Set Your Goals haven't "seen a dime" from former record label, says vocalist

Earlier this month, Set Your Goals co-frontman Matt Wilson tweeted an interesting tidbit of information, which read: “To this day, SYG hasn't seen a dime from Eulogy in royalties, merch, etc. If you buy Mutiny! just know that it will never go to the band.”

Read more: Set Your Goals put rumors to rest with an official statement on their current state as a band

Following this, Lambgoat reached out to Wilson and conducted a tell-all interview, which proved to be very revealing in regards to Set Your Goals' past, present and future. You can read a few select excerpts below.

On Pete Wentz almost signed the band to Decaydance:

“Pete Wentz had gotten in touch with Jordan and expressed interest in signing SYG to his label Decaydance, and brought us all on Fall Out Boy’s bus when they came through town to pitch the idea. During their set that night, Jordan stage dove and knocked a monitor off the stage, which ended up being billed to Fall Out Boy. Their tour manager cornered Jordan backstage demanding payment, but we were all total broke asses at the time and Jordan couldn’t afford to pay him. I think the monitor was $400.

After that night Pete never returned any emails, and ended up signing Four Year Strong instead. We never got an answer from Pete as to why, but we were told from a reliable source later on that it was because of the monitor.”

On the band's past with Eulogy:

“I'm sure it recouped very well, and then some! John just didn't pay us our mechanicals, and we couldn't afford to audit him. I remember when we requested an accounting statement from the label, once we finally got one it was laughable. All of the numbers were fabricated and the costs were inflated. I wish I still had the statement.

One of the many tricks he used I think he stole from Victory, where he takes out a full-page ad in a magazine and splits it into four quarter-page ads (one for each band), then charges each band for a full-page ad, therefore requiring 4x the cost of what he actually paid in order to “recoup.”

We were young and naïve at the time, and didn't realize that hiring Dave Crisafi, an employee of the label, as our manager was a huge conflict of interest. Dave would always side with Eulogy whenever payment was brought up, and once we learned that this isn't the way things are usually done, we fired him. We'd developed a friendship with him and everyone at the label, so this was not an easy tie to sever.”

On Burning At Both Ends:

“There were some very heavy circumstances around why that album didn't succeed, which I am not going to get into. All I will say is that we knew going into the studio that it wasn't going to be up to par, and we knew that a lot of that was out of our control. Once again we booked extra time in the studio and when even that ran out, we had to finish tracking vocals in LA with Mike Green and Kyle Black. We worked harder on BABE than anything else we had probably ever done in our lives, and almost gave up many many times along the way. In the end it still wasn't enough because certain elements weren't there, which was an EXTREMELY frustrating situation for everyone involved. What successes we did have following the album's release came as a pleasant surprise.

I don't like calling it a “failure” because it wasn't, but it wasn't our best work, and we knew that we weren't reaching our potential as songwriters or as a band. We knew it wouldn't sound like us, we knew Epitaph wouldn't push it as hard as they pushed TWBTDOU, and we knew why. We knew that everything from then on would be an uphill battle for the band but we all loved doing the band so much that we did it anyway. And we wrote a lot of the lyrics with all of this in mind.”

On the band's future:

“Last time I talked to everyone about the band we all seemed receptive to the idea of playing shows again when it makes sense. 2016 marks ten years since the release of Mutiny! so maybe we’ll play some shows then? Our band has always sort of flown by the seat of our pants, so it’s hard to say this far in advance, but we’ve all agreed it’s best to leave the door open.”