PipemanRadio Interviews Story of the Year at Louder Than Life 2025

0:04 Hy you lunto here. That's true. For see Wow, crazy you. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm here with Dan and Adam from Story of the Year and you artist Story of the Year here at Louder than Light. That's true. I don't know about that. There's a lot of awesome, crazy, amazing bands today and all week all weekend. But yeah, we're happy to be a part of it. Yeah, we're one of the story instead of Slayer. Yeah. Yeah, obviously we're way bigger than Slayer. I know, right, clearly, clearly.

0:46 Now, we're excited to be here. Man, it's it's it's really cool, cool. Fest So first question I want to ask is I ask every artist, how does Danny Wimmer treat you as an artist at his festivals? Well, we're new to the Danny Wimmer universe, so this is actually one of the first things we've done with him. I mean, we are management knows that we are acquainted, but yeah, we're just now starting to do this stuff because we're this is a little heavier than Story of the Year in some ways. I mean, we do have that side of our band, but we're not used to playing these kind of festivals as much. We've been treated amazingly so far. And yeah, it's cool. We don't know too much yet though it's still early in the day. But yeah, at first glance though, just coming in, just the scale of the festival wasn't something that was on my radar really. See, I mean the bus parking is indoors.

1:32 I mean, granted, this is that wild. Yes, the granted that is you know, this is festival grounds that are made for these huge things. You know, there's horse stables and all anything you could possibly want to put on like a you know, any kind of like what do you call it county fair on the like it is a fund fair ground. Yeah, in the true truest sense. So it's kind of wild. But yeah, seeing the way it's all organized in terms of like credentials in and out and everything's very organized. It reminds us of when we were young. Just obviously a little bit different genre bllance. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome so far. But see, one of the cool things about the Wimmer festivals is a band like yours would play here because there's all different types. Even though it gears more towards the heavy it mixes in which I love because I'm from the early days where you didn't do that, and I thought it was stupid. Yeah, I like all the different types of music, Like I'd be just as happy and and you're at your gig in a pit as I would be in Slayer and pit. It's just a different pit.

2:26 Yeah, Yeah, it's weird twenty something years A couple twenty years ago, whenever we were starting out, the genres were very divided, and yeah, it's like even like hardcore and punk, like wouldn't even necessarily play shows, you know. It was like such a weird thing. You had to be the exact same style of band. And now that we're like we get coined as emo now, which is fine, but what we never thought of ourselves as an emo band. Twenty something years ago. We were just like a hard rock, post hardcore kind of whatever we were doing with pop punk and everything else. And then it turned into scream o emo whatever. I liked it. It's all kind of turned into one big wh just everybody likes music and let's just all be friends. And we've made so many friends in different bands over the years that now it's fun to be able to do different kinds of stuff like this.

3:08 What's funny is our influencers are so varied, and even on our first album, we hit such a spectrum. I know it's a cliche to talk about, you know, you had really really like ballad songs and then heavy like whatever, but we combined things in a way that I think was a little bit newer for the time. In our group of genres. You know, we were influenced by everything from Pantera to Saves the Day, everything in between, punk and hardcore, all this stuff Dan talked about. But being kids from the nineties, it was even worse in the nineties in terms of what you were quote allowed to listen to in or outside of, you know, a certain genre or like a community of people within those genres. But we saw bands that came after us that not only took those extremes that we put into our music, but combined them all into one song. Like I remember hearing a data remember for the first time, and I was like, how do you put a breakdown in a punk song?

4:00 In a pop punk song? Like what? But now it's so normal and it makes sense after a while, And you go so heavy sometimes that you come all the way back around to pop and vice versus. So it's a cool time for music. I love how you put that too, because now I go back to the eighties. This is my eighties battle vest nice, Okay, that's awesome. Yes, and I have a bunch of punk bands on here, but I was along hair and I wasn't allowed to go to punk shows. Yeah, or I got my ass beat and vice versas. Punk and metal did not gel very much. I never got that. I thought it was the stupidest shit ever. Yeah. We were both small groups that were very similar and both gang bullied by the jocks in school.

4:41 Yep band together idiots. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't put it a plainer than that. It's like, and now we have this where it's like we're just all one big, happy family and we can go see whoever we want, we can play with if you're an artist, with whoever you want, not the men. And I think nowadays, like you're talking about all the labels before, I hate the fucking labels. Okay, Like you're an artist, you should be able to play whatever you want, whatever moves you. As a creator. The creativity shouldn't be I have to write this type of song today, you know. Yeah, especially in the metal world, that was very like it has to be so heavy, it has to be exactly fit these boxes and whatever.

5:24 Yeah. Luckily the Internet has kind of changed all of that over the years and technology and just people listen to everything, and you don't have to be ashamed to listen to the poppiest thing on earth and the heaviest thing on earth at the same time. It's kind of just especially younger kids than us, like my kids, they they just they don't have any any rules of what they listen to. They're just like, no, I like that, right, whatever that is, I like it. Yeah, see, I love that. The other side of the labels thing. Though, in some ways, I am thankful that we are lumped into a scene at least not necessarily the genre because yeah, yeah, because clearly emo doesn't cover all the genres that are in our scene. But we're happy to least to have at least been a part of a scene.

6:06 So we as we move now twenty twenty five, thirty, who knows how many years passed when we initially broke out, there's still a community of people that can hold on too that nostalgia pass it down to the next generation, because I said, we have friends who are in bands that were mainstream successful but don't have a scene that they're kind of locked into, and I see them sort of like swimming in this abyss of like where do we fit in? Who do we tour with? True? So that's a good point. So I am thankful for at least being part of a scene genre aside. It's funny even when you look at Warp Tour this year, you look at some of the bands, they would have never been Warped Tour when it was a thing. Yeah. Yeah, we did a lot of Warp Tours in the early two thousands and later two thousands. But yeah, and we were even a weird band for Warp Tour at first because it was like the old school punk bands like No Effects, Bad Religion and all them. Rant said, So we were like the new young kids at that point in two thousand three and four. But Kevin Lymon's always been great at that, like bringing in new stuff and not just doing the thing he's supposed to do.

7:06 And that's what Warp Tour was so great. That's what it was. It's funny too, you bring me a Rives and headline in here, on Sunday Night. I think it is. And I love what Ali said in an interview once, because they've been getting a lot of crap because they're not purest death cores anymore. Yeah, and he said, why do I want to write the same song over and over again? What a great point, Like, that's why I'm getting to You're an artist when you want to evolve, when you want to express as you're getting better at your craft, when you want to experiment and go farther with it. Yeah, and you change in life, right, You have different influences over the years and feelings and different ideas and yeah, like we're completely different people than we were twenty two years ago when our first.

7:47 Record came out. But let's hope. Well we still love those songs and still fun to play them. But yeah, you can't write the exact same thing in your forties that you could in your teens and twenties. But yeah, I don't know. There's no rules, fuck it, do whatever you want. That's the case. Like Outback Steakhouse, no rules. I love it. So what you're going to be at after Shock too? Yeah, we're doing after I love after Shock. You're gonna love it. It's our first time for both, so we're in said. A lot of they do have after shocks one where you will fit in too, because for years they've been including like pop punk type of bands and stuff like that, so mix it up like they'll have like like Blink has headlined after Shock. Okay, yeah, yeah, you know what's weird you say that we were looking at the bills for each of the days and we're not on the day that I think most people would expect us to be on, or that we would expect to be on.

8:37 We're on a much heavier day. That's wild. But also I mean it's weird because if you look back at the beginning of our career when we were were on a major label, so we started off like playing a lot of radio festivals. We would do like the summer circuit of radio festivals, and we've played a lot of like active rock stations, or you know, we we played in front of a lot of crowds that we had to win over because we were in the exactly the same kind of situation where we were kind of like a sore thumb on the bill. So in that sense, I guess it's full circle and it makes sense we're not on the pop punk day. I actually kind of like it though, because that exposes you to new people. Yeah, it's the people in those days aren't going there specifically for pop punk. But sure, as you've probably not us here in Louder than Life even early in the day, like, there's huge crowds. It doesn't matter who the band is.

9:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love having to win over people and not being comfortable. It's fun and yeah, that's that's fine with us. There you go. That's the only way to grow. Yeah, right, yeah, it's a challenge. It's good. Anything else you want, let the listeners know that we haven't covered yet that you got coming up. Yeah, we just finished recording a new record. It's not announced and out yet, but everything that would be well yeah, well like as far as the single and the album name and all that stuff, we're announcing in the next couple weeks, so look out for that. And yeah, we're just happy to still be doing it, happy to be here. Oh man one, we're happy to have you here at Louder than Life, absolutely, and thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man, No problem, thank you, Thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipe Man on w for Cui Radio