While She Sleeps

UK metalcore outfit While She Sleeps made their big return to North America doing this year’s edition of the Vans Warped Tour. While they are here in support of their latest album Brainwashed, they are going through the usual first day chaos of the tour. Aside from working on their long overdue suntans, they are managing to get their adventures started.

“It’s fucking hot though. It’s starting in California. It started in the deep end of the heat. It’s cool though,” says bassist Aaran Mackenzie, about dealing with the Southern California dry heat.

“We’re trying. We’ve got some sunscreen on. Obviously you can’t burn,” he adds, talking about getting a tan while not sunburning at the same time.

Loz of While She Sleeps. Photo Credit: @hennythepooh (via Facebook)

Another minor dilemma was their vocalist Lawrence “Loz” Taylor did not arrive with the rest of the band, due to visa issues on the US embassy’s side. Fortunately the problems were resolved quickly and he only missed one show.

“They said it was a problem with the visa. I think the printing system went down,” said Savage.

“It was worldwide in the US Embassy. We got through it first and then Loz was a little later,” added Mackenzie.

Fortunately this got resolved quickly with friends coming to the rescue. “We have Beartooth’s singer [Caleb Shomo], We Came As Romans’ singer and Capsize [Daniel Wand] filling in. They’re all filling in a song each. Everyone’s supporting us and it’s a good family based thing. It’s cool everyone’s helping us out,” explained Mackenzie.

“The thing is the kids are there and will still enjoy it. It’s something different. Whatever will happen,” added drummer Adam Savage.

This is their second time on this tour and they admit they have learned from their experiences from the first time on how to better prepare themselves to last on this lengthy journey. 52 days is quite a while and they were up for the challenge.

“It either makes you or breaks you. You’ve got to be pretty tough to last the whole thing. It tests you but being British, we rarely get to America and it’s a novelty for us. You see it in movies your whole life. To be here and being in the mountains in Los Angeles is like a dream come true,” explains MacKenzie about what being on this tour means to him as well as the rest of the band.

While She Sleeps on Warped Tour 2015 (via Facebook)

Brainwashed is their latest album (out now via Razor and Tie in North America and Search and Destroy in the UK), and continues their growth process from their debut album.

“It’s kind of the same, like our previous albums. It’s a natural progression in our band really,” said Savage.

“It seems like some concepts like we’re sung about on This is the Six, but we’re not beating around the bush any more. The title Brainwashed, we’re trying to tell people how it is about this stuff. We did the writing in a similar style as we did to our first mini album (2012’s The North Stands For Nothing). We all moved in together and we tried to really clinch the four live parts of the writing than writing the whole album on a computer and then on ProTools. We all moved in together and played stuff live together as much as we could. I think it’s come out really good,” added MacKenzie.

“A lot of things we’ve learned and many things are different learning curves. You learn a lot of things from this session and put it into this one and all sorts of different stuff on the next one,” concluded Savage.

Being that While She Sleeps have began to venture across the globe and reaching new fans everywhere they play, their longtime fans and friends back home have been supportive of their ambitions. Mackenzie summed it best about their longtime supporters: “We’ve been in this band since school. This is all they’ve known us to do and that’s all we’ve known. So they get it.”

By Rei Nishimoto

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