Miss May I has been known to be one of the hardest working artists on the heavy music scene today and rarely leaves much downtime in between recordings. They spent the summer on the Unicorn Main Stage on the Vans Warped Tour, in support of their forthcoming album Deathless (out August 7, 2015 via Rise Records).
“It’s important to have something new and exciting to do these summer fests. We dropped [the last] record a little bit before the summer tour last year and it worked really well for us, so we pushed real hard to write a really good one for this year. Luckily we got it done just in time,” explained bassist Ryan Neff, about the quick turnaround on the new album.
“We didn’t have any breaks really. We just slept after it was done for a month straight,” said vocalist Levi Benton.
“It was three or four weeks off right before this [Warped Tour], but we’ve pretty much been out solid, between touring and going into the studio to do this record, since January,” added Neff.
The band had debuted a new song within their set list “I.H.E.,” giving fans a taste of what was coming from Miss May I.
On Deathless, the band reunited with producer Joey Sturgis, who worked on their Rise Records debut – 2010’s Monument. While they worked with someone familiar, the subject themes on the album took on a heavier yet darker overtone.
“It’s mainly written about the struggles we went through as a band. I know we’re young but we’ve been around for a long time. It’s our fifth album,” explained Benton.
“We had a rough year behind the scenes. I think it’s the first time we’ve ever gone into a recording session with a…I don’t want to say a negative attitude because we were obviously very excited about doing a record…the meanings behind the lyrics that Levi would write and then I would write with him a little bit. There’s a lot more aggression on this record than we’ve ever had before,” added Neff.
Miss May I at Warped Tour 2015 (via Facebook)
Following a year’s worth of solid touring behind their last album, 2014’s Year of the Lion, they began working on new material immediately following the conclusion of their album’s touring cycle. They began writing new material and got the creative juices flowing.
“We came into the studio with over 20 songs on the last record, and then we slim it down to ten. Our guitar players (Justin Aufdemkampe, B.J. Stead) are our main writers. They’re on their computers making riffs all day. So we’re always constantly writing.”
“We wrote songs right when we left the studio. We left the studio, went home for a couple of weeks and there were already a couple of songs. They’re like ‘ah…we’ve got some ideas,’ “ explained Benton.
“It’s a lot different than we used to do it, where we went and got started until that time to record everything. We’d try to have everything done, or at try to start it so the ideas are forming and we can starting working on stuff a little bit earlier now,” added Neff.
Miss May I Deathless Sessions (via Facebook)
They spoke about reuniting with Sturgis, and how working with him differed from working with two different producers on the past couple of albums.
“He definitely brought the heavy back out of us, like the first couple of records, which was fun. We haven’t worked with him in a while so it felt like high school again. It was nice to jump in there,” explained Benton, about the working environment with Sturgis.
Joey Sturgis Producing Miss May I (via Facebook)
“We did one with Machine [2011’s At Heart] and one with Terry Date [2014’s Rise of the Lion]. We bounced around for a couple of records, and the thing about those two records was, with those two particular fellows, we didn’t know them before we started the recording. So you kind of have a two week period where you’re getting to know each other and try to figure out how things work, and with Joey it was Day One and we were already friends, ready to go and the working atmosphere was really great for us,” said Neff.
“We brought a whole new sound too. We’re the band that hates releasing the same thing twice, so it’s nice to jump back to Joey because it’s completely different from the last record,” added Benton, about the musical direction on Deathless and working on it with Sturgis.
Miss May I Warped Tour 2015 Crowd
As they are now reaching five albums with the release of Deathless, Neff admits building a set list covering a cross section of their catalog has become a lot tougher to please both themselves and their fans watching their shows.
“It’s such a pain in the ass! It is the longest discussion that we have as a group. We all have the same goal – make as many people who are watching our band as happy as we can, and everyone has a different opinion about what particular songs to use. For us, it all still comes down to we only get 30 minutes to play and we’ve got five records with at least 30 minutes of material on it. So we can play one fifth of what we’ve created in our career. Maybe a little bit less. It’s a lot more difficult than it used to be.”
“I remember when we did this tour the first time when we had two records obviously we would play these six or seven songs. Everyone would know these six or seven songs. It was easy. It was a lot more difficult this time.”
While pleasing both themselves and their fans on what songs to play, they have occasionally thrown in Miss May I’s versions of deep cuts, which is met with mixed results.
“I remember we tried in the winter with August Burns Red, we threw in this song ‘Tides’ off of our first record. It’s a diehard fan from the early days would know that song, but we played that and it was a whole lot of arms crossed like ‘what the hell is this?’ We’re on stage having a great time, like ‘I remember this song!’ It’s a lot harder to do those to go over real well. Like I said, the whole point of the show is to make the people buying the tickets happy. Sometimes what we feel like playing is not exactly what they want to hear.”