The Orange County metalcore scene was a well documented scene in the early 2000s, where a moderate sized music scene began producing bands that brought attention to a usually conservative area of Southern California.

Scars of Tomorrow reformed this past year after going on hiatus in 2007. They came out of the same scene as bands such as Throwdown, 18 Visions, and Bleeding Through, and made a name for themselves with their abrasive metallic hardcore sounds that fans have grown to love over time.

Frontman Mike Milford talked about what led to them going on hiatus. “Before these shows we’ve been doing this year, we disbanded around 2007. We had toured non stop for years and years. Real life started kicking in and everybody started going ‘hey let’s go back…’, finish what we’re doing with school, get real jobs, make some money and experience normal life for a while. That was around 2007. We started playing shows again in April. “

He explained how the reformation idea began nearly two years ago and they slowly began working towards making it a reality. “It kind of started with me and Bob [Bradley]. For the last year and a half or two years, we’ve been throwing the ideas around. He’s stayed pretty active with music. He has Fake Figures and he did a band SS Nova right after Scars. I’m a president of a record label [Artery Recordings] and I manage bands for a living.”

“We’ve been in this industry still this whole time so we thought ‘why don’t we start doing stuff again?’ We were done with our contract with Victory and since I own my own record label, I thought why don’t we write music and put it out on our own label. I have all the assets that we need and we literally do everything ourselves with no rules. We could do all the things we wanted to do. We finally found time to do it. The members who will be playing for us all have jobs we could travel with. It made sense. We would do it for fun now. We don’t have to worry about the BS and all the politics behind touring and what tours you get. It’s been cool to come back and play whatever shows we want to get on.”

Bob Bradley of Scars of Tomorrow

They released a new EP on Artery Recordings titled Failed Transmissions, which gives a taste of what they are working on these days. While they haven’t stayed too far from their classic sound, Milford wanted to retain some of the flavor of the past within an ever changing music scene.

“We put one out a couple weeks ago. We didn’t really do any crazy promotion or anything for it. We wanted it to come out around the time of these shows. We’ve been doing shows on weekends for about a month now. We wanted it to be word of mouth again, like it was back in the day.”

“Back in the day, I would be sitting out here with demos, passing them out. I kind of wanted it to be word of mouth. If somebody wants to buy it…they’ll hear about it, we’re playing shows..oh we’ll go check it out. It’s selling…not like it was back in the day when we were selling 20 to 30,000 each release. That’s what I wanted. I wanted it to be something small, kind of a comeback, see what people thought about it. We’re stoked to hear some good metalcore again. It doesn’t sound like all of these other bands now doing the same 4/4/4, same everything. There’s no autotuning. We like the raw sounds. It felt good to write a record like we used to.”

Mike Milford of Scars of Tomorrow. Photo By Keith Chachkes.

As for who’s in the current lineup, Milford said the current members will be doing the upcoming live performances. While the final few years of the band saw numerous members in and out of the band, they found a core group of people who they could manage to get things going again.

“This will be the lineup. The guy who’s playing drums for us now, Sam [Shepard], we had to literally call him a week before the shows started. Justin [Salinas], the guy who was in Scars before, his work was like ‘if you leave on tour again right now, you won’t have a job…’ You can’t lose your jobs. We all have real bills now. We’re not living at our parents’ house. We don’t want to live on people’s couches.”

“I got it so Sam is playing for me. He works for me at my record label. He’s my graphic designer, so I was like ‘hey do you want to take some days off of work and come hang out?’ He was like ‘dude that’s awesome!’ He’s worked for the company for a little over a year now and I’ve never had a chance to really bond with him outside of work. It’s been cool to get to know him to strengthen that friendship/work relationship. He’ll be in the band full time.”

“Mike Nordeen, who’s been a close band friend, and he works for me as well. It’s funny how it works. Bob [Bradley], he’s not playing bass any more. He plays guitar now. It’s what the core lineup is. Our friend Therron [Francis] is playing with us. We wanted to make it to where the core lineup is in Portland. So four of us in Portland and Bob still lives here in Orange County.”

“The four of us get together and practice, and Bob has to come in and plug and play since he knows how to play everything already. So that’s how it’s been working out. It’s nice.”

As for future releases, Milford says there are tentative plans of another release, but no set schedules as for when it may see the light of day.

“We’re already talking about the new EP or the new CD we’re going to do. We cranked out this last CD pretty fast. I knew what I wanted it to sound to be. I wanted to bring back that old sound, and write a CD that reflected some of our earlier stuff. The next CD, we’re talking about bringing in some new sounds and having some more people writing this time.

“I kind of took control of what happened on this last record. It wasn’t as many people involved, but now we’re playing shows together again, everybody’s getting the writing juices back. I’ve heard some cool ideas and some cool things coming out. It will be a cool collective of stuff.”

Interview By Rei Nishimoto