Flyleaf Talks About the Band’s New Album, ‘New Horizons.’ - Interview

Tweet Flyleaf exploded onto the scene in 2005 with the band's self-titled debut album. The album sold more than one million copies and since then, Flyleaf has become a legitimate force in rock music. Their new album, "New Horizons," is set for release October 30, 2012. Guitarist Jared Hartmann phoned in to talk about "New Horizons."

Thanks for calling. I remember seeing you in 2006 on the Family Values Tour with Korn and Stone Sour. Do you enjoy doing those types of festivals more as opposed to regular touring?

Both I like for different reasons. Whenever we do a headlining tour it's a lot more engineered; it's usually just our fans that are there. You'll hear people singing louder and the energy is a little different. At the huge events, if there are so many people, that energy is very overwhelming. Sometimes it's nice to play the festival tours because you only have to play for 30 minutes as opposed to headline tours where you play for over an hour.

The band has a new album coming out called "New Horizons." This is your third studio album, the first since 2009. How was the writing process different on this album as opposed to previous ones?

The writing process was pretty similar to "Memento Mori" in the style that we did it. We picked a couple weeks, because Lacey (Sturm) lives in Pittsburgh now, to get together and write, so us guys would do a lot of writing here in Texas. We had a guy named Mark Lewis who would come down and help us arrange our thoughts and make demos. I would come up with a guitar riff or song idea, or Sameer (Bhattacharya) would come up with a whole song, or Pat (Seals) would come with a whole song or an idea and we would bounce it off each other. Everyone would just add their parts; James (Culpepper) would put drums down on it, I would put guitars, and we would listen to it back and say, 'We can change this here.'

The first single, "New Horizons," was just released. What has been the response so far and what can fans expect from the rest of the album?

Everything I've read so far has been good and we're happy about that. I was really excited about 'New Horizons.' It's kind of different from other songs we've done before. I love Third Eye Blind, bands like that. I also love Slipknot and Deftones so there's a lot of diversity in the record. I heard that some fans are a little disappointed with the song; they thought it was too pop. We have songs for them on the record so you don't have to worry. There's a good balance. A lot of our personal tastes come out and I'm really excited. I think it's our best record.

When you go out on tour, how much of the new album gets played?

We've been practicing a set and depending on set length and how long we play we'll probably play half new record and split between self-titled and 'Memento Mori.' We know there are songs we have to play.

Flyleaf has been around long enough to see changes within the music industry and how fans acquire media, whether it's by iTunes or another digital format. How do you market your band differently in this era versus back in the day when CDs were prevalent?

We have to be more aggressive on social media - Twitter and Facebook. When we started we barely had cell phones. That's something I've noticed that's different; how we interact with fans. They want to know all about you, what you're doing. Sometimes I'm good about it, sometimes I'm not. But we love our fans and how we impact them.

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Jason Tanamor is the Editor of Zoiks! Online. He is also the author of the novels, "Hello Lesbian!" and "Anonymous." Follow him on Twitter at @zoiks_online. Email Jason at jason@zoiksonline.com.

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