Lionheart release new track by track guide for ‘Welcome To The West Coast III’
LIONHEART have released a new track by track guide for their new album!
Heavy hardcore mob LIONHEART have been enjoying a steady rise to fame in the hardcore underbelly; thanks to their venomous bars from vocalist Rob Watson, hefty breakdowns and a mantra that embeds itself to the community. This year sees the band return with the ferocious Welcome To The West Coast III, a record we summarised in our review as: “LIONHEART stare their struggles straight in the face, and in doing so they will likely inspire others to do the same. That’s more important than even the hardest breakdown, and arguably the main thing that makes this record worth your time.”
To find out more about their new record, we caught up with vocalist Rob Watson to get a full track by track breakdown for their new record!
INTRO
I love a good intro and I don’t see bands doing them as much anymore. All the hardcore albums I grew up on had the best intros and it always set the tone for the record. This one is simple, to the point, and brings back some of the lyrics we used on the outro on the Love Don’t Live Here record.
DEATH COMES IN 3’S ft. Jamey Jasta
As most people know by now, Jamey Jasta produced the record with me and he is also featured on this song! This was probably the first song that we actually worked on together. I had been texting with him and shot him a bunch of pre-production instrumentals and this was one of the songs that he wrote back about immediately to say it needed to be at the top of the list. Evan and I wrote the music for this right at the start of COVID and it really kickstarted the album writing process for us so it was awesome that we were all on the same page with this song being a favorite. This song actually ended up going through a few lyrical revisions. We had finished recording all the vocals for it and the chorus used to just chant “Life… Life sentence!” and I swear to god a week later MALEVOLENCE dropped their song Life Sentence. Jasta and I must have both listened to it on the way in that day cause we got to the studio, looked at each other, and were like God damnit [laughs]. How the fuck does that even happen? MALEVOLENCE are the boys though so we had to change it up! Jasta actually had the idea to change it to “Life is a Death Sentence” which turned out to be even more perfect for the song and really took the chorus to another level.
HELL ON EARTH
This was one of the last songs I recorded on this album but easily one of my favourites. I actually wrote these lyrics years ago but never really had the right music to accompany them. In this song I really wanted to tell a story around what it’s like to grow up in certain environments and never even have the chance to make it out. Unfortunately that’s a reality for a lot of the guys I grew up with and a lot of other people – that side of life isn’t shown in hardcore as much as it used to but that’s what I wanted to show in this song. It’s about the catch 22 of being backed into a corner and having no choice but to fight your way out and unfortunately a lot of time the same shit that you have to do to survive ends up being the shit that kills you. My favourite part of this song is the ending though where we overlay the chorus with the breakdown lyrics – we’ve never done that before and were just fucking around in the studio but it turned out sounding really really cool.
This song is easily the coolest moment in our entire career. I grew up listening to Ice-T and BODY COUNT so to have him on a track with us is absolutely insane. We’ve done a bunch of shows with them in the past and were actually scheduled to do a short tour in Europe with them before it was cancelled by COVID so everyone knew each other already. We reached out during the beginning of COVID and sent him the instrumental and he hit back to say he was down almost immediately. Then, as we all know, COVID seemed to last forever. Two years later we are in the studio finally recording and thankfully he was still down but he had literally just started shooting this current season of SVU so the scheduling was not easy but we got it done. All I can say is that he is the real deal – the most down to Earth, gracious, and cool dude we’ve ever worked with. Ice is the same Ice he always has been – no celebrity bullshit. A West Coast legend and we are honoured to have him on the track.
COLD WATER FAREWELL
This song is actually a remake of a song we had on the Undisputed album, At Your Door. I always loved the music in this song and I thought it fit the vibe of this record really well. The first thought was to just re-record At Your Door but then I just decided to write new lyrics for it and breathe some new life into it. I think it came out better than the original.
STORIES FROM THE GUTTER Pt. II
This song is actually a sequel to Stories From The gutter Pt. I which was on our last album, Valley Of Death. Part One was definitely a sleeper hit on the last album. We’ve gotten so much feedback that people really loved that song, they really love the story, they really love the message and to be honest it was one of my favourite tracks on the last album as well. We never made a video for it and we never really played it live, so I always felt like it didn’t get the attention that I would have liked it to. This song picks up where the last one left off in that it’s really painting a picture of a life most people never have to live. It shows what it’s like growing up in poverty, growing up fighting for everything you have, and just trying to make it out of hell. This song also features one of my favorite vocalists of all time, Ant from E-TOWN CONCRETE.
E-TOWN is one of my favourite bands and I always really related to their lyrics growing up so when I wrote this song I really felt like this was a perfect fit for for Ant to jump on. I also tried something new with this song where during the verses ant and I went back and forth. We basically traded two lines for me two lines for him two lines for me two lines for him. Normally when I have a guest on a song I’d either give them you know the first verse of the second verse or the ending part of the song but in this case I really wanted to sort of trade War Stories going back and forth and I think it ended up being a really really cool way to do it. The song has a ton of energy, a ton of groove, a ton of vibe and I think it’s one of the best tracks on the album.
NEW MONEY | OLD PAIN
Evan and I wrote and re wrote the music to this song maybe 100 times! We had that main riff forever (that ended up being the chorus) but we just messed with it over COVID a million different ways. I love circle pit bass parts, and they aren’t easy to do, but i think we nailed it in this song. We did something similar on Shelter off of the Welcome To The West Coast II album a few years ago and I’ve been wanting to fit it back in since. Great track that’s fast, heavy, and to the point.
DEATHBED CONFESSION
This song actually took a lot of work as well. Similar to Death Comes In 3’s, it just really pushed me to think differently about how I tell my stories. In this song rather than sing about depression or loss or pain in a very direct and matter-of-fact way like I usually would, he really pushed me to think outside the box to tell the story in a different way that I hadn’t done before. In this song I decided to use a car crash and everything that happened afterwards as a way to describe depression and describe pain. This is really the first time that I’ve ever tried to write like that, and I think it came out great. Using this traumatic event as an analogy for what some people have to live through in their day-to-day helps paint the picture of that pain in a much more relatable way for a listener who may not have to experience those kinds of lows.
AT WAR WITH THE GODS
This one is hands-down my favourite track on the entire album. My guy Los, from the band DESMADRE, guested on this track and his feature is insane. DESMADRE are one of the best bands coming out of California right now and Los took this track to a whole new level. We actually just shot the video for this song a few days ago and it’s going to drop the same day as the album releases. We shot most of the video in South Central LA with our guy Jamie from Luna Vision who’s incredible director and videographer. He also shot the video for Sin Of man by DESMADRE and if you’re reading this make sure you check that out too, immediately. If you’re listening to Welcome to the West Coast III for the first time, At War With The Gods is definitely one of the tracks you should listen to first. Hardest one on the album for sure.
BONNIE & CLYDE ‘05
This track was actually originally released on the Valley Of Death album back in 2019. In that original release I had sampled a TOM PETTY song at the end of the track as a little fade out after I also referenced some of his words in the ending lyrics. It all fit together perfectly and was honestly one of the coolest parts on the album… until like a month after the album came out and I opened my mail to find out TOM PETTY’s estate was suing us. That was not a fun day. We ended up having to remove it from the album, take it off streaming services, etc. I’ve been pissed about it ever since so I just re-recorded it on this album and did not include the sample at the end so hopefully no one sues me over this one this time. For the record TOM PETTY is still one of my all time favs but his estate’s legal team can fuck off.
EXIT WOUNDS
Another song with an awesome feature. This time we have Alex from MALEVOLENCE on the track and I think he fits the song perfectly. We’ve known the MALEVOLENCE boys for a long time we’ve toured together we’ve played a million festivals together and I’ve always been a fan of the band. This was a really cool feature for us and fun to have a more metal vocalist hop on a track. This song is really dark, really honest, and really fucking heavy. The bass groove in the verses fuckin slap and the ending breakdown is an absolute slumper. Alex kills his part and definitely makes this one of the heavier tracks on the record so a great way to end it.
Welcome To The West Coast III is out now via Arising Empire.
For more information on LIONHEART like their official page on Facebook.
