"I hit up our singer, and he called me and was like, ‘...I thought the band was over.’"
In 2013, Christian metalcore up-and-comers Oh, Sleeper toured the U.S. as part of Warped Tour. For the Texan quintet, this trek on a massive traveling festival was the culmination of all their hard work, a chance to bring their message of hope and positivity to the world. Instead, they were miserable.
"I would leave the bus and would be walking to the stage, and I would see fourteen-year-olds in shirts that said, 'Fuck bitches get money,’ or fifteen-year-old girls with beanies that said, ‘Slut’ on them," says harsh vocalist and programmer Micah Kinard. "Then, I’d see certain bands on the main stage, and saying the most degrading things, and everyone just cheering so loud. Meanwhile we’d have two hundred, three hundred people at our stage -- which is great, and I should’ve been totally happy for it -- but I would be pissed. I would be like, ‘No one even wants this message. No one wants to be encouraged. What are we doing? We’re wasting our time here.’"
For Micah, it felt like Oh, Sleeper were on their last legs. Soon after Warped Tour ended, guitarist and clean vocalist Shane Blay was asked to join the remaining members of As I Lay Dying in their new band Wovenwar. The band used Shane's new opportunity as a chance to take time off...which eventually grew into an extended hiatus that began to feel a lot like a break-up.
Soon, however, the members began to miss the band to which they gave so much of their lives, and finally managed to get the band back together. The result is Bloodied/Unbowed, the band's first album in six years, and one that Micah feels is a painfully genuine expression of what Oh, Sleeper has been through since they split up, and where they're headed.
"This is such an honest representation of the desperation, the despair we went through thinking it was over, the triumphant feeling of it being back," says Micah. "This album is a real peak into all of our inner battles throughout the past six years and where we’ve been at."
You went on hiatus in 2013 after a successful run on Warped Tour. What was going on in the band, to halt all that momentum?
Individually, we were all just getting very jaded about being in a band and the day-to-day of it all, and a number of things going on with our personal lives. Warped Tour was what we were looking forward to our entire career. And we got it -- and we found ourselves at the lowest point in our attitudes. So, at the end of it, we decided to put the band on the back burner and focus on what the next steps in our lives was gonna be. Then, right out of the gate, Shane joined the As I Lay Dying guys and started Wovenwar, and they took off with the dream-team management and everything like that. I got married, bought a house, got a job, and did that whole thing. Zac [Mayfield, drums] moved to L.A. We all just kind of split.
Depending on who's telling the story, you guys broke up because Shane got the job with Wovenwar. But the way you tell it, this was coming long before then.
Exactly. I think we all used the opportunity with Wovenwar as an excuse to be like, ‘Okay, that’s a reason, let’s take that.’ But I think everyone was already there. It just wasn’t clicking with me anymore, I wasn’t appreciating it, and I wasn’t present like I used to be. I was internally conflicted about it. I was praying about it. I just needed to know what to do. When [Shane] got the offer, he was hesitant, and I was like, ‘You have to do this.’ He was also talking to me about his dreams of being a lead singer, and I was like, ‘This is your chance.’ I took that as my sign: if you want out, here’s an out. So, I jumped on it. In my mind, I wasn’t ready to say, ‘Let’s end Oh, Sleeper.' I was just like, ‘Let’s push it back. We can always pick it back up where we left off.’
What led to those feelings of dissatisfaction? Was it fatigue, or worry that you were wasting your time?
I think everybody had their own motivations in it. We were all going through some tough decisions with letting people go on our team that we weren’t wanting to deal with. I was trying to buy my first house on Warped Tour, to do remote closings by stopping by Fedex Office Centers, and it was such a pain. I remember being at Warped Tour, stoked to bring our message -- we always try to bring a positive and encouraging message to people, and we love talking to people afterwards and knowing how our music has affected them. From my removed state, I wasn’t talking to people. I was just going straight to the bus. Because of that, I was just taking the surface look at the whole fest.
Above: The artwork for Bloodied/Unbowed.
When did the idea of getting the band back together first get brought up?
Eventually, the void started becoming noticeable. Wovenwar was working on their second album, and we had these come-to-grips moments. I remember a moment, three years into the hiatus, I was just so ready to start again, and I was hitting up Shane, like, ‘Hey, man, we gotta write, we gotta write, we gotta write, I gotta start working on something.’ And finally he called me and was like, ‘...I thought the band was over.’ And that was the first time I ever let it set in that the favorite part of my life was done. I remember my wife found me collapsed on the floor in the living room, just sobbing, because I wasn’t really there for it mentally. I felt like there was so much unfinished business. And I had realized, after this time away from it, that [Oh, Sleeper] really was my favorite thing I’ve ever done. It was the time I felt the most alive.
That’s intense. How did you guys decide to finally pick the band back up?
A couple years passed like that, until finally, I was beating down the door with Shane again and he started to respond like, ‘Man I miss this so much.’ He sent me a new song that he had been working on, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this.’ We just got the gears turning again. We all came back, we booked a couple of shows. We started falling in love with being on the road again, doing the grind, hanging out with each other, and writing together. We got really stoked on what we were writing, and that carried us in an exponential curve of hype and excitement.
As the guy who spearheaded the hiatus, what brought you back? What is it about Oh, Sleeper that you just can’t get from other projects?
I love the things I did with my side project Vile Ones, and a couple of other things I dove into, but nothing was as fulfilling as Oh, Sleeper is to me. Everything else feels like fun and entertaining for the moment, and a cool outlet, but Oh, Sleeper feels like I’m living out my purpose, especially when where we’re playing shows and getting to have those conversations at the merch table, getting to try to connect with people when we’re on stage. The time away was eye-opening in that it showed me how I can have success -- and I did, I got good work and was making good money -- but then it’s like, 'Okay, I’ve got the house, I’ve got the money...and I’m depressed.'
I remember when Shane sent me a new Oh, Sleeper riff, it lit me up. It was like something dead started to stir at just the thought of the possibility of writing another song with him, and what message to put on it, and who we could reach with that. And all of a sudden, everything made sense. Then, I was just desperate. I was like, ‘Come on, we have to do this!’
Tell me about the new album. What’s the concept behind Bloodied/Unbowed?
It still follows the concept of The Titan EP, which was the beginning of a new concept from our other albums, and the characters carry over into this one. But the story is all a metaphor for how we had this big breakup, and were basically dead. It tells the story of Shane’s time with Wovenwar and creating without us. The Island is kind of about my leg of the story, where I didn’t want anyone else’s input. I wanted to make everything exactly how I wanted it. I wanted to be the captain. So, I kind of made myself an island, and was so dead set it was gonna make me happy. And all it did was make me realize how much I messed up. And how badly I wanted back.
What’s something about the new album that you’re just so stoked for people to hear?
I think on every album we release, there’ve been a couple of songs where I was like, ‘Oh man, I can’t wait for them to hear this song or this song.’ But this album is the first time I’ve actually written about us as the underlying direction of the story. The concept still follows the last album, and each song has its own stand-alone meanings -- it’s not just like, ‘This songs about me. This song’s about Shane. This song’s about Zac.’ But at the core, it was following the story. And I think that, for the people who really do dive into our lyrics and know our history, that is what I’m really excited about. Like, there’s a song called Abandoned Disease that's Shane’s feeling of finally getting his platform to write his music and have his voice heard. The song starts out and it’s this triumphant charge, he’s just going all in.
Oh, Sleeper's Bloodied/Unbowed comes out Friday, July 12th, via Solid State Records.
