IE: How's the tour going?

Zach: It's going good. We're about a week in, first three shows around the mainland, and this is the second to last of the UK shows, all have been pretty good, a couple sold out so far which is awesome, with Coldburn from Germany. We met them once before this. Forsaken is also on the UK show, they're from Wales.

IE: Difference between UK and American tours?

Josh: Touring in the UK and in Europe is a lot different, it's a little more hospitable. I think they have more of an appreciation for hardcore bands. With touring in the states there's always a punk mentality, and you might get some water, you might get a PA that works, whereas here you get fed, people are really nice to you and give you a place to stay, but touring the states is a different story as far as that goes.

IE: What does hardcore mean to you?

Zach: To me hardcore is an outlet. I don't know many people who get into hardcore who came from the perfect upbringing, whether that means broken homes or people and their family, or you're unhappy with a lot of things. That for me is a huge reason why I got into hardcore, and why it's still important to me. I feel like people start to get out of it or fade a little bit once they stop having things to be mad about and they grow up and get their routine, and there's nothing to be pissed off about or makes you angry, whether you're mad or bummed out or whatever it is, it's this place where you get it all out and it doesn't matter if anyone thinks you look stupid or that you're saying stupid shit, none of that matters, you shouldn't give a shit, it's just a place and a thing that is really cool and open, and even when it seems like it's getting cliquey, none of that matters at the end of the day. The ones who stick around are the ones who can be above that and don't need to try and segregate people out.

IE: Let’s talk about your lyrics…

Josh: I've always written a lot and hardcore is a way where I've been able to put the poetry in motion for the most part. I can say whatever I want and feel comfortable doing it. I don't think my family can understand what I'm saying, unless they actually read the lyrics, and I don't think they have, 'cos they never said anything about it, so no, I haven't got that before. All they know is that I curse on the records and that's all I hear about, other than that I don't really hear anything about the content.

Zach: I had my dad proof read the lyrics for our new record, and I definitely got the “Is everything good? This is some pretty depressing stuff, who wrote this?” and I was like “Mostly Josh, some me.” and he's just like “Well, if you guys need anything,” and I was like, “Man, I really shouldn't have gotten my dad to proof read this” but I wanted to make sure we didn't look like idiots, so that was the first time that's come up for me. But he gets it, he understands.

IE: How do you reflect on your last album “Pendulum Swings”?

Josh: I think it's a hard record to follow up. We were really happy with it, that record did a lot of things for us, we got really far on that record alone. A lot of things happened as soon as that record came out. We were at this level as a band, and once that record came out we grew so much. A sophomore record after that is stressful.

IE: What's the word on the new album “Pretty Low”?

Josh: It's done. We've been listening to the masters today to see if we're happy with that. Musically the record is done, after that it's just pressing vinyl and that kinda stuff.

Zach: It should be out in June. That's the tentative plan right now.

IE: How do you guys throw a song together?

Zach: For “Pendulum Swings” and everything before that it was a little different than for “Pretty Low”. Musically other records have been more of Marcus our drummer and myself writing. “Pendulum Swings” was pretty fifty fifty between us. Then lyrically Josh comes in at the end and puts his bit on. The less people writing sometimes it's better because you get a more cohesive sound, whereas if you have four people writing music you're gonna have four different ideas at the same time and it's too many cooks in the kitchen. For “Pretty Low”, musically it's mostly songs that I have written, and obviously they're Expire songs, I'd never say they're completely mine, because I bring in things to practice and they get tweaked and they become everyone's, but I did more of the writing. Caleb did a little writing for it, and Marcus wrote a couple of things here and there but the process is more, we'll come with riffs and parts we really like and  just build on them in practice, get songs done, and then leave and come back, record them at practice, everyone will listen to it, then the next time we come back, we'll kind of say, “Okay we're happy with that,” or “what were we thinking, this is not great”. Then once we have a final thing Josh will listen to it and do his thing over it. So writing for “Pretty Low” was definitely different to anything else we've done. It sounds good, it was just different, not necessarily for better or for worse.

IE: What kinds of things inspire your music and lyrics?

Josh: I'm not sure what really inspires me lyrically. Most of the time it just kinda happens. A lot of times I get a little more creative when I'm stressed or feeling anxious. But I wouldn't say I truly know what it is that inspires me. It's mostly just stuff inside my own head, obviously things happen around me that give me an idea, but I can't say that anything really inspires me.

IE: Live favorites?

Zach: I really like playing “Spit Out”. It has a little bit of everything, and it's one of the better songs up until that point that we had written, it's great. I like playing new stuff. We have to make sure there's an even distribution. Even being younger I remember seeing bands and they would only play new records, and you're just like “shit”. Maybe they've played the old stuff five hundred times, but I've only seen it once. We never wanna be a band that only plays new stuff. We have to balance it, it's a fucking game man. Us working on a setlist can turn into the biggest argument you ever heard, and there will be times where we'll end up not doing it, 'cos some people wanna play certain songs, then sometimes it takes two seconds, like “OK, that makes sense.” It's all over the place, it just depends on people's moods at the exact moment when we're writing the setlist. We kind of know what songs translate well live from testing them out and playing them, some songs are cool to record,and we're excited recording them, but live it maybe doesn't hit as hard, or maybe it wasn't a song that kids caught onto as much, so you've gotta pick the songs that make your set fun.

IE: You guys were very extensive with demos, getting your foot in the door. How do you reflect on those days now?

Zach: Personally I like to think that I'm still just as hungry for the band to progress as I was five years ago. I remember doing the demos, coming out for practice - I lived in Chicago at the time, so I'd take a bus up to Milwaukee – meeting Josh at like our fourth practice and just going from there to sitting in my living room and burning fifteen hundred demos by myself. All I thought about when I woke up every day then was the band, and that's still what I think about. For me nothing's really changed, it’s just different. We would go on tour and hope that tours still happened, and hopefully have a place to stay. Things just change as a band grows, it doesn't mean you have less to worry about, usually it means you have more to think about, it's just not as much of the small day to day things, as it is, you have to be worried about whether you're gone enough, whether you're home enough, so no one else will kill each other, are we still stoked, there's all kinds of things that come into play, it just changes the longer you are a band. You gotta roll.

IE: There are a lot of bands out there, are there any you'd give a shout out to?

Josh: We love all our mid-west bands, all our friends who are from where we're from. Bent Life, Black Ice, Out of Time, Cross Me. Basically just everyone that's around us. We support them because they support us.

Zach: Last night we checked out Below in Manchester. They only played like four songs but it was the shit, man. It was great. There is a lot of sick UK bands that I feel get looked over. It's really hard to be a band from out of the country, and get recognition in the states, because hardcore is so over saturated in the states, there's like a thousand bands, but I feel like a lot of the UK bands deserve to have some ears on them. There are awesome, awesome UK bands. I love Survival, that's one of the coolest bands that's come out in the last five years. But they don't get looked at in the states. It sucks. It's hard for kids to get into a band where the odds are that they will never see them. It's easy for American bands to go places, but there are very few that have crossed into America rather than America onwards. I know that Broken Teeth are supposed to be coming over at some point this year, which is great for them, that'll be fucking awesome.