For the members of Illinois metalcore outfit Sworn In, the past four year’s worth of hard work and roughing it on the road has slowly paid off into their latest album The Lovers/The Devil seeing a release through Razor and Tie this past April 7th.
“We have a record before this [2013’s The Death Card] and two EPs [2011’s Catharsis and 2012’s Start/End]”, explained frontman Tyler Drennen, about their history. “It’s three or four years of solid shit eating and get where we need to get to, and biting the bullet to do the shitty shit. Being at the point where we’re doing [Rockstar Energy] Mayhem Fest and stuff like that, we’re grinding it out and doing whatever tours come our way, staying on the road and playing music.”
Like their previous recordings, The Lovers/The Devil is a concept album that sticks to a theme based on tarot cards. But aside from that, their songs are also built around personal stories relating to that theme as well, which became relatable to Drennen.
“For Sworn In, all of our full length CD’s are conceptual albums based on tarot cards. So this album combines two tarot cards into one. There’s the Lovers card and the Devils card. The whole idea is that it’s a two part CD – part one is songs one through seven, and eight through thirteen is the devil’s side. If you follow the story of the destructive relationship, with one character being the lover and one being the devil and on the CD it switches and the characters switch too. So it starts off as the lover and then the devils side starts up. It’s a long way of saying everyone has a lover and the devil side of them.”
He went into depth about how the songs tied into his own personal life. “I wrote all of the lyrics. It was a collection of observations that I made on love. My parents didn’t have a great relationship. I wasn’t in a great relationship while I was writing that CD. So there’s some personal stuff in there too.”
“I mean the entire time I was writing the record, I was dating a girl and we didn’t have a very good relationship. That was a lot of what I was thinking about while I was writing it.”
Musically, The Lovers/The Devil showcases a mix of heavier metalcore-esque tunes on the Devil half of the CD, while the Lovers side experiments with a darker yet melodic flavor less featured on past recordings. He talked about their wide range of musical influences that have been within the band and how tastes have changed over the years.
“The early days we were a lot heavier than we are now. We were listening to bands like Between The Buried And Me, Meshuggah, The Acacia Strain, Emmure and stuff like that. But we also have more mainstream-y influences like pop music. We all like rap music. I’m way into My Chemical Romance, Thrice and stuff like that. It’s a nice little potpourri of stuff we’re into.”
“We wanted the Lovers half of the CD to be a bit more straight forward and mainstreamy with singing and catchy choruses. We wanted the Devil’s side to be the same. So that’s what we did,” said Drennen.
At the time of the interview, the band just endured a minor dilemma when Drennen sat out a leg of their recent support slot with Chelsea Grin with throat problems.
He explained what exactly happened. “The day we left, I got strep throat and that led into bronchitis and straight into laryngitis. Then from there I went straight into some walk in clinics and they were worried that whatever infection I had got septic and got into my blood. So they suggested me to go see my primary healthcare physician, so I went home for a few days and he said it would take a few days of no talking with antibiotics. Long story short, after I stopped yelling every night I got better.”
“It was a matter of my larynx got super inflamed from a symptom of being sick. It got all swollen and was hard for me to talk and scream and do anything. Our merch guy Kenny was [filling in for those shows].
Sworn In will be spending this summer on the Rockstar Mayhem Fest across North America, sharing the side stage with Whitechapel, Thy Art Is Murder and many others. Drennen shared his thoughts on their upcoming summer touring plans.
“That was mind-blowing for us. One day we got a call from our manager and he was like ‘we got Mayhem [Fest]’ and we were like holy shit – can’t even believe it. We didn’t think we were going to get it and it worked out.”
He also shared what to expect from their appearance on the tour. “We’re going to play a couple songs off of The Death Card and the rest are going to be new songs. It’s going to be really cool. We’re working on some cool stage production so it should be an amazing show to watch.”
“I’m excited to see Slayer every night. It will be crazy. We’re really good friends with the guys from Thy Art Is Murder, so we’ll hang out with them a lot. I’m pretty stoked to see Code Orange every night.“