| Sputnikmusic
 

Welcome to a very special interview with My Epic’s Aaron Stone, conducted by DrGonzo and Tyman. Founded in 2005, My Epic are known for their deep-rooted Christian themes and lyrics, over a sound that has gone through various transformations over the years – from post-hardcore and post-rock to indie and pop, all carefully crafted with lush, ethereal soundscapes with powerful breakdowns. Both Tyman and Gonzo hold a huge amount of reverence for My Epic, and we got chance to sit down with Aaron Stone, the band’s vocalist, to discuss the band’s history, future and all things in between. So, let’s dive in.

Tyler: For those of you who are listening and may not know, we are joined by Aaron. He’s the vocalist of My Epic. If you don’t know My Epic, what are you doing now? Me and Simon absolutely love this band and thought it would be fun to have a good little chat with them.

Simon: Jumping straight into the My Epic stuff, could you just give us a brief overview of the band and its history, if that’s cool?

Aaron: The band started my senior year of college with my brother Jesse and my best friends, Jeremiah and Maddie. After college we moved to Charlotte together and the band sort of whittled down to me, my brother and Jeremiah, and that had been the core of the band for a long time. We signed to Facedown Records in 2008 and released our first full-length [I Am Undone], and then our second full-length, Yet, was sort of where we started getting some traction. Then we put out an acoustic EP where Tanner Morita joined the band, and he’s been with us ever since. Then Nate Washburn joined us in 2016 and then in the last few years, my brother and Jeremiah sort of phased out, although we’re still very close. And so, for the last four or five years, it’s really been me, Nate and Tanner kind of leading the band. Alex Camarena of Silent Planet stepped in as our primary drummer. We’ve put out a bunch of records with Facedown since 2008, and then we signed with Tooth & Nail in 2020. And because of kids and some health stuff, we took a couple years to put a new full-length out, which was last year’s Loriella, which we’re super excited about.

Simon: To segue from that then, I’ve been looking forward to this interview, just simply because I know you’re a Christian, and Tyler is also a Christian. I actually found out about you guys through Yet but at the time, I was an agnostic and quite defiant against Christianity at that time, too, but your music transcends all of that. You don’t have to be religious whatsoever to enjoy it, it’s strong music. Being a Christian, what was your musical upbringing like?

Aaron: First, I want to say I don’t speak for everybody else in the band. I am a Christian, although these days it’s something you sort of want to add a bunch of caveats to, because there’s so much going on, that embarrassing to me, in the name of Jesus. I often want to jump, not because I’m ashamed of Jesus, but because I’m ashamed of what’s been happening in Christianity at large. So I wouldn’t want to speak for the other guys. I’ve always thought “Christian” is a better noun than an adjective: we don’t want people to like us because we are good and Christian, we just want to be good, and we hope that the integrity of our music and the art and the message is all based in that fact. I grew up a pastor’s kid at a large church and so did my brother – actually, so did Jeremiah, just a different church – and I’m sort of thankful that we grew up in a large enough church, but I was also going to public school. My parents weren’t hiding me in a Christian school or home-school – not to knock anybody whose experience that was.

Honestly, the church I was at, my youth pastor was a lovely dude, but the guys that had the biggest impact on me, besides my dad, were a couple of high school kids that were three or four years older than us – and they were the raddest dudes. They all skated; they all knew what was good [music wise]. They’d be introducing me to Rage Against the Machine and deep-cut ska and grunge and stuff. And so, there was this nice, salty-sweet of the love of God, this idea of grace and forgiveness and mercy, the stuff that I still find to be very relevant to my life, and that I find to be relevant to almost anyone’s life, whether or not they’re a person of faith: that the ideas of grace and mercy and forgiveness and healing and speaking. I guess confession sounds weird, but naming the things that you’re struggling with, these things have great universal power for everybody. Taking that stuff from the faith and mixing it with the DIY punk/hardcore/grunge scene. I grew up 45 minutes from DC and it was cool to understand a lot of the most integral music in the world, this cutting-edge grunge that was growing out of the roots of hardcore punk, which is heavily based in DC. Having those two things, it’s like this spirit of love, forgiveness and DIY. [This sense of] We can do it ourselves, don’t trust the man, and we got to take care of each other. Those things really were a powerful mixture. I’m super thankful because both of those things have proven to be very true to me, like when things get really big, people tend to get dehumanized, and things tend to get kind of crazy, and we’ve got to look out for each other.

In my youth group, they sort of let us do what we want, and my dad grew up in the hippie movement and had an afro and stuff. He grew up in inner city DC, in a very integrated neighbourhood, so there was not a lot of clutching pearls. My dad didn’t like distortion at first, which he just called “the button,” because when I pressed the button the guitar would get distorted. At first – if my aunts were visiting or something – we would play something clean or pretty, because we knew that my dad would like that more, but as the years went on it didn’t take long for him to be like, okay “push the button,” because he could tell it was good. He could tell that even the heavy stuff was good. My dad raised me on contemporary Christian music and soul, like the Commodores, but then I was getting all this grunge and stuff, along with CCM from school. I remember listening to Smashing Pumpkins and The Deftones and stuff as it was coming out, Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana and early Foo Fighters. It was all just like a soup. My dad didn’t get this music, but he didn’t have a moral issue with it. It just took him a while to start liking it himself. But anyone that would have given us crap about it, we just weren’t interested. None of us are doing drugs. We’re all getting good grades. We’re all trying to love God and share our faith. I think we just would have been like, “oh, then we’re just not for you, that’s fine.”

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Simon: I feel like that’s what gives you your uniqueness, that combination of different backgrounds – religion and the punk. Putting those two things together is what makes you standout.

Aaron: When you grow up and you like punk and hardcore, even though we were Christian kids, at least the kids I grew up with, and you want to do good, there’s a part of you that kind of doesn’t want adults to get it. The few 50-year-olds that turn their noses up at you, that’s good, you know, it’s not for you. You’re not supposed to get it. We aren’t actively aggravating anybody, but I think subconsciously we were like, “yeah, this is dangerous,” you know?

Tyler: I’m right there with you. As a side tangent, I’m from a Christian background. I grew up Christian. I was a missionary kid. My dad was into nu-metal and stuff like that, and so he got me into that stuff too. I definitely get that, the idea of maybe you’re not supposed to get it. You guys were part of that group of bands I found that did the heavier stuff but had a Christian message behind it. I think one thing I’ve noticed and appreciated about your music is essentially, you’re not afraid to try out a bunch of different things. Very early on with I Am Undone and Yet it was a lot more of that post-hardcore feel; Behold went more for that post-rock style; and the EPs Ultraviolet and Violence go for this beauty and aggression kind of thing, which goes even further into that ambient style. Even with Loriella, taking on that punchier sound, and still being very ambient and beautiful sounding. Looking back at your career and discography, how were you able to take all of these different styles and influences and be able to hone them into certain albums or EPs that you guys have made?

Aaron: The journey is the best part, more than the destination. My favourite thing is being in the process of making stuff with friends and discovering it together. I’ve heard it said before that writing music, or any creative task when it’s going well, is more like archaeology than engineering – you feel like you’re discovering it. That’s something where even my friends who are like stone cold atheists, if they’re creatives, they’ll admit it. When you do good stuff, it does feel like you’re discovering it, the shape of it kind of tells you what it wants to be in a spooky way. The thing I always point to in this is like, when you’re writing anything, a movie, book, or song, and you’ve got a good part, you’re all in love with the chorus, or you all love the twist in chapter two, and then you’re trying to write the next part, and you come up with an idea and you’ll play it, sometimes you’ll all be like, that’s not right. And that’s an absurd thing to say, because you’re making it up. It could be anything. What do you mean it’s not right? But you all know it. When we’re in a room together, what makes My Epic is whoever’s in the band at that time, those friendships, that alchemy, it’s our taste coming together. It’s super interesting to me, like you’re all discovering something.

I like to think there’s a consistency and that we’ve always tried to have this, even as much as we’ve changed in all these years, in all the ways that we’ve changed. You need to grow, you need to progress as a person. There’s this integrity of trying to do the best thing we can, trying to be the most honest we can. We’re not a band who is funny, we have a lot of fun, but the songs aren’t funny, even when they’re sweet. I also think from the beginning, there was this idea of we knew there was going to be big dynamics, that’s what was interesting. Even the name, which our original guitarist Maddie suggested, and I voted against and lost, thankfully, because my option was even worse, we knew we wanted it to have big swings, because we liked all this stuff, and we also knew we wanted it to be centred on serving the emotion and whatever was being said in that song.

Every time we’ve written a new record, we’ve never had to turn it in until we’re proud of it. People can think whatever they want, and that’s totally their right, but whenever we’ve turned in a record, we always feel like that’s the best thing we’ve ever done, and in a sense, we’ve always changed the target. After Behold, we did Viscera and that was made to keep the engine going, but it was a conceptual record, which we were proud of; then it was like, alright, let’s split our dynamic and do two EPs that go together; then it was like, well, we haven’t done a full-length in forever, so let’s do that. We knew Loriella was going to be more hopeful, because we had just written this heavy record dealing with doubt and then a record about pain and struggle, so I felt like I didn’t have any more of that in me. Where I’m at in my life, as some water has gone under the bridge, it’s like I’m looking more at what does it look like to find hope again? What does it look like to be looking back at life with new eyes after the inevitable loss of your youth and your innocence? When we turn over a record and we feel like we’ve said that thing – whatever that thing is – we’re like what’s different? What’s next? I don’t want to try to write a better “Lower Still.” I don’t want to try to write a better “Black Light.” I don’t want to try to write a better “Heavy Heart,” I’m happy, you know? I can see things evolving, songs are related, but we’re not trying to write another one like that, and so I think that’s huge.

Besides the integrity of what we are, where we’re at and what we care about, I think the other thing that keeps us centred is that I am accidentally the primary songwriter as the vocalist, and I’m the most limited person in the band, and that’s not a joke. Nate is a full-time producer and can play every instrument, Tanner can play multiple instruments and could also produce, and he owns a coffee chain, and Alex is one of the best drummers on the planet, he’s insane. But when I write a song Nate says a lot as a producer, and Matt Goldman, who we’ve worked with for years, and that helps keep My Epic in check. I can’t help but do certain things, and so changing all these north stars, we’ve never been too worried. We’re always keeping it in mind: are we losing the plot? Are we losing what makes us us? Early on before we did Broken Voice, Jason Dunn, who owned Facedown Records, who’s one of my best friends and our label head, we were like, should we do this? People liked Yet, and we sort of needed to make something else, but we’d just got some new members and didn’t feel confident going right back in with a full-length. But we had all these accidental acoustic songs. He’s like, “I don’t think people will care if you put the same intention into it, and you sing it, and you write your lyrics and melodies the same way, people will accept it.” So the dynamic is: I’ll write riffs – honestly, if it sounds like a riff, 80% of the time, I probably wrote it – Tanner is very ethereal, I could go anywhere in the world and if Tanner was playing guitar I would notice him. Nate’s the same way on bass. When I write riffs, I’ll play a new riff and they’ll be like, that’s sick, that’s an Aaron riff. I don’t know why my brain works that way.

Simon: It’s funny you say that. I 100% agree. I’ve been in bands, and I have my part that I’m good at doing, but I feel that having other members is integral. It’s great to see solo artists that can do everything, but for me, I love getting in a band with other people just to see what their personality brings to it. Like you say, there’s something very metaphysical about it all that you can’t explain, but when all the personalities come together, there’s this thing that electrifies you.

Aaron: Well, that alchemy – that reaction is what makes a band. I think solo artists are great, but I’m not interested in being that. Nate could do everything by himself, and he has, there’s records for major bands where Nate literally played everything. There are so many songs over the years where it wouldn’t sound that way if it didn’t have Tanner and Jesse and Jeremiah and Nate, or whoever is in the band at that time. We bounce off each other, or we pulled each other a little bit in different directions. That’s what I love and I’m interested in. You sort of become a hivemind, Simon, and it’s really special live. When you’re playing together and you think about it, like when you do a big hit, or you all come in together or something. Even just playing; I can only play my part and I need the bass to come in here, I need the drums to come in, and when they do, you sort of feel like a magician, because you did your part and then you made these other humans do their thing. You feel like you’re bigger than yourself; the whole is greater than some of the parts. It’s really special to be part of that and to be involved in that process is one of my favourite things.

I’ll also say I’m very blessed, now as much as ever. If we write a new song or a new record, if me and Nate and Tanner, which is really the core of the band now, if we all love something, I couldn’t be more flattered that they love it too. At that point you’re in a good position, because you can put it out. If we chase trends, or we chase what the fans want – that we think they want – it’s really hard to figure out the perfect amount of same and different. You have to go, “what are we excited about?” Because it’s been three years and this is kind of where we’ve changed, how do we honour that? If we get to the point where all three of us are excited then I go, okay, we can put it out. If people like it, they like it, and if they don’t, we can still say we believed in it and we still believe in it. If we chase some trend and we miss and nobody likes it and we don’t like it, we can’t even stand behind it, and now we’ve wasted time, and there’s no integrity in that. I think we could have made a lot of choices that would have served the band better as a business. People love our acoustic stuff, I just haven’t been interested in making more of it, it hasn’t been sonically interesting to me. So after Broken Voice, which was something we did that on the cheap, we should have done a bunch more acoustic songs at a much higher production level. But that’s not what we’re interested in. We have to be true to what and where we feel we’re at and then we can live with it. If Nate and Tanner and I are excited, I’m already flattered that I got to be a part of it.

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Simon: I want to get into Behold. Tyler and I think Behold is your best record. It’s Tyler’s favourite album and it’s definitely in my top 10. Each record has its own character, but there’s a real gravity to Behold. Was it more intense to write and record as opposed to the other records you’ve made?

Aaron: It was one of the hardest, because during I Am Undone and Yet and Broken Voice, I was pretty much doing the band full time, and whatever other jobs I did were side jobs just to go back on tour. During Behold, I was a pastor full time, and I was writing it in the cracks and the crevices. So we went to the studio and I didn’t have enough songs done lyrically, and I almost had a breakdown. Thankfully, Tanner, Maya, Goldman, who was recording, and Jason were like “take your time, we’ll just spend the rest of the two weeks we’re here, and we’ll make it sound awesome. You can come back when the lyrics are written.” The lyrics are sort of always finished last but with that album, it was recorded and I think Tanner might have done some additional stuff from his little home studio as the lyrics were being finished, to help sew some things together. With the other records, they tend to be locked in sonically. So, it was emotionally one of the toughest. I was really into studying the Psalms at the time and the different types of Psalms and so that was a guiding star. Each of those songs is a type of Psalm. At the time, I think Tanner had just joined the band and we wrote Broken Voice together, but it was exciting to write a full band record with him; that was our first four-piece record. In the first two, I was the only guitarist and we sort of held ourselves to that constraint. For I Am Undone, we sort of threw everything at it because it was our first and you never know if you’re going to do it again. With Yet, which is where we really got traction, it was the clarity of just the three instruments, pretty much no piano, there’s one bell part on a song, but it was just guitar, bass, drums, sometimes a baritone guitar instead of a regular guitar. No double guitars anywhere. If I’m playing, whatever I’m playing is the only guitar. Sometimes we double the track, but we wouldn’t write a rhythm guitar.

Then for Behold, it was very freeing, because we love a lot of really big stuff. All this ambient stuff like Cigarettes and Mogwai, and then heavy stuff like The Deftones and Hum and the kind of double guitar effect you get from a band like that – Foo Fighters to some degree. It was nice to be like, now we have all this stuff that we can add back in, because we can execute it live. Also there was all this stuff that we liked that we didn’t know how to do. Then Tanner showed up with that bag of tricks, and that was also the first time where there was another person who could writing songs in the band – there was another primary songwriter – so that was exciting for me. Although Tanner really quarantined himself in some ways, like he would sit in the room and he wouldn’t hold an instrument while the rest of us would write, and he would sort of sit in the room like a producer. He would be equally a part of the discussion – what could happen next, what would feel right – but he wouldn’t be offering riffs. He wanted the backbone of the record to be my riffs, because he didn’t want to be the one responsible for messing up what had gone right on Yet, which was cool, and I appreciate it, but I also was like, please give me some help, I’m not trying to be “the guy”; this doesn’t need to be my show! Thankfully when Nate joined the band, he can’t help it, Nate is going to Nate. I’ve enjoyed the last couple records of Nate bringing stuff and then it freeing up Tanner. Now all of us write songs, but with Behold, it was the excitement of adding all the ambient stuff.

The pressure of wearing two jobs for me, there was a real tension that I see now in that time – maybe that’s what you’re feeling – of trying to still fit in. I was working at a church, but even as a person of faith, I had already become a lot more progressive and liberal than the community I was in. When I went back to that church, it was tough. My home church asked me to come back and I went back because I appreciated and honoured their contribution in my life. We agreed about some really core things, obviously, but there was a lot of things that we were kind of agreeing to disagree on. I look back and see there was a lot of tension in me about what record I wanted to make, that’s honest, that won’t be dunking on anyone or like trying to be too angsty. I think I struck that balance, but it made it even harder. I wasn’t worried about anyone being mad, but I was subconsciously like, I just love the people that are in my life, and so I’m not trying to make anyone upset. So, that was another thing trying to figure out: how can I write what’s honest but have more clarity on how to say it? Who am I imagining?

We don’t play a lot of that record live because, and I think it’s one of the things people like about it, a lot of the songs are really drawn out. All the songs are overly long, which was one of the things we talked about with Loriella. When we play a setlist, many of our best songs are long and it’s like, if we play “Memoir”, “Zion”, “Hail” and “Lower Still,” that’s like 40 minutes! I also think about not wanting to do the same thing. I love “Hail,” I’m not going to stop playing “Hail,” that’s one of my favourite riffs I’ve ever written. So it’s a case of what can we write this time? I’ll write a “Wildflowers” or a “Heavy Heart,” because I want to add that to the list of stuff to play live. Getting to play those songs together this last tour, “Heavy Heart” was sort of the last song before we closed with “Hail.” There are so many things I can look back at and be embarrassed about when I make records. I mean, you grow up; people change. I’m sure I will feel that way about Loriella in 10 years, but I can also honour that and be like, yeah, Behold was a huge step forward into what the band always wanted to be. With Yet we couldn’t do a lot of that stuff because there were just three of us, so this was the best band we could be. I think we really felt like we took the top off. Maybe I feel like we didn’t quite know how to rein it in. Maybe we accidentally made something that is the perfect thing for people, because it is so long and it takes its time.

Tyler: I’m willing to admit it, and this might be pure bias in an interview with you, I don’t really care: Behold, is probably my favourite record ever, straight up. It genuinely is, and part of the reason for that is, I like what you said about the lyrical aspect of it. For me, that’s what really struck me, I’m sure you’ve probably seen it before, there is a lot of great worship music out there, but there’s also a lot that just lacks that very real side of life, of accepting doubt and frustrations and anger in your life. I think what you said matches that well. You were studying the Psalms, and I would say it’s relatively evident in the music, because I look at specifically “Curse,” which is probably my favourite song on that album. Part of the reason is because it has that very real side of faith, of stepping back and being like, if I was in that place, I’m sure I would have done this, and I’m sure I would have said this. You sit there and realize everything that happened during the Crucifixion, what happened during the Resurrection, and how you kind of live from that, it’s like, what am I doing with it? I think that’s a beautiful thing. Looking at each part in your life, obviously you in 2025 is very different from you in 2008 when you guys were writing I Am Undone. When you look at the lyrics and where you guys have come from, what things in your life and your experiences, whether that’s studying parts of Scripture or genuinely just moments in your life where you are struggling with things and struggling with your idea of spirituality, or even just struggling with everyday life, how has that influenced your lyrical storytelling throughout My Epic?

Aaron: Integrity is huge. One of the artists that impacted me really strongly as a kid, when my parents were heavily playing Christian radio, was Rich Mullins, which became a door into singer/songwriter, like some of the greatest singer songwriters like the John Prines of the world and really setting a high bar lyrically. Most of what was happening in the church world and even in the CCM world – this is a me thing – it just wasn’t interesting to me. How many times can you say I was struggling and falling beneath the waves? I don’t want to throw shade at anybody, that just feels like we’ve said that a lot. If Jesus came back now, he would be just as revolutionary and just as progressive, and he would shock the religious people just as much as he did then. So, I always kind of viewed him as an outsider. I think if he came back, he would hear most worship songs and be like, man, you are just rewriting the same song. When people keep rewriting the songs with the same lyrics, I think it’s good to re-sing the old songs, but you’re writing new songs with Lion and Lamb metaphors? None of you are shepherds, why is that the metaphor? That was the metaphors they were grasping, because that was what was in their life. I think he’d be offended. It’s a good thing you’re singing the old songs, but your new songs are still using all this old language, you are not where the people are at. If God is a God of truth, if He’s real and if He’s alive, then it ought to be piercing, it ought to speak about what’s happening right now. “We don’t need to talk about anything else, not politics.” That’s garbage. We don’t live in a vacuum. Jesus was a person who spoke to all the stuff in his world. He was a revolutionary; there’s a reason Rome put him to death. I’ve kind of always felt like it was my job to try and dig for – not new, because no one’s reinventing the wheel, you’re all standing on shoulders – that feeling when you’re writing a song, and you just say it a little bit different. I think the word is “fresh”, and I think art is always supposed to be fresh, and if it’s fresh, then it can be timeless.

This is totally my opinion, and I could totally be wrong, but a few people have asked me, will you give writing advice, or writing production? I’m not good at it, because I really only know how to write My Epic songs, I couldn’t write a song that didn’t sound like a My Epic song. Anytime someone wants me to help, I don’t know how to help other than just writing. I had a friend and he showed me a song he’s working on, and this one line is great, and he hasn’t really put much out yet, and it is a great line. I’m really proud of him for it. Now I would keep working until every line in that song is as good as that line to me, and I would put in the time, and I would wait. From what I read of great, accomplished artists, sometimes you have a breakthrough and it comes fast, but that’s the exception, and that usually happens after you’ve done so much work, because you put in the hours. There’s the labour there that’s remained consistent, waiting and waiting and digging and digging and chipping away at the stone until it is special. Like my partner says, it takes quantity to get quality. You cannot decide when you’re going to write something great. You could just write a lot of stuff, and I think what makes great artists is they’re willing to do that work, then they actually have a filter what’s good enough to know when they made something special. Every time we make a record, I’m afraid I’ve lost it, like maybe I got lucky every other time. When something good happens and I know it, I’m like, okay, I didn’t lose it. Ira Glass, who’s the host of “This American Life,” he talks about how the tough thing when you start making art is, at first, your taste is good. That’s why you want to make music. You like Radiohead, and Radiohead is brilliant, but then you make your first song and it doesn’t sound anything like Radiohead, because you have no idea how to do that. The tough thing is it takes so long to close the gap between your taste and your ability, but if you keep working at it, and if you’re gifted and blessed, whatever terms you want to use, eventually you start to close that gap a little bit. Or, you at least close that gap in the way that you can be like, I can’t be Radiohead, I can’t be any of the artists that inspired me, I can’t be The Deftones, and I can’t be so many other bands, but if I try to be all those artists like Imogen Heap and Phoebe Bridgers, or whatever, and I miss, what I land on is me. Everyone is inspired by artists, and thankfully, none of us quite know how to sound like the ones we want to, and so we accidentally become ourselves.

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Tyler: At the end of the day, it’s sticking true to yourself. I love what you said just at the beginning of being real about it. We don’t live in a vacuum, and I feel like that gets lost a lot. We can treat it as this is just what we live in, and this is just us, and it’s like, no, it’s not just you. If it was just us, then the whole purpose of our faith would not be a thing.

Aaron: Right? I don’t mean this word actually in a spiritual or churchy sense, but I think it’s an issue of stewardship, whether you think that God talents are God given, or the universe, whatever you want to call it, or that you just have it. I view it as I can, and I feel that I want to make good with what I have. I want to do the best I can, because that’s an opportunity. I view everything that way. Like the time I have with my daughter, I’m so blessed, lucky, thankful, whatever word you want to say to have a daughter, I want to do what I know is best to be a dad to her and my wife. My business today, we just shot all day today, I’m with dudes that I love. We’re working hard for a client and it’s like, we’re here and we have this opportunity, so how can we make the most of it. I’m a tremendously optimistic and positive person. When we went and did some shows this month and did some time in the studio working on new music for a new record, and part of me, besides the fact it went well and I connected with lots of fans, I got to see some my favourite dudes and play together. It felt good. Obviously other than my wife and my daughter and some other things, but there’s very little that feels that good or better than that. When it’s done, I also feel this very cosmic sense of I did one of the things I’m supposed to do. Whether or not we’re successful or make money, I’m just thankful that the tour worked out and I didn’t waste that thing.

Simon: I love that perspective, you can only be you when it comes to writing. You do have inspirations, but that’s exactly how I am as well. You can only be you. Not to put it onto me, but if I ever write stuff, I don’t have something in my head where I want to sound like someone else, I just play and whatever comes out is just me.

Aaron: Somebody much more brilliant than me said “I got to be myself, because I’m not good at being anybody else.” Of course, you’re carrying all those influences, like every heavy riff I write has faint notes of Strong Arm and in The Deftones and Mogwai’s heavier stuff, all that stuff is in there. It’s inspiring you, it’s sort of subconscious at that point. If you’re consciously trying to write a Hum riff, that’s bad, but if you’re subconsciously doing it, and then you go, I kind of dig that, that’s good. I think Behold which is funny that you guys point that record out, I think that the promotional cycle for that was the first time I told a guy in an interview, I said, “for better or worse, nobody else was going to write these songs.” We’re the only band that’s going to write these songs. Now I don’t say for better or worse, just that we’re the only band that’s going to write these songs, and I’m thankful that we get to.

Simon: After Behold you did a lot of EPs. I find that really interesting. Obviously Behold got critical reception and most people would just jump off the back of that and write another album, but you wrote an EP, and then a double EP. What was the thought behind that?

Aaron: It felt like Behold almost broke us because we wrote it when we could. I always joke we’re not a full-time band, but we are when we do it. When we get together we don’t know how to write songs that sound like a part-time band. We’re going to write and record until we feel like that’s the best thing that’s going to sound like a band. No one’s going to know we’re not on tour all the time, and I miss those days for sure, but it almost broke us and took so much longer. With EPs, writing four songs is so much easier to me than writing 12. Even if you finish one song, you only finish 10% of an album and that’s crushing, whereas if I finish one song on Viscera, you’re 25% done and it’s like, I’m cruising now, we’re moving. [After Behold] So it was a practical thing. Our lives at the time, I was working at the church, Jesse and Jeremiah were in the band, Tanner was doing other stuff, and so it was like, this is something we can stop. We can stop, so what’s the most we can do and still enjoy it? One of the things I talk about with my business partner is, rushing is bad, pushing sometimes is good. To make something great, sometimes you have to push, but rushing is bad. That’s a bad headspace, and they’re both addictive. So how do we do this in a way that feels healthy but lets us keep going?

That was the EPs. It was Viscera. People liked Behold, and we’re kind of recalibrating now. We’re not touring all the time. I couldn’t tour all the time, which I don’t know that I regret it, but in an alternate life it would be interesting to see if we’d have kept full-time for a couple more years where we’d have been, but it wasn’t something everybody could handle, and I don’t regret not doing the thing that took care of everybody. We don’t have any bad breakups or any lost friendships, and it’s all sweet memories, and that’s one of the most important things to me. Then with Ultraviolet and Violence, people wanted another full length, so can we kind of cheat one by putting out two EPs in a row and also using it thematically to help us focus writing? I don’t know if people perceived it that way, but we love those songs, and they’re some of our favourites. Full respect to Behold and to the dudes who made that record, but in a lot of ways, there’s songs on there that are reaching for things that to us sonically – maybe not so much lyrically, because I was in a different headspace – were really growing into the band we wanted to be. Once Viscera was out, once Nate came into the band, we really felt like the songs were turning out the way we wanted them to sound the whole time. After three EPs, we signed with Tooth & Nail and they were like, you guys can do whatever you want. But we were like we need to do another full-length. At the time, it had been like 7 years and by the time we finished, it was 11 years. It was like everybody loved the new EPs, but they wish we had a full-length. You greedy, greedy people.

Tyler: I might have been one of those people…

Aaron: That’s super flattering. It was a new challenge again. It had been 10 years – can we make a full-length? What does that look like? With Loriella, one of the big changes was that Nate moved to bass full-time, because Maya left the band and Tanner was able to be more involved. He wasn’t quite as involved with Violence and Ultraviolet. I mean, he was still involved, he still came to the studio and wrote, but Nate had joined the band and kind of picked up some slack. So, this was the first record where the three of us were riding like a Cerberus, and that was super exciting to be writing that way. Now we’re getting ready to start doing singles and build up singles into a record, because that seems like the smartest way to approach it. At first, we were thinking it was going to take us a long time to do another full-length, so we looked at doing an EP to get it out sooner, and at least then we’ll still be active. But I thought about it and was like, we need to do a full length, it’s been too long. So, the idea is to do some singles and be out there more often, hold a few songs back and then we’ll have a full length in two years, but people will have heard singles all the way, so we won’t be silent. So just practicality mixed with what is the healthiest thing we could do for each other is the best way.

Tyler: Looking more at that, with the idea of EPs, I got into you guys when I was 16 or 17, so this was around the time that Ultraviolet had come out, and then Violence was going to be coming out. I fell in love with those records and then got into Behold and all that stuff. One thing I love that you said is the idea that you guys had started to grow into it. Obviously Ultraviolet and Violence kind of piece that together, making it a full-length if you wanted to. Then five years later, you have Loriella. Those were the songs that you wanted to finally start getting into, and that’s where you guys felt that you had found your style. All the other albums before were your style, just that evolution of style. Looking at around that time of Ultraviolet and up until today, what are your biggest influences, and what are your biggest strives in trying to make that sound like you?

Aaron: We’re still in love with dynamics. We put “Make Believe” next to “Red Hands” on the same record back-to-back for a reason. We love both of those things, and I think with Loriella, it was wanting to write some shorter songs and being naturally excited about that. “Red Hands” was the only song where we just let it be what it is and let it be as long as it wants to be, and the fans who like that will like it. That was the easiest song on the record to write, we won’t tamper with it, we’ll just let it happen; it’s harder to write shorter songs. Part of what’s helpful is that Nate, as a full-time producer, is very current, so he’s always showing me whatever is hitting, whether he likes it or not. Tanner is very cool, he’s one of the coolest people and he can’t help it. He always finds rad artists, and we’ll all listen and it’s one of the sickest, craziest things I’ve ever heard, and then you’ll go check and the band has 5,000 monthly listeners and they live in Finland. I don’t know how he finds this stuff, he’s just a cool person. And so they’re always feeding me new stuff. I’ve kind of rediscovered music the last five years, I’ve especially fallen in love with singer-songwriters, female singer-songwriters like Phoebe Bridgers and Imogen Heap. I’ve loved the last five years of emo, and then 90s grunge kind of came back. It was kind of like music was circling back to what I loved. With a song like “Wildflowers,” as I’m writing the riffs I’m thinking this song kind of sounds like “what if Refused tried to write a Gin Blossoms song?” Refused is one of the most important heavy post-hardcore bands, “The Shape of Punk to Come” is like a top 10 record for me. I’m in middle school hearing that stuff, writing that stuff with a little sprinkle of Mew, who’s one of our favourite bands as well. I’m not trying to do that, it just is that, and so it was exciting for our 90s stuff to kind of come out more. We experimented with more fuzz and letting some of that stuff show on Ultraviolet and Violence. We’re going to lean into it because I don’t think we’re going to lose the plot. We’re going to still have huge parts; we still get to write heavy parts. I think it’s letting ourselves be excited about what we’re listening to that’s new, as well as when something comes through that’s kind of referencing something like I’ve always wanted to write. The big opening riff in “Heavy Heart,” I’ve always wanted to write something that sounds like early Pumpkins riffs, and I wrote it and I was like that sounds like an early Pumpkins riff, but it sounds like us. Then, the last riff that’s on that song, the whole slide part and then it hits at the end, that was the first heavy riff I wrote for the record, and I knew I wanted to write a more hopeful record. So, when I wrote that riff, I was like it sounds giant and it sounds happy, this record’s gonna work. We’re going to make something new, and whether people like it or not, they’ll decide, but this is new, and it feels like us.

I’ve seen people say “I love Loriella, but I wish there were a few more heavy songs.” For some reason, we’re all circling back into heavy music again, and like, my daughter, my four-year-old loves Sleep Token, and I’m just kind of there along for the ride. I’m not snooty enough to hate it, this is like “what if a djent band listened to The Weeknd”. I get it. I love all the new genre-fluid stuff, because I hated gatekeeping when I was a kid, when people were like that ska band can’t do this or that. I feel like we got a lot of that when we were starting off, “but you’re not hardcore”, and I was like, who cares? Genres are made up. I liked a lot of Post Malone’s early stuff and now he’s going country. I don’t like country, but dude, he should do whatever he wants, and if it’s good, it’s good. Seeing so many genre-fluid bands like Bilmuri, or whoever, mashing all these things up is great. I’m inspired by younger kids that are mashing up things that aren’t supposed to go together. You’re gonna fail 9 times out of 10, but you might make something sick, you might make something new, and at least you made something you love. People who say Sleep Token shouldn’t have so many R&B parts, well then just don’t listen to it, it’s not for you. I think we should do a lot more of “that’s not for me.” Art being good, especially sonically is such a subjective call. I had a friend who’s not an artist and he’s like, well everybody knows that song’s good. No they don’t; I hate that song, it’s a good song because you like it.

Screenshot 2025-06-20 060306

Simon: It’s funny you say people mentioning that you could do with more heavy songs on Loriella, I think the balance is really well done on that record, because while there is a lot more upbeat stuff on there, some of the heavy stuff on there is ungodly, like the drop in “Northstar.” Did you come up with that?

Aaron: Dude, that one’s a story. We had a different ending that was almost like a sludgy/doom riff, and it was very dark, very dark chords. It was a Tanner riff, which he doesn’t often do, but when he writes riffs, they’re rad. We recorded it because it was cool. It was more like the end of “Red Hands” to be honest, or it was more from the “Lower Still” family tree of dark riffs. We recorded it and the rest of the song sounded pretty much the way it sounds now, but the more we got into the record, me and Nate would keep coming back to it. We were literally working on that record for two years because I had a baby, Nate had some health stuff, and COVID happened, but at some point, me and Nate agreed we freaking hated the ending. By this point the lyrics were coming together and he’s like, it doesn’t serve what needs to be said. Even if I wrote the best riff in the world, or Tanner wrote the best, it should die if it’s not doing what the song is trying to say or do. So we literally pulled everything up except the drums and we rewrote it. There’s the little two chord refrain at the end of “High Color” where we thought, what if we did that same refrain here? I wrote the guitar that’s a little more buried and sounds a little stringier. I imagined this guitar that kind of sounds like M83, a slide guitar with some synths that are ascending. Instead of sounding sludgy, it sounds heavenly, big. And we were thinking of bands like M83, Mogwai and Sigur Ros, which was like one of our favourite bands, and was probably the biggest impression on Behold. Having Tanner more involved this record was exciting. We were in the studio one time at Nate’s house, and Nate had to go to the hospital for some health stuff, so me and Tanner were alone for a couple days and the end of that song was one of the ones where me and Nate had changed it to this simple two chord pattern. Tanner immediately dialled it in, because he knew what I wanted, slide guitar, tons of reverb and then Nate’s brother, Tyler, was hanging out and he can engineer, so he was engineering the session. All these old synths were in there. We doubled it – it happened really fast and it sounded so huge and heavenly. Then Nate came back from the hospital, and we were showing him everything we worked on, he was sitting there, and we got to the end. By then he knew the chord changes, and he knew what my guitar did, but he hadn’t heard all the slide guitar and the synth stuff, and it finished playing and me and Tanner were sitting there, like I hope he likes this, because we’re going to really have a fight. Rarely do we fight, but when you love something that much, you can be a little nervous that they’re not going to love it too. Nate was like that is not what I thought you guys were going to do there, and I love it. That evolved over a year. It all started with Nate being like it shouldn’t be that riff, what if we grab those chords, and what if they were bass chords, and now we’re in My Epic territory. This feels good, and this feels, emotionally, like the end of the song – something really powerful and beautiful.

Simon: It must be really fun to play live, is it?

Aaron: It’s super fun. We haven’t used tracks in 10 years, just because we don’t get to play a lot, but once we added Nate in the band it was easy for us to just be a rock band. It’s fun to interpret songs live and work out how to play songs as a four-piece and just leave all the production. For a couple years, we wouldn’t have synth or the percussion, we weren’t doubling any guitars or anything, only the stuff that wasn’t seen. We’re not fooling anybody. But it was fun for years to be like, let’s play all those songs without it. What does this Behold song sound like without synths? What does an Ultraviolet song sound like without synths? But this last tour was us bringing that stuff back, just because it was different and fun. So hearing the guitar sliding live, and then the production doubling it, that’s money. It’s slamming a big riff like that with bass chords. If people haven’t seen Loriella: The Film on YouTube, you can go see it, and that’s what that looks like. It feels like you’re part of a hivemind, and it feels really special.

Simon: Last question from me. The Hourglass Version of “Phantom Limb” is amazing. I think you guys do a really good job of reinterpreting it. It sounds almost like a new song, but in a good, fresh-sounding way. Will the new record be reinterpretations or is that just a one off?

Aaron: That’s something we’re going to do along the way. Those happen naturally, because we write songs and usually a song must be pretty defined, riff-wise, for me to start writing lyrics; and then when I’m writing lyrics, I switch a lot from electric guitar and acoustic when I’m listening to a demo, the change helps me work through it. Almost all of the songs that we’ve written in the last 10 years, I write an accidental acoustic version when I’m writing the lyrics. I have a demo that sounds a lot like the version you finally hear. Sometimes it is the final version but without the vocals, depending on how the order goes, but I pick up an acoustic too, to check if the emotion works, because it’s used as a way of defining what makes us “us”. We could just release stripped down versions and that could be the band, but we all like this other stuff, which probably doesn’t help us, because everything else we like is less popular than just the acoustic, pretty stuff. There’s a lot of versions, like “Late Bloomer.” The first version was a super heavy song and then when I finally finished the lyrics, the song was recorded and I played it for Nate in one of the studios we were working in and he was like, that version you just played is the most powerful version. We need to throw it all away and we need to just record that and then re-record the whole song around it, which we’ve never done before. We did it for a couple songs on Loriella, we took our time. So, there’s a lot of other songs on this record and on previous records that have accidental versions. We’ve done “Phantom Limb”, and we have a “Heavy Heart” one ready, it’s just not out yet. Me and Nate sat down for an hour, he grabbed whatever instrument felt good to him, because he can just write stuff. For “Phantom Limb” I played, and then he picked up another acoustic and did a weird tuning and, in an hour, we had the version. Then we recorded it in two hours, which was the opposite of Loriella, he mixed it and that was it. We recorded the video in another hour and a half. So, we’re just trying to release that stuff whenever we have a hole in our release schedule. We’re looking to build up another full-length with all new original stuff, but to us these “Hourglass Versions,” are just a way of shaking the songs up. Shameless plug, we also have a Patreon which is the wind beneath our wings and really supports us. With the label and the Patreon together, it means we can do this, if they both didn’t exist we would have to stop. They really support us. We have a lot of other acoustic versions that have been released exclusively on our Patreon, and we will be doing that more in the future, as well as additional content for Loriella.

Tyler: As a last question for me as well. Building off of that, obviously, y’all took your time with Loriella, and you have those “Hourglass Versions” and stuff like that. Throughout that entire process of Loriella, what is something that you learned as a band, even after two decades? What is something that you learned as a band that you will be taking with you as you continue to work on a new album and continue throughout the rest of your career?

Aaron: We all went through some pretty heavy stuff. I mean, the whole world did in that season, and so just continuing to be reminded that the relationship we have to each other is one of the biggest privileges of the band and one of the most important things, taking care of each other and getting to spend the time together. It’s really just an excuse for us to be together! That’s one thing that comes to mind. I mean, there’s a mantra in my mind, and it’s a lyric from “Make Believe,” which is “open hearts and calloused hands.” That’s a really important lyric to me that, for all the things that have changed in my heart and mind and all the other guys, and again, we’re all different people with different stories, but I know I’m supposed to keep my hands callous and my heart open. I’m supposed to stay at it and try to keep my heart from growing callous, but keep my hands callous. So that message has really stuck with me as an idea that has been a guiding star and what it means to be faithful. Growing up as a pastor’s kid or whatever, everybody grows up and you don’t know what you’re doing, you just believe people around you. We’re all in the process of figuring out what everything is, how much of it is bath water and how much of its baby, and what to throw out. So that’s been a good northstar to trust; I’ve just got to keep my heart open and my hands calloused, keep busy. The truth will continue to unveil itself and I’ll be patient with myself, as I’m always learning. As far as the writing goes, as we started writing this new record – that’s not even close to completed – me, Nate and Tanner were talking, we were all like, we can’t do the Loriella thing again, not because we shouldn’t do it again, but because we already did it. We’re not going to overcook these songs. We’re not going to think too long. We’re gonna pull the trigger quicker, not because the last thing was bad, but because we just did that. “Open heart and calloused hands;” that one sticks with me as a super important thing to keep with me and keep kind of tattooed on my heart.

Simon: We really appreciate your time, Aaron. Is there anything that you want to let fans know or what they can look forward to in the future?

Aaron: Like I said, Loriella: The Film is out there on YouTube. It’s five songs off that record played live. It’s totally worth watching. I got to produce it with my partner, and I’m very proud of it. There’s a new “Phantom Limb” acoustic song if you like our acoustic stuff, and we’re writing and recording right now. We have a Patreon, and we’re just super thankful to everybody, to both of you guys, it’s an honor. Thank you for being patient with me, it just means the world. When you write a song and you put it out, it’s like shouting in the darkness, and it’s just such a privilege and an honor that anyone cares about it. You’re both enablers. You’re part of the reason why we’ll keep going.

Simon: Now I say this every interview as well. It sounds unlikely from what you’ve been saying so far, but have you ever toured Europe or the UK?

Aaron: I want to, we haven’t yet. We’ve had a couple, almost times that we did, but if it ever was able to work out, we want to do it so badly.

Tyler: To everyone on Sputnik listening to this or reading the interview, please go listen to My Epic if you haven’t already. You could just go throughout their entire discography, find whatever sticks to you. They got a lot going on in their music stuff, and so definitely go show some sort some support, show some love to them, and thank you guys for listening again.

You can support My Epic by joining their Patreon pageLoriella is available on all streaming services.

Screenshot 2025-06-20 150821





DrGonzo1937
06.20.25
Not sure if this is a first for Sputnik or not, but this is a double-trouble interview conducted by myself and tyman.

Hawks
06.21.25
YESSSS!!!

Emim
06.21.25
I've always said Aaron writes like King David. Very Psalm-like in the way he wrestles with ideas and bares his heart and struggles. Great interview, gentlemen!

DadKungFu
06.22.25
Wonderful interview, thanks guys

botb
06.22.25
Aaron is such a nice guy, love this

DrGonzo1937
06.23.25
thanks for checking everyone.

@botb
yeah, one of the nicest dudes i've ever interviewed

Purpl3Spartan
06.25.25
Dream interview love it

DrGonzo1937
06.25.25
Thanks for checking Spartan. The interview was very fun.

redrig
06.25.25
What a great band to interview, I am Undone and Yet are both 5s

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