Pre-Pre-Production: Emarosa

Even with EMAROSA’s full schedule of tour dates this summer on the TAF Across The Nation tour with Our Last Night and In Fear And Faith, the Rise Records post-hardcore outfit are planning to work on the follow-up to their 2008 debut Relativity. And don’t forget that vocalist JONNY CRAIG also splits his time with super-group Isles & Glaciers (featuring members of Chiodos, Pierce The Veil and others). LUCY ALBERS caught up with Craig to get an advance peek into Emarosa’s plans to avoid the sophomore jinx.

Do you have any plans set for the new album?
Our plans right now just include writing. We have a good amount of time before we go into the studio, so we’ve just been relaxing and throwing out ideas. We actually just pushed [our recording date] back a little because we had plans conflicting with other tours we wanted to do. So we’ll be recording in January and working with [producer] Brian McTernan. We haven’t worked with him before. It was kind of a mutual thing: He contacted us and we had wanted to record with him. He’s done a lot of albums [with artists] like Thrice and Circa Survive, so we know who he is, obviously. He was one of our picks [who] we wanted to do an album with in the future, and he said he wanted to work with us, so it kind of worked out that way.

Emarosa have a busy schedule of touring throughout most of the year. How will you find time for the new record?
We have about a month off after this tour when we’ll be writing. Then we have another tour and almost another month off to write, so we’ll have plenty of time. We’ll also be writing on tour. We’ve been just throwing out some guitar parts and ideas so far. We have an RV, so we go over guitar parts and ideas and stuff like that together on tour. We just kind of get together when we’re around and go from there.

How do you think the new material will compare to Relativity?
Well, not to say that we were rushed with Relativity, but I joined the band right as the songs were done, and we kind of just went into the studio right away to get the album done. We decided to take a lot more time with this album and really give ourselves a lot of time to write it and make sure it’s bigger, better and more epic. We just really want to go all out and make sure it’s exactly what we want at the end of the day.

Although Emarosa are somewhat wedged into the hardcore genre, not all of your music has a ton of screaming. What are the vocals going to be like on the new record?
We don’t necessarily make our music so there is no screaming, I just pretty much do what I hear [based on the music]. If I hear a screaming part for the new CD, it’s obviously going to be there. If I don’t hear screaming, I won’t scream. It’s just kind of what I hear when we go into the studio, and what sounds cool.

It seems like there was an underlying theme with the last album that circled around your new addition to the group. Are there any themes we can expect on the new disc?
As far as being a theme, that hasn’t really been decided yet. I haven’t really started writing lyrics yet, because I just got done with my solo album and I used a lot of the things that I was writing for that. But as far as a theme, there are just a lot of ideas that have to be worked out. You never know. We might do a themed album; we might just do it off the leash.

Are there going to be any guests on the album?
Right now we don’t really have any plans. We all thought it would be cool to get, like, Daryl Palumbo [of Glassjaw and Head Automatica] on it or something. We don’t know anyone in contact with him, but that would be a dream. My sister’s going to be on it for sure. My mom was on the last record and my sister will be on this one.

Does any of your solo stuff or your work with Isles & Glaciers influence the new writing?
I guess you could say that. Everything that I do and have done up to this album has all just kind of been a learning experience for me. Working with all those people for Isles or doing my solo thing, everything will build up to be better and better every time.

Is there an objective you want to meet with the new material?
Well, what we’re shooting for is just bigger and better. We just want to make it more dynamic and more put together than the last album. The more time we have to work on this album is really going show in the music and the vocals and the lyrics. alt