Catch Your Breath: Growing Pains
How any artist approaches writing and recording their debut record varies per person, yet one thing that they have in common is the shared daunting feeling. It’s one thing to put out a single and focus all your energy into one track, yet they now need to put that same energy into around ten or more tracks in one go. How CATCH YOUR BREATH went about it was to create something that represented themselves to the fullest.
A process that seems to have worked well for them, especially given that their single Dial Tone went on to receive 30 million streams before their debut record, Shame On Me, came out. We sat down with frontman, Joshua Mowery, fresh off touring with rock legends ATREYU and having had some time to process the reaction we asked how they’re feeling with everything that’s happened so far.
Josh says, “we feel pretty good about it all, it’s been a long time coming, it’s something that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. We finally got to sit down and hash out a full body of work to kind of represent what we do as a whole, instead of trying to toss out singles and hope that people get it. It’s been awesome! We’ve loved every second of it, we love the album and we loved working on it.”
“We certainly hoped that there would be a really good reaction to it. We weren’t sure what to expect, just because we kind of stepped out on our own branch right off the bat. For a lot of bands, it usually takes two, maybe three, albums to do that, we just decided to go ahead and put the gas to the floor to show everyone who we were right off the bat.”
When it comes to their music, the first thing that immediately stands out is the versatility of genres and the experimentation that happens on each song. There are a range of genres ranging from gothic rock to standard metalcore and hardcore to rap to even melodic metal that explores orchestral elements.
How did this come about? Well simply put, it came down to a range of musical loves as Josh describes it. “That’s where our likes in music really range. For instance, one of Ornell’s, our drummer, favourite band is RED and BREAKING BENJAMIN, and Teddy [guitars] really likes MAGNOLIA PARK. I like a mixture of a little bit of everything.”
“I’ve always been a huge A DAY TO REMEMBER fan. It’s not necessarily because they have the best sound to me, it’s because they’ve always had that attitude of, ‘I really don’t care, we’re just going to go and write great music, and you’re going to like it!’. As a band, we don’t really care what genre you want to call it, we just care about making the best songs possible at the time.”
What also stands out is the deeply personal nature of each song, a brutal telling of different stories and feelings. CATCH YOUR BREATH have stated that the entirety of the album is a representation of different points in their adult lives and the lessons that came along with them. We see this range from heartbreak and anger that a lot of us will find all too relatable, but then we see things take a vulnerable turn when it gets to songs like Y.S.K.W., a track that covers the difficult topic of addiction likened to a toxic relationship one needs to finally let go of.
While challenging in some respects, Josh is happy with how each song came out and viewed the recording process as a chance to be fully honest.
“When we were in the studio, I finally had a chance to really open up and talk about more things in my mind that I would find the most appealing song. So, like when we go into the studio, a lot of the times I have to choose between writing something that is lyrically like Cycles, where you as a kid are angry at your parents, or I had to choose to write a song like Dial Tone. A lot of the time I would be like, ‘okay, let’s do a song like Dial Tone, let’s do sad boy stuff!” but for the album I had to have way more than that, we couldn’t just come out with thirteen, ‘you broke my heart!’ songs, so I went ahead and just delved into my personal life, and I went back a lot to find inspiration. That’s kind of where it came from, in that I wasn’t going to write anything that I hadn’t experienced before.”
Shame On Me is out now via Thriller Records.
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