I caught up with Dennis of Affiance after their set at The Social, we talked about their latest album “The Campaign”, and some of his favorite music releases from this year, you can check it after the jump. Affiance just finished their tour with Protest The Hero, they’re going to take a break for the holidays, and then go into the studio in February. So be on the lookout for any updates from the band.
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Q – The Campaign has been out for a year now, is there any current plans for new music?
Dennis – Oh yeah, we’re heading into the studio in February, but it won’t come until the summer or fall.
Q – Can you tell us about the lyrical content for “The Campaign” ?
Dennis – Its a continuation of the previous album and it’s about political, humanity type theme. Jfk speech theme, how Jfk was the last american president and he was killed for it. We want to encourage people to seek truth and stop being mundane and robotic about life and it’s all based around this person reaching to awaken and the 3rd album will be a continuation of that. The 3rd and 4th album are going to lead up to this big event.
Q – You guys just release a video for “We The Machines” .How was it shooting it and how was it visually?
Dennis – It was all set with machinery and all the band members are bleeding oil like they’re loosing their humanity, and then eventually we destroy the machines. Which we can’t afford really nice laptops and cars. but we got our hands on some old tvs and computers and we destroy them. You know that scene where we drop that tv off a building and it just explodes? I got a 32 inch super heavy tv, me and this other guy, went to the top of a parking garage, in downtown Cleveland next to where the Cavs play. Not even 5 feet up, and there was ice up there and right before we let go I slip. We wanted to get the shot of the tv where the screen was facing forward, but the screen is so thick and heavy, if feel face down, and sounded like a bomb went off, because those tubes are compressed with super thick glass and it blew up man, it was awesome! It was fun, and it’s basically about remembering that we’re human, and you got to draw the line somewhere.
Q – On the album you had guest appearances from Dustin of August Burns Red, and Ricky of This Or The Apocalypse. How did it come about having those guys on the record?
Dennis – Dustin is a super awesome dude, we met him in the studio, I love him. I would love to tour with ABR, Ricky’s just awesome, we toured with him and TOTA before.
Q – A while back you guys started an Indiegogo campaign for a new bus because you were having trouble on the KSE tour, how did it work out for you? You raised a little over 14,000 right?
Dennis – We bought an old handicap bus that we put a lot of money and work into, and we’ll keep it for a long time, it’s sustainable, its diesel and it’s 2007. Our old van is currently somewhere in Fl, we haven’t seen, it’s somewhere near Miami, but I don’t know I haven’t seen it.
Q – What’s the best concert that you’ve ever attended that you didn’t play?
Dennis – Iron Maiden in 2008, the “Somewhere Back In Time” tour. They played 23 songs.
Q – What are some of your favorite music releases of this year?
Dennis – I like some of the new KSE cd, but I don’t like all of it. I don’t know if I’ve been blown away by one release, I like songs like Born Of Osiris, it had some really great songs on it. KSE, Tesseract had like 7 songs that were awesome, there hasn’t been a whole album that’s blown me away but I find myself listening to that stuff. What else came out this year? Protest! But that’s another one where I only like half the album.
Q – After this tour is over, what’s next for Affiance?
Dennis – Merry Christmas! Yeah we’re going to try to finish up writing this next album and try to secure a tour with “errr errr”. And hopefully we get that, and then we’ll go to south Africa for a couple days which is insanely insane, like, I’m going to go to south Africa and play a show, like that’s just weird. That’s just insane and we’ll record in the winter or spring!
Thanks for coming out!
