From Autumn To Ashes latest album is Fiction We Live out from Vagrant Records. FATA, as they are known by their fans, is used to doing everything themselves. When they were with the mini-label Ferret Records they sold over 5 times that label's previous best seller and now with Vagrant they are poised to become a big force in the world of punk music.
Many critics have commented that FATA's new album is more audience friendly but the band itself is friendlier. After playing with their idols at festivals like the Warped Tour and the Donnington Festival in England who wouldn't be. They got everything thing going for them and are still modest.
I have to give them credit. One love to native Long Islanders! They are no longer a band with an identity crisis, as they once described themselves, but now are ready to kick some serious fucking ass.
I got a chance to talk with FATA's drummer Francis Mark after he just got some coffee down his gullet about gross bathrooms, why Long Island doesn't totally suck and their new novel.
Check out the website for From Autumn To Ashes.
Daniel Robert Epstein: How was the Warped Tour this year?
Francis Mark: It was great. A lot of our friends' bands were on there like those dudes from The Starting Line, Suicide Machine and Poison the Well. We hung out with them after the shows. It was a good summer because of the shows during the day then always a barbecue at night.
DRE: Did you cook?
FM: Nah. One of the bands on the tour threw a barbecue every night. They had a huge grill where they would bang out hundreds of burgers, veggie burgers and hot dogs. So you just throw them a buck so everyone can eat.
DRE: Do girls come back and dance for you?
FM: They have volunteers that serve the food and they always pick hot girls to do it. But if they were dancing I must have missed out.
DRE: What inspired the new album?
FM: I don't think there was a specific one thing or event. It was the just the culmination of the last two years of our lives. We've been touring for two years and we kind of grew a lot through living together. I'm getting mixed feedback from people. A lot of kids and older people that weren't feeling our first record are really into the new record. I guess its a lot more musical and what not. It's less frantic and a little more produced.
DRE: How have you guys changed since the last album?
FM: We were just kids when we made the last record. That was the first time any of us had left home for a long period of time. It's a life altering experience.
DRE: What's the Fiction We Live in refer to?
FM: That's our lives because I feel like what we live is fiction. It's a fantasy world. We get to do all this for a living.
DRE: Is it part of the band with an identity crisis thing?
FM: It could be. I said that about the last record because one second it's straight crazy metal then in the drop of the hat it turns completely different. I think that this album is more focused. This record does do that also but I think it's a lot smoother. I think this record flows a bit better but at the same time it's all over the spectrum. The first song is heavy as shit, The After Dinner Payback, its also on the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack then you've got Autumn's Monologue which sounds like a Dido song [laughs].
DRE: How does that work when you've got a song on a movie soundtrack like that? Do they come to you?
FM: The song was already written and recorded. We were talking to Roadrunner a little bit, they had a copy of the song and they wanted to put it on the soundtrack.
DRE: What did you think of Freddy vs. Jason?
FM: I thought it was cool for the novelty of it. I like Jason. He was scarier for me growing up. Freddy became like a comic book character. I just wish there was some closure to the whole movie.
DRE: Some reviewer called From Autumn to Ashes a punk metal hybrid. How's that sound?
FM: I would probably agree with that to an extent. I think it's a hybrid of more things though.
DRE: You guys were always considered a punk band. What are you leaning towards now?
FM: Maybe it's because I'm in the band but I don't think I can categorize the new stuff we are doing. I'd really just call it music. I wouldn't call it straight heavy metal at all.
DRE: Every time I talk to a new band they are in a genre of music I didn't know existed. East Coast Metalcore is what they call you guys.
FM: [laughs] We're probably in genres I don't even know about. I don't even know what those mean.
DRE: Is there a track on the album that is more personal to you?
FM: Probably the last song [I'm The Best At Ruining My Life].
DRE: All of you write the songs together. Did you write more on that song?
FM: Lyrically it did. I wrote them all. Then me and Scott wrote the music together.
DRE: That is an interesting writing process you have. Do you all write stuff separately and then come together?
FM: Generally the way we write is Scott will have an idea for a song then we'll sit down together and he'll start playing. Then I'll make suggestions and things will come together. Scott and I have a really good chemistry because things just come out. Most of the songs on the record were either written in 45 minutes or not written at all. If we're sitting there struggling with a song then we just scrap it and go home.
DRE: Does that process ever cause any friction?
FM: Not really because it's been working up until now. We tried to write music the conventional way, even though we don't know what that is, with all the guys sitting around. But it didn't work out.
DRE: What beauty is there in the scream?
FM: [laughs] Man if done right I think it's great. You can really get your point across. Some people who aren't hip to hardcore music hear it and are like; holy shit that guy must be pissed about something. It's effective.
DRE: What drew you to hardcore music in the first place?
FM: When I was young I went to a hardcore show on Long Island. Prior to that the only shows I had been to were stadium shows like Metallica and Guns 'N' Roses. I think it was VOD and Earth Crisis or something. I had never seen a band interact with the crowd that much like handing out the microphone and kids were on the stage jumping off the speakers. Then I pretty much stopped going to stadium shows for like four years. Every weekend I was at a hardcore show.
DRE: Did you start jumping off the stage?
FM: Oh yeah man. I've been known to do a stage dive or two in my day. I never got hurt too bad though. Back when that band Most Precious Blood used to be called Indecision I was at one of their shows. I was 14 years old and dancing. A fight broke out. I was in the middle of this fight and this huge dude that was probably 10 years older than me just blasted me harder than I've ever been. Right square in the face. It was a mess; my whole eye was just swollen shut.
DRE: What about now? Any fans ever jump onstage and pop you in the nose?
FM: [laughs] Naw I don't think so. Some angry fan that's not feeling the new record is going to come and knock my drum set over.
DRE: Besides going to these shows on Long Island how did growing up there get you to where you are now?
FM: Just lucky to get the right mix of guys. That's the hardest part to get five guys that are one the same page. Also the good thing about trying to get started on Long Island is the great underground music scene. The Glassjaw and Sound Majority when I was younger. Then when we were coming up it was Taking back Sunday, Brand New and The Movie Life. So all these great bands made for a great Long Island scene.
DRE: The Donnington Festival must have been amazing.
FM: That was the greatest thing ever. We got to talk to Bruce Dickinson for a couple of minutes. He was really cool. We said hello to Lars from Metallica. He signed our laminates but I don't think he wanted to be bothered.
DRE: He wanted to go sleep on his big pile of money.
FM: [laughs] For whatever people think of those guys today they were the first metal band I ever got into. The first heavy record I ever had was Ride The Lightning.
DRE: When you guys were on Ferret Records you sold a lot of albums comparatively. Did you start out the DIY route then you met with Ferret?
FM: Yeah the first thing we ever did was put out a four song demo. We pressed 3000 CDs with our own money and gave them out for free. It was good to get the name out there. Then Tribunal Records out of North Carolina repressed our demo after that we hooked up with Ferret.
DRE: 50,000 copies is pretty amazing. Ferret must have been blown away.
FM: Yeah it's more of an operation now but when we started Ferret was just Carl in his apartment. I think their biggest selling record before that was 10,000.
DRE: How did it go with Vagrant?
FM: The thing is those guys at Vagrant aside from knowing we can move records they are really into our music. It was comfortable moving to them because they were behind us musically. Even though they are bigger they are still feel independent. They are 49 percent owned by Interscope but they have the control.
DRE: Were you crushed when Dawson's Creek was cancelled?
FM: I fell off after the early days. I used to have a TV watching partner I lost and then we hit the road for so long. By the time I got back from the tour half the characters were dead or married. It was a different show.
DRE: I did read about the last episode.
FM: What happened?
DRE: It went five years into the future. Jen died and one of them might have turned gay.
FM: I'm sure.
DRE: How is the bathroom book going?
FM: [laughs] We still want to do a photo documentary of bathrooms around the country. But we actually are working on a book. It's not the bathroom book. First we are going to try to do a fiction novel. Scott and I writing that.
DRE: Is that a lot different from doing the music?
FM: Yeah it's pretty interesting. That dude will write a chapter. I will read what he wrote and pick up from there. Then vice versa. It's pretty crazy.
DRE: Where did you all first meet?
FM: Scott and I met at this girl Bobbie Jean's house. But I can't go into it.
DRE: So you tag teamed her?
FM: It might have been something like that. Maybe it was a double team gone terribly wrong. But we did get a band out of it.
DRE: Did you put your hand on his ass by accident?
FM: [laughs] Nothing like that. Bobbie Jean's football player of a brother came home before we could even get the ball rolling.
DRE: So you guys got to talking at the hospital?
FM: We got thrown out on our asses.
DRE: You guys went totally Axl recently and set a hotel room on fire.
FM: Yeah our hotel room and our bus caught on fire.
DRE: You set your bus on fire?
FM: That's debatable. It was a fireworks accident. But the official cause on the paperwork is that a belt snapped on the generator or something.
DRE: What's the drug of choice?
FM: We've got one dude who is pretty hip to the cocaine but other than that nothing.
DRE: Have you ever slept with a Goth girl?
FM: I don't think so. But I'm not against it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
Many critics have commented that FATA's new album is more audience friendly but the band itself is friendlier. After playing with their idols at festivals like the Warped Tour and the Donnington Festival in England who wouldn't be. They got everything thing going for them and are still modest.
I have to give them credit. One love to native Long Islanders! They are no longer a band with an identity crisis, as they once described themselves, but now are ready to kick some serious fucking ass.
I got a chance to talk with FATA's drummer Francis Mark after he just got some coffee down his gullet about gross bathrooms, why Long Island doesn't totally suck and their new novel.
Check out the website for From Autumn To Ashes.
Daniel Robert Epstein: How was the Warped Tour this year?
Francis Mark: It was great. A lot of our friends' bands were on there like those dudes from The Starting Line, Suicide Machine and Poison the Well. We hung out with them after the shows. It was a good summer because of the shows during the day then always a barbecue at night.
DRE: Did you cook?
FM: Nah. One of the bands on the tour threw a barbecue every night. They had a huge grill where they would bang out hundreds of burgers, veggie burgers and hot dogs. So you just throw them a buck so everyone can eat.
DRE: Do girls come back and dance for you?
FM: They have volunteers that serve the food and they always pick hot girls to do it. But if they were dancing I must have missed out.
DRE: What inspired the new album?
FM: I don't think there was a specific one thing or event. It was the just the culmination of the last two years of our lives. We've been touring for two years and we kind of grew a lot through living together. I'm getting mixed feedback from people. A lot of kids and older people that weren't feeling our first record are really into the new record. I guess its a lot more musical and what not. It's less frantic and a little more produced.
DRE: How have you guys changed since the last album?
FM: We were just kids when we made the last record. That was the first time any of us had left home for a long period of time. It's a life altering experience.
DRE: What's the Fiction We Live in refer to?
FM: That's our lives because I feel like what we live is fiction. It's a fantasy world. We get to do all this for a living.
DRE: Is it part of the band with an identity crisis thing?
FM: It could be. I said that about the last record because one second it's straight crazy metal then in the drop of the hat it turns completely different. I think that this album is more focused. This record does do that also but I think it's a lot smoother. I think this record flows a bit better but at the same time it's all over the spectrum. The first song is heavy as shit, The After Dinner Payback, its also on the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack then you've got Autumn's Monologue which sounds like a Dido song [laughs].
DRE: How does that work when you've got a song on a movie soundtrack like that? Do they come to you?
FM: The song was already written and recorded. We were talking to Roadrunner a little bit, they had a copy of the song and they wanted to put it on the soundtrack.
DRE: What did you think of Freddy vs. Jason?
FM: I thought it was cool for the novelty of it. I like Jason. He was scarier for me growing up. Freddy became like a comic book character. I just wish there was some closure to the whole movie.
DRE: Some reviewer called From Autumn to Ashes a punk metal hybrid. How's that sound?
FM: I would probably agree with that to an extent. I think it's a hybrid of more things though.
DRE: You guys were always considered a punk band. What are you leaning towards now?
FM: Maybe it's because I'm in the band but I don't think I can categorize the new stuff we are doing. I'd really just call it music. I wouldn't call it straight heavy metal at all.
DRE: Every time I talk to a new band they are in a genre of music I didn't know existed. East Coast Metalcore is what they call you guys.
FM: [laughs] We're probably in genres I don't even know about. I don't even know what those mean.
DRE: Is there a track on the album that is more personal to you?
FM: Probably the last song [I'm The Best At Ruining My Life].
DRE: All of you write the songs together. Did you write more on that song?
FM: Lyrically it did. I wrote them all. Then me and Scott wrote the music together.
DRE: That is an interesting writing process you have. Do you all write stuff separately and then come together?
FM: Generally the way we write is Scott will have an idea for a song then we'll sit down together and he'll start playing. Then I'll make suggestions and things will come together. Scott and I have a really good chemistry because things just come out. Most of the songs on the record were either written in 45 minutes or not written at all. If we're sitting there struggling with a song then we just scrap it and go home.
DRE: Does that process ever cause any friction?
FM: Not really because it's been working up until now. We tried to write music the conventional way, even though we don't know what that is, with all the guys sitting around. But it didn't work out.
DRE: What beauty is there in the scream?
FM: [laughs] Man if done right I think it's great. You can really get your point across. Some people who aren't hip to hardcore music hear it and are like; holy shit that guy must be pissed about something. It's effective.
DRE: What drew you to hardcore music in the first place?
FM: When I was young I went to a hardcore show on Long Island. Prior to that the only shows I had been to were stadium shows like Metallica and Guns 'N' Roses. I think it was VOD and Earth Crisis or something. I had never seen a band interact with the crowd that much like handing out the microphone and kids were on the stage jumping off the speakers. Then I pretty much stopped going to stadium shows for like four years. Every weekend I was at a hardcore show.
DRE: Did you start jumping off the stage?
FM: Oh yeah man. I've been known to do a stage dive or two in my day. I never got hurt too bad though. Back when that band Most Precious Blood used to be called Indecision I was at one of their shows. I was 14 years old and dancing. A fight broke out. I was in the middle of this fight and this huge dude that was probably 10 years older than me just blasted me harder than I've ever been. Right square in the face. It was a mess; my whole eye was just swollen shut.
DRE: What about now? Any fans ever jump onstage and pop you in the nose?
FM: [laughs] Naw I don't think so. Some angry fan that's not feeling the new record is going to come and knock my drum set over.
DRE: Besides going to these shows on Long Island how did growing up there get you to where you are now?
FM: Just lucky to get the right mix of guys. That's the hardest part to get five guys that are one the same page. Also the good thing about trying to get started on Long Island is the great underground music scene. The Glassjaw and Sound Majority when I was younger. Then when we were coming up it was Taking back Sunday, Brand New and The Movie Life. So all these great bands made for a great Long Island scene.
DRE: The Donnington Festival must have been amazing.
FM: That was the greatest thing ever. We got to talk to Bruce Dickinson for a couple of minutes. He was really cool. We said hello to Lars from Metallica. He signed our laminates but I don't think he wanted to be bothered.
DRE: He wanted to go sleep on his big pile of money.
FM: [laughs] For whatever people think of those guys today they were the first metal band I ever got into. The first heavy record I ever had was Ride The Lightning.
DRE: When you guys were on Ferret Records you sold a lot of albums comparatively. Did you start out the DIY route then you met with Ferret?
FM: Yeah the first thing we ever did was put out a four song demo. We pressed 3000 CDs with our own money and gave them out for free. It was good to get the name out there. Then Tribunal Records out of North Carolina repressed our demo after that we hooked up with Ferret.
DRE: 50,000 copies is pretty amazing. Ferret must have been blown away.
FM: Yeah it's more of an operation now but when we started Ferret was just Carl in his apartment. I think their biggest selling record before that was 10,000.
DRE: How did it go with Vagrant?
FM: The thing is those guys at Vagrant aside from knowing we can move records they are really into our music. It was comfortable moving to them because they were behind us musically. Even though they are bigger they are still feel independent. They are 49 percent owned by Interscope but they have the control.
DRE: Were you crushed when Dawson's Creek was cancelled?
FM: I fell off after the early days. I used to have a TV watching partner I lost and then we hit the road for so long. By the time I got back from the tour half the characters were dead or married. It was a different show.
DRE: I did read about the last episode.
FM: What happened?
DRE: It went five years into the future. Jen died and one of them might have turned gay.
FM: I'm sure.
DRE: How is the bathroom book going?
FM: [laughs] We still want to do a photo documentary of bathrooms around the country. But we actually are working on a book. It's not the bathroom book. First we are going to try to do a fiction novel. Scott and I writing that.
DRE: Is that a lot different from doing the music?
FM: Yeah it's pretty interesting. That dude will write a chapter. I will read what he wrote and pick up from there. Then vice versa. It's pretty crazy.
DRE: Where did you all first meet?
FM: Scott and I met at this girl Bobbie Jean's house. But I can't go into it.
DRE: So you tag teamed her?
FM: It might have been something like that. Maybe it was a double team gone terribly wrong. But we did get a band out of it.
DRE: Did you put your hand on his ass by accident?
FM: [laughs] Nothing like that. Bobbie Jean's football player of a brother came home before we could even get the ball rolling.
DRE: So you guys got to talking at the hospital?
FM: We got thrown out on our asses.
DRE: You guys went totally Axl recently and set a hotel room on fire.
FM: Yeah our hotel room and our bus caught on fire.
DRE: You set your bus on fire?
FM: That's debatable. It was a fireworks accident. But the official cause on the paperwork is that a belt snapped on the generator or something.
DRE: What's the drug of choice?
FM: We've got one dude who is pretty hip to the cocaine but other than that nothing.
DRE: Have you ever slept with a Goth girl?
FM: I don't think so. But I'm not against it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
joscelyne:
Fuck yes. I love this band so much. Those guitars are incredible. I can't stand most screaming bands, but this band just does it for me. And that drummer is a genious!
bathory:
rmhrm, thats what im sayin!