Photo Credit: Andrew Le
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SO WHO IS DYING WISH?
Dying Wish is a group of people from Portland, Oregon (the northwestern part of the United States), aiming to re-create an older sound of metal and metalcore with our own refreshing take on it. And addressing topics that we see are important and trying to inspire change in the world, through the process of creating heavy music and being involved in our communities.
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‘INNATE THIRST’ WAS THE FIRST TIME I CAME ACROSS YOU GUYS BECAUSE SAM FROM ARCHITECTS SHARED YOUR RELEASE. BUT YOU’VE BEEN RELEASING MUSIC FOR A FEW YEARS NOW AND ‘FRAGMENTS OF A BITTER MEMORY’ IS YOUR FIRST ALBUM AND THE MOST WORK YOU’VE RELEASED IN ANY YEAR YOU’VE BEEN ACTIVE. WHAT HAS THE PROCESS BEEN FOR YOU AS A BAND TO GET TO THIS ALBUM?
Well we formed in 2018 and honestly it’s pretty shocking how quickly people caught on and wanted to support us. We had a handful of songs out when we were in the studio recording the record. So the process kind of came very quickly and very naturally. I’ve been very active in my local scene here, I’ve been booking bands and making networking connections throughout the process. But we kind of all have been within the scene for quite some time and knew what we wanted to accomplish with the record. And just worked our asses off essentially.
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FAVE TRACK ON THE ALBUM?
It’s hard to say but personally I think ‘Fragments of a Bitter Memory’ – the title track – would be my favourite. That song is just very personal and means a lot to me. I was able to sing and I think the song has a little bit of everything that we wanted to do.
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I FEEL LIKE SCREAMING VOCALS ARE ALWAYS A BIT OF A LEARNING CURVE. I WISH I COULD DO IT SO BAD. HAVE YOU ALWAYS SOMEWHAT HAD A HANG OF YOUR VOICE OR HAVE YOU LEARNT THINGS THROUGH THE YEARS ON HOW TO IMPROVE OR MAINTAIN WHAT YOU DO?
I’m still learning honestly. I’ve been trained as a singer and I’ve been told it’s the same thing as singing, it’s not. Kind of like unlearning the technique that I know, trying to learn that it comes from a different place and you have to carry your voice differently. It definitely has been a learning curve, especially because I haven’t been able to play shows for the last year and a half. But definitely finding my voice in the last year and a half has been rewarding.
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YOU’VE BEEN ON QUITE THE TOURING SCHEDULE WITH SHOWS WITH SILENT PLANET, MOTIONLESS IN WHITE, ATREYU, KNOCKED LOOSE AND JUST RECENTLY YOUR OWN ALBUM RELEASE SHOWS. IS IT BREAK TIME NOW OR IS THE TIME WHERE YOU DO THE PRESS BEFORE YOU POP BACK OUT?
I’m home for 2 weeks right now and we go back out next week with The Accacia Strain and we;’re basically out until Christmas. So we are hitting the ground running with shows this year. I think we’re playing 75 shows in like 90 days or something wild like that.
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IS THAT A BUS OR VAN TOUR?
We’re doing a sprinter van with a trailer for this one.
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SO 2020 AND 2021 HAS BEEN A CHAOTIC COUPLE OF YEARS. SO WHERE DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION OR MOTIVATION TO WRITE & RECORD?
The fucked-up-ness of it all is where I find the inspiration. What isn’t inspiration at this point. I think that we’re all collectively waking up to the injustices around the world and the experiences that we have that we share with so many other people. So that really was the inspiration. I feel like this opportunity to create this record really came at such an important time for us to express ourselves and talk about the things going on in the world. A lot of what motivates me is personal experiences and the political things we see, especially here in Portland. The socio-economic political climate we’re living in. It’s the perfect fuel for angry heavy music aimed at a mission.
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THE VIDEO FOR ‘COWARDS FEEL, COWARDS BLEED’, THERE’S A LOT OF BLOOD. WHAT WAS THE FILMING LIKE AND WHAT WAS THE BLOOD MADE OF?
It was so much fun. So we built the rain rig in my driveway and we mixed the blood. We had two big trash cans, like 40 gallons or something and we mixed red food dye, cornstarch and water together. We had a running hose and we would stir it like every 10 minutes. Then we hooked the hose to a pump that went up to the rain machine that we had built. We had to do it when it was dark outside and we did it in a parking lot in a residential area so we only had like 3 hours to do the whole video with the lights and everything. By the end of it we were all soaking wet and I still have the clothes hanging up in my closet but they’re totally ruined.
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DID THE BLOOD STAIN EVERYTHING?
It did. It stained everything pink though. The cornstarch made everything really sticky so my hair just ugh it was gnarly. It was worth it. It was in April or May so it was still really cold outside, probably like 60/65 degrees, it was freezing.
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SO DID YOU LEAVE EVERYTHING IN THE PARKING LOT?
Just dumped it out. It just looked like pink chalk and it was everywhere. When the rain would fall it would look pink so a lot of the red is editing.
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HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE A DYING WISH SHOW?
Very high energy. We encourage crowd participation quite a bit: Singing along, jumping off the stage, dancing, moshing, whatever you want to do. It’s a place for us and our fans to express ourselves and just have fun.
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Photo Credit: Ian Enger
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I WANTED TO BRING UP THE PICTURE I SAW OF YOU AND YOUR MUM HOLDING HANDS AT YOUR RELEASE SHOW. HAS YOUR MUM SEEN YOU PLAY BEFORE?
She has seen us play a handful of times. She usually sits in the back and I can see her. So it wasn’t just my mum it was my mum, my mum’s sister, 2 of my cousins, my other aunt, my little sister and her friend all in that pocket in the front. I remember when we were setting up and I turned around and looked and my whole family, none of the are hardcore-adjacent and don’t go to heavy shows, but they wanted to be up front because it was our record release show, it was a special moment. They stood up the front the whole time and held it down. It was cool. They think I’m the shit. Their just really proud of me and it was cool to see them and have them there in that capacity
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I THINK THERE’S A HUGE MISCONCEPTION AROUND HEAVY SHOWS THAT IT’S DANGEROUS AND SCARY BUT IT’S ACTUALLY A SAFE SPACE. WHEN I SHOOT SOMETIMES PEOPLE TRY TO PROTECT ME AND I ASSUME THE CROWD WOULD PROBABLY PROTECT YOUR FAMILY.
Yeah exactly. I think she even noticed too. Because at one point I was like “Hi Mom” and you could see very one around her was like oh that’s Emma’s mum so if you’re going to stage dive, stage dive in the other direction.
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HOW LONG HAS THIS ALBUM BEEN IN THE MAKING FOR?
We started with 2 songs. We went to the studio pretty confident that we wanted ‘Innate Thirst’ and ‘Enemies in Red’ on the record. But we were just going to write as many songs and see where that ended up. They did make it to the record, so those 2 songs were done. We had probably about 4 or 5 songs demo’d out a little bit. But we rewrote those a lot in the studio. As far as for me goes I wrote pretty much all of those lyrics in studio because that’s how my process works, I write to the music. So that was a little stressful in itself but kind of just the way I like to do it so you know, it’s on me. But I think a lot of us do feel that was kind of a lifetime in the making. All of us going through being in this band, wanting to play music, express ourselves and having the opportunity to do it. It just kind of felt like we were all at this pinnacle in our lives like this is it, this is our opportunity.
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I FEEL LIKE YOUR COVER ART FOR YOUR RELEASES IS VERY COHESIVE. WHERE DO YOU GET THE IDEAS FOR THE ARTWORK AND IS THAT PLANNED IN ADVANCE?
We did not have that planned. We had the record done when we started shopping around for art and we found that piece, it’s called ‘Ripped from Inferno’(Kim Jakobsson). We were like this is just so cool and we reached out to the guy like hey we want to commission and do something like this but maybe if you want to do something a little different. He was like yeah sure what do you want to do and we were all like actually we kind of just want that. It was an existing piece. So we just licences the piece off of him and it’s awesome that it works cohesively because they are all different pieces of art.
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DO YOU HAVE MUCH PLANNED FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR, YOU’RE OUT IN 2 WEEKS?
We leave next week. Our first date of tour is the 6TH November and our last day of tour is the 19TH December. So we’re on the road for quite some time then we come home and it’s the holidays. So we’re pretty much doing everything we can for the rest of the year.
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ARE YOU ALREADY PLANNING STUFF FOR NEXT YEAR OR JUST TAKING IT A STEP AT A TIME?
We’ve got a few tours on the books for next year and honestly we would love to do even more if borders open up and we can go to other countries. We have a Europe tour on the books for next fall. But if we could do Australia, Japan, UK, whatever, we want to get out there as much as possible.
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Photo Credit: Errick Easterday
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SOME FUN QUESTIONS:
Fave snack?
Anything bell pepper honestly. But have those little sweet peppers which are probably so genetically modified but I love them. With a hummus. It’s the best snack.
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Overused phrase?
Probably “that’s sick”. Honestly I say “that’s hot” all the time. So it could be like Oh I got this breakfast burrito that had soy and this and that and I’d be like “that’s hot”. But yeah probably “that’s sick”, “that’s hot”. Or “dope” is something I say way too often.
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If I said New Zealand to you, what is the first thing you think of?
Lord of the Rings.
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If you could start a rumour about yourself, what would it be and why?
Probably that I have really nice feet. It’s not that I don’t, I don’t know objectively I might. Okay I don’t know if that’s what I want. But yeah probably that or that I tell really good jokes, cause I don’t. [We then spoke about how self care for your feet is important – moisturise!]
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