We here at the Black Planet had the opportunity to interview the Australian metalcore band A Breach Of Silence regarding their new record “Secrets”. Their vocalist and bass player Blair Layt was kind enough to take some time to answer our questions.
Can you tell us a little bit about A Breach Of Silence’s history and introduce yourselves to The Black Planet readers?
We’re a 5 piece metal band from Brisbane, Australia. Our sound is fast, heavy, and a melodic mix of metal core and power metal. But hold the cheese, if you know what i mean haha. In the band we have Rhys our front man, Cossie and Kerrod our guitarists, Blair (me) on bass and singing and Gee on drums.
Your last album “Secrets” was released in 2017. What would be your best description for this record?
Secrets represents a very dark time in our lives for many different individual reasons. We were going through depression, some of us financial struggle, some social, but we all managed to pull each other together and write an album about it. Each song representing a dark time in one of our lives at some point. For example, i wrote the lyrics to Fair Weather Friends about all those fake friends our there that run and hide when times get tough.
Falling Away we wrote about the struggle bands have currently with the digital industry. It’s an album of therapy for us that we needed to do. And we’re proud of the result.
How much has A Breach Of Silence changed since the debut record?
We’ve certainly evolved. We had two different people in the band back then and our sound is very different. We’ve learned a few things and implemented new methods in writing, singing, playing etc, and we think we sound totally different since the first album, but that’s natural. If you don’t evolve then technically you’re not going anywhere with your music and it becomes boring over time.
Can you unveil a bit of how your writing process happens?
We keep it pretty structured actually. Cossie and Kerrod write most of the guitar music first, then drums get put with it, then bass and lyrics top it off. We’ve written most of our songs like that.
You are in constant collaboration with Fredrik Nordstrom, a big name in metal music business, experienced musician (Dream Evil) and producer (Opeth, In Flames, Arch Enemy and many others). How much have you learned from this collaboration?
Fredrik has taught us so much over our time working with him. The man is a genius. He helped us with song structure at the start, he is basically responsible for our tones and sound. He’s great at polishing a turd haha.
“Falling Away” was the first single extracted from “Secrets”. The video shows messages addressing the changes that the music industry seems to be going through. Could you share your thoughts about the messages within the video and how the industry is changing these days?
Falling Away shines a light on the huge flaw in the business model of modern day streaming platforms. Bands are just not getting paid for their music or they’re getting significantly less than they should for a free stream that anyone could access with an email address to any music streaming platform. It’s wrong and it needs to change.
How do you see the music industry in 10 years?
It’s going to be a lot more DIY. With technology on the rise and programs making it easier to make good music, it’s going to be a lot more abundant but also more technical. We’ll see a vast array of new genre’s and sub-genre’s forming throughout the many branches of the industry. It’s going to be an interesting time.
In your new video, “Secrets” the main focus point is a beautiful girl what was a surprise for me, and it is not what we usually expect from aggressive musicians. Where is this idea coming from?
Well the simple answer there is, Who doesn’t like to look at beautiful girls?? haha
The Secrets video takes a different approach to the conventional 5 piece performance clip. It’s a short story snippet that takes you into the life of someone trying to run away from their problems, but to no avail. You can’t keep secrets, they’ll get found out in the end.
How’s the public reacting to the new album so far?
We’ve had great feedback so far. We changed our sound a bit on this one, so we were expecting some backlash. With the exception of the unavoidable one or two people, we managed to keep everyone happy and gain a whole new set of fans too! We were stoked about that.
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