By Cathy A. Campagna

Shoutweb: Since you have an art background, you must do the album covers and t-shirts.

Quentin: I do most of it, I do like the shirts. I did the artwork and the layout for the last full length. A friend of mine did the artwork for the EP, but then I did the layout with one of the guys from Equal Vision. It's cool to establish the look of the band over the years, but it's definitely a lot of work. If I had just gotten out of college and I didn't have a couple of years of design work under my belt, I would love doing it, but I just got really burnt out on the whole graphic design thing prior to the band. It kind of brings back some bad memories, even if it's like me calling up the printers and making sure everything is to spec, because half of that stuff is just management work. It's kind of brutal.

Shoutweb: You said there was going to be more singing on the next record. How else is it going to be a departure from your previous work?

Quentin: It's awesome already. I can say that it is already turning out phenomenal. There are going to be some songs on there where you can listen to them and say that is straight up Vaux rock songs, and I feel like a lot of it is way mature. It's really cool, it's definitely all over the place, and we kind of have established ourselves as that kind of band already. It had lots of cool elements, lots of exciting instruments. It was a lot of fun to record the stuff over there in England. We just got back a couple of weeks ago from doing the music.

Shoutweb: So you chose to do the whole record out in England?

Quentin: Yeah, then I go back to England on Sunday to finish recording the vocals. Our producer is from over there, and they don't know any of those bands over here that are popular out of the Warped Tour kind of crowd. A lot of those bands are great bands, but at the same time, there are a lot of them right now. The record was not approached with that kind of mentality at all. They are still our songs, but it doesn't have any of that American rock sound to it. At least, I don't think so at this point, and that is kind of what we were looking for. That's why we pushed to do it over there, and the label pushed to do it over there. So it sounds great so far and it's not even mixed or anything yet.

Shoutweb: You said there were some exciting instruments, can you elaborate on that?

Quentin: Yeah, there is a lot of piano on it, there are all kinds of stuff on it. We were at this great studio, it was on the countryside and there were all kinds of instruments. We'd hook in paper clips to the piano strings to make them sound like glockenspiels. And the producer, Garrett Lee, he was a maniac and we had a ton of different guitars to try out, organs and a lot of percussion instruments. It was pretty exciting, and when you weren't recording there were all kind of great instruments sitting around, so we were all trying to figure out new parts. One of the songs was written completely in the studio, it was cool. The studio is called Jacob Studio, it's named after some sheep that hang out there. Garrett Lee, he just finished the U2 record. He did the Snow Patrol record.

Shoutweb: You gave birth to one song in the studio, what was that like? That spur of the moment flow of creativity must feel great.

Quentin: It was cool, we had worked with him for a couple of weeks at that point, and we were like, "Let's write a song that he is not going to want to change anything in." So we did just that, he came back in and he was like, "Cool, let's record it." I think we were trying to figure out a few chords for another song, and we came up with the main riff for that song, and just had to put in parts of it. It just kind of came into being. It's exciting when things come that spontaneously...it's a good energy. There is something about playing things for the first time and not trying to get things totally perfectly down. A lot of things sound better when they are a little bit rough.

Shoutweb: Can you reveal a few of the titles?

Quentin: You know what, we went into this record having everything loose...we wrote the songs, but we approached it like if we need to switch things around or change some parts in the studio, none of us are going to get affected by it. That goes for the vocals too. So a lot of that stuff will get figured out in the next couple of weeks. I don't really know yet because there is going to be a lot of that spontaneity when I am going to be going over the vocals as well.

Shoutweb: But you have a lot of the lyrics written already?

Quentin: I have a lot of them written, but I have a feeling that I will probably change. I have everything pretty much written out, but because we have the time on this record. We have not had that before. It's been, "Okay, we are almost done recording, and we have to do all the singing in the last three days." So on this one I have a couple of weeks to do vocals so the producer and I will have time to sit there and just go over it. And I think it will be better to just do it there on the fly even though I have a lot of it written out already. That is the goal at least, we will see how it all turns out, but I am feeling good about it.

Shoutweb: From listening to the first EP, would you say that the band has gotten a little angrier over time?

Quentin: The new EP is definitely pretty brutal compared to a lot of the stuff, but that was the goal. It was our last EP before the record that is going to come out on Atlantic, and we wanted that sucker to be kind of dense and sick. Not exactly like the record that follows it, so that one might have been a little angrier than the new, but it has a lot of songs that are just has heavy as that. But it also has a lot more stuff that has a little more texture and melody to it. If you listen to the new one it wouldn't sound as angry as the EP overall.

Shoutweb: So you are just on some downtime now?

Quentin: Yeah, we basically have been writing music or been on tour for the entire year, so it's going to be nice to have time off. Most of the guys are back in Denver, but I am out here with my parents in New Jersey. I am from Jersey, but I have been around Denver for the last six years now.

Shoutweb: Your Krome [NJ venue] show got cancelled because of a shooting. Now this tragedy with Dimebag, what are your thoughts on this issue?

Quentin: I heard about Dimebag because of my mother, she called, and said a guy got shot at a concert. She is always worried about that kind of thing because of me playing music. I flipped on the news and it was on when I turned it on, I was like, "Wow, Dimebag Darrell I can't believe that." I don't know, but you would almost think it would happen more with obsessed fans these days, I mean, Pantera was a huge band. I don't know, there are some crazy people on this planet. It's wild though. That Krome thing, was that even people at a concert. I don't think it was a rock show, I don't know. Hopefully, it's not a trend. The guy in Columbus went through a back path that's what I read in the paper, so he didn't go through security. It was something that he really planned on doing. That's scary that there wasn't a way to prevent all that.

Shoutweb: Aside from the Warped Tour how has touring been for you in general? You had done some shows with Head Automica as well.

Quentin: Yeah, they were friends of ours from the Glassjaw days, and it's cool to see these bands getting successful. All these bands like Thrice and Thursday, they are friends of ours so it's really cool. It's incredible to see how many of these bands are made of really cool people, like I imagine something like glam rock was made out of real assholes. I think there is something about the scene right, it's made up out of real genuine people who are really enjoying music. So it's pretty cool.

Shoutweb: Is there a set release date yet?

Quentin: Hopefully, it will be early-summer. I would like to have it come out tomorrow, but for some reason it always take forever with these things. But the album will be done mid-February, but then they have to do all their industry stuff to it. Marketing and all that.

Shoutweb: What's it like being on Atlantic?

Quentin: So far it's been awesome, just the fact that we have been able to do this record in England. It's phenomenal, with that producer. Definitely would not have guessed I would be on Atlantic. It's really cool.

Shoutweb: Thanks for your time Quentin and good luck with the vocals.

Quentin: Thank you!