Mike Fuentes gives 4 reasons you need to catch Pierce The Veil’s Misadventures tour

Pierce The Veil shocked all when they finally announced their long (long, long…) awaited fourth LP, Misadventures . As if a full-length wasn’t enough, they also planned a 16-date U.S. tour where they’ll be playing the new album in full. Still not running for your credit card? We chatted with drummer Mike Fuentes about why this tour is can’t-miss.

DID WE MENTION THEY’RE PLAYING THE ENTIRE ALBUM FRONT-TO-BACK?

How many times can we say it? As many as it takes for it to sink in how awesome this is. If your favorite song off a new album isn’t a single, you’ve just got to hope and pray (and bug the poor band members on Twitter) they’ll play it live. But this round, you’ve got it in the bag.

MIKE SAYS: When we were wrapping up the record in the studio, we were talking to our producer, Dan [Korneff], and we were so stoked on every single song that was on the record. He was like, “You guys just need to play this record from start to finish.” And we were like, “Well, why don’t we actually do that? We played some of the new songs for the first time the other day in London, at the HMV record store on Oxford street, and it was interesting to hear so many kids already singing “Texas Is Forever,” “Circles” and “The Divine Zero.” I’m [excited to play] the sing-along-y songs on the record, like “Floral & Fading” and “Today I Saw The Whole World.” It’s getting me more and more excited because just hearing kids singing “Texas Is Forever,” I was like, “Damn, it feels so much better live, being able to hear kids sing along.” “Song For Isabelle,” too. I feel like every song is going to be so exciting to hear the kids sing it live and to see their response to each song.

THEY’RE BRINGING THE HEAT… SOMEHOW

From confetti cannons to pyrotechnics, Pierce The Veil shows are always rife with production and surprises. We tried to tease out what exactly we should prepare for (Splash zone? Trapeze artists? Lions and tigers?), but Fuentes kept it mum.

MIKE SAYS: We’ve always strived to do as much as we can to put on a good show. Even in the early years when there really wasn’t any budget for production, we would rig up our own light show. We would just do what we could do without spending a bunch of money. But now that we do have a production budget, [there are] pretty much endless possibilities. I can’t really give away what we’re thinking of, but we’re definitely doing stuff that we’ve never done before, especially on [this] tour, because we’re playing our entire record from start to finish. That just lends to so many different ideas to coincide with the new record. That’s the best part of the band right now, nobody can tell us what to not do, because we can do whatever we want now. [Laughs.] That’s our goal: just to put on the best show we can.

LET’S GET INTIMATE

As sick as it is to see your favorite band blow the roof off a massive venue, it also stinks to be caught in the back or unable to see. With this run, PTV booked venues on the smaller end—barricade-huggers and crowd surfers rejoice!

MIKE SAYS: Compared to what we’ve done recently with the All Time Low co-headliner and stuff like that, we are scaled down. We wanted to start a little slower, and give the kids something a little more intimate, especially with playing all the new songs first. And just keep rising from there, eventually do some bigger venues in the future. But my favorite has always been playing small venues because I’m a drummer, I’m in the back. [This way] I get a little closer to the crowd, and get to be in their faces a little more. That’s always fun for me.

COME EARLY, STAY LATE

Half the fun of the show is catching the opening bands eager to leave it all the on the stage. This round, PTV brought out fellow Cali rockers I The Mighty and Movements—both perfect fits for this heavy, intimate tour. Turns out the Pierce boys hand-picked both acts.

MIKE SAYS: We always like to pick up-and-coming bands that we like and have a little buzz—we want to give them a little more love. We’ve done that in the past with This Wild Life, and a bunch of bands we think deserve a chance to play in front of a bigger crowd. I The Mighty is a band we’ve been friends with for a long time, and we’ve been trying to bring them out numerous times, but the timing’s never been right. This seemed to work out on this tour, and they said yes before we even asked them. We’re just fans of that band, we love their technical guitar parts, and their songwriting is cool.

Movements, that was a band we’ve heard coming up, and Vic actually saw them play live with our nephew’s band in a super small venue in San Diego. Vic was like, “Hey, you guys heard this Movements band?” And we were like, “Yeah, we’ve never seen them live.” He was like, “They held it down live, we should bring them out.” That was it.

We always want to have a cool, fun, fresh lineup, and we don’t want to do too many things that have been done, because I feel like a lot of bands stick to their own little group. There’s never anything really fresh about that. We always like to show these hard-working bands some love because they deserve to play in front of more than 10 kids. That’s how a lot of bands gave us the chance in the past—A Day To Remember, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, they were the bands that took us on our first big tour, and they treated us awesome. They showed us how to run a tour, and we like to pass that down to other bands.

Did he convince you? Grab your tickets here.