∞ 9/25/2011 (12:12am) 30 notes

On 16th September, MME got the opportunity to interview Alesana all thanks to the amazing Upsurge Productions who brought them in to play a show with special guests, Crossfaith. We managed to catch up with Shawn Milke and Dennis Lee, the two leading men of Alesana to answer some of our burning questions.


Alesana, a band that started out in 2004 with post hardcore as their genre, have gathered many fans throughout the years. Using literature as their strength, their albums are based on different literati that inspired them to write short stories to bring the flow in the songs in each individual album. Expressed through beautiful words, Alesana has brought post hardcore up a notch with their popular number ‘Ambrosia’ and ‘The Thespian’. They also recently released their single ‘A Gilded Masquerade’ followed by ‘A Forbidden Dance‘ from their new album, ‘A Place Where The Sun Is Silent’. These songs gave fans a feel of how the new album is going to be like and what they can expect from it.

 

Welcome to Singapore, first of all. So how do you find the weather here? 

S: It’s alot like Florida. Very humid. So we’re getting excited cause we can start wearing hoodies again and then we came out here and it’s really hot again.

D: Weather is humid.

How is touring life for you guys?

S: Long, tedious but it’s also exciting cause you get to play shows every night. I mean that’s what we dreamed of so…

D: Long and hard my friend. Yeah we all signed up for it.

 

Halloween 2008, you guys performed at the house of blues in New Orleans wearing bikinis, who came up with the bikini idea?

S: I actually think I did believe it or not. So we just went for shock value. We don’t have any other costumes so let’s just wear bikinis.

D: Yeah everybody else had like, Silverstein was all dressed up in death cloak and we didn’t have any costumes.

 

And we hear, you guys are fans of literature so were there any particular literati inspiration for your new album?

S: For the new record it is The Inferno by Dante Alighieri. That was our big influence for this one.


Question from a fan, Elissa Zapata: Does Dennis still have a necklace a fan gave him at VWT’10 Florida? It’s a high-life bottle cap one Elissa made for him?

D: Oh man, yeah I lost that. I actually like that one alot too. Sometimes I get like weird things that are just like crazy coloured beads and stuff and I’m like yeah thanks but I’m not a 14 year old girl. She actually made me that necklace out of a high-life cap and it’s really cool.

S: Yeah it’s really cool. He lost it.

D: I liked it. The joke about it is this hat, I just got it to try and see if I can actually last the entire trip without losing it. I actually already lost it last night.

S: I ended up finding it but it was missing for about an hour or so.

Question from a fan, Dzul: Dzul wants to know what’s the most dangerous thing you have ever done in your entire life?

D: I held our old tour manager out of a door of a van going about 60 miles an hour, I was just fucking wasted.

S: And I laid there laughing about it.

D: There’s that jumping off that balcony into that pool. Probably legitimate like pretty dangerous.

S: Oh yeah that was like 2 stories down into a pool. Yeah that was pretty dangerous.

D: Yeah and that borat bikini on.

 

Question from a fan, Wayne: Will Shawn be putting up some old tracks/demo from your old band ‘The Legitimate Excuse’?

S: Yes. I am. Yeah. It’s just been difficult with Alesana still taking up so much time so…

D: I’m sorry.

S: No. It’s ok. It will be coming soon. I promise to do it. And actually my good friend, the guitarist in that band, he and I are going to write some new material for that band too and release it.

How do you guys handle any pressure you received form the Media or your fans out there?

S: Like criticism? Yeah it used to bother us a lot back in the day. Obviously when you spend a lot of time doing something and you really love it and then somebody just tells you that it’s terrible, and you know can sting a lot but I think we’ve grown up and maturing as artists and we realize that not everybody is gonna like it and you’re better off focusing on the people who do than the people who don’t.

D: That’s the freaking internet dude. It’s like built just to talk shit about people.

S: It’s like a lot of criticism here and you take so much offence to it and you realize that it’s probably just some 13 year old boy sitting in his bedroom just writing that. You know we’re out here living our dreams so we really don’t care about what people like that have to say.

 

Alesana, though they are an internationally well established band and having gone for countless tours around the world along with other awesome bands, are really laid back and down to earth. They made us feel as comfortable as we can be throughout the interview. We were glad we got to speak to them and we can push aside all those comments about band members being all snotty and shit. What Shawn said at the end about being out here and living the dream, well they definitely are and nothing is going to ever stop them.

Oh and we managed to pass to them a tank that Dzul, owner of Heratic Clothing had packed for Alex Torres as a birthday gift.

It was a great day for us all. And we do hope that Alesana will come back for another show.

#Alesana#Shawn Milke#Dennis Lee#Singapore#Upsurge Productions#mme interviews

Notes (30)

  1. orianakillseveryone reblogged this from fuckyeahshawnmilke
  2. fuckyeahshawnmilke reblogged this from fuckyeahdennislee
  3. shitidontknow reblogged this from mymusicexperience
  4. iwakefromthisperfectdream reblogged this from mymusicexperience
  5. bringmethefuckinghorizonyoucunt reblogged this from mymusicexperience
  6. agildedmasquerade reblogged this from mymusicexperience
  7. liquidlithium reblogged this from alesanaband
  8. herblackgown reblogged this from alesanaband
  9. alesanaband reblogged this from mymusicexperience
  10. weirdlikethat reblogged this from mymusicexperience
  11. mymusicexperience posted this