When we're writing a song, we'll write a bunch of parts and put it together. If it doesn't flow, we'll scrap the whole thing.

Maelstrom: Yeah, I just got the new Botch. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm really keen on it. I really like the artwork. Lately I guess I've been really into artwork. The mountains on the new Botch are so cool.

Josh Brigham: I love Botch. They're a great band. Seriously, they're one of my favorites. I feel the same way. I really like the artwork for the Anthology of Dead Ends.

Maelstrom: Talking about themes, you have a graphic in the album that says "escape" (with a silhouette of a spacecraft) and "renewal" (with the silhouette of an astronaut). Could you please talk a bit about this theme and how it fits into the album?

Josh Brigham: Lyrically, we wrote about things that are personal to us. Our singer, Jay, asked me to not explain lyrics. He hates when he reads bands explaining what their lyrics mean; he wants people to read what he wrote and apply it to themselves (if they want to look into it that far). We were going through hard times as a band: we had a lot of lineup changes and a lot of disappointments and setbacks. That happened in our band as well as in our personal lives. We were dealing with a lot of issues of separation. We felt that the album was kind of cathartic.

Maelstrom: That's the absolute best word to use, "catharsis." The album is hard and brutal in some parts, but it has this feeling to it that just makes you feel really good.

Josh Brigham: The whole renewal and escape thing, "A Man Exits" is about that. It's about as much about escapism as possible. The record itself doesn't necessarily deal with the theme of renewal, but that whole piece of art was renewing to us. It brought the band back together, it got us started again, it got us touring again, got us with a label. There's a lot of that there. I have to give a lot of credit to Chandler Owen. When we were doing the art, I came to him and I was like, "I have these specific themes, and you have a free palette to do with what you want."

Maelstrom: What are the other themes that are prevalent in The Satellite Years?

Josh Brigham: Feeling suspended, feeling distance from others, from the Earth.

Maelstrom: What are the main influences on Hopesfall?

Josh Brigham: My formative years I spent listening to The Smashing Pumpkins and Hum, and Dinosaur, Jr….The Pixies, The Smiths. That was what I got into when I was forming my own opinions about music in my early teens. Then I got into hardcore and heavier music later because I was so fed up with what was on the radio. Looking for other things, and I kind of stumbled upon it. Musically we've always tried to be somewhere between the two.

Maelstrom: Do you think that puts you at a disadvantage? You're different from much of the hardcore I've heard: you have this dynamic. Does this put you at a disadvantage to some of the fans who want to hear brutal hardcore, mosh, jump up and down stuff?

Josh Brigham: I kind of thought the same thing when we first started out as a band. We got a lot of shit from fans: "You guys aren't hardcore, blahblahblah." We were like, "we don't really care." We don't want to be your typical hardcore band. We've always tried to do something original. If our audience decides that, hey, we sold out hardcore, then that's their opinion and they're entitled to it. I just want to keep writing music that makes me happy. If we write a sick mosh part that we really like, we'll use it. Honestly, it's a selfish endeavor. We write music because we wanna have a good time; we do it for ourselves.

Maelstrom: How hard is it for Jay to switch from the hardcore vox to the clean ones on stage?

Josh Brigham: I think that he enjoys it. He likes the heavy parts; he likes the melodic parts. He sees it as a challenge. "Hey, I've got to train my voice to be able to do both on tour for 40 days in a row."

Maelstrom: I was going to ask Adam what his drum influences are.

Josh Brigham: Oh, I can tell you EXACTLY what his influences are. Puller, Shiner, and (although I hate Phil Collins) Phil Collins.

Maelstrom: When are you coming back to San Francisco?

Josh Brigham: We played there in September, and it was awesome. Honestly, San Francisco was THE best show the entire summer.

Maelstrom: What made it your favorite show?

Josh Brigham: Driving in to the town. It was just a beautiful day. My grandmother lives there. We played really well; we did really well with merch; we had a great crowd. It was a really good day. But then that all ended on Interstate 5, though. Early the next morning we had to drive from San Francisco to Portland, which is quite a hike. We slept for a couple of hours on the side of the road near Sausalito, in the van. We got up, and it was about 6:45 in the morning, and I'm heading north on Interstate 5. We have a 15 passenger van with a trailer. We're going 70 miles an hour, we're good, and it's early, so I go up to 76 miles an hour. At that point a cop pulls me over. I'm like, "officer, I'm really sorry I was going 6 over," and he says, "no, you weren't. You were going 21 over." I said, "what do you mean? It's marked 70." He said, "since you have a trailer, you're considered an 18 wheeler, and you can't go over 55." I got a $400 ticket that I'm still in the middle of by a trial by declaration where I'm writing letter to this judge where I'm trying to get the sentence reduced or completely wiped clean. I'm not paying that ticket.

Maelstrom: That's not even a good bad story. That's a bad bad story.

Josh Brigham: It's a shitty story, and the cop was a real asshole. It was a start to a really bad day. San Francisco was a really good day; Portland was a really bad day. 

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