San Diego natives Pierce The Veil will soon be back on Australian shores touring with Silverstein, Beartooth and Storm The Sky. We caught up Pierce The Veil drummer Mike Fuentes to chat about their awesome new album Misadventures.

SCENEzine
How’s 2016 been for you so far?

Mike Fuentes
Man it’s been great. Especially recently now that the records out so we can tour and play more shows. It was a long road to finish this record so we are all celebrating the fact that it’s finally out now.

SCENEzine
Congrats on Misadventures it’s one of our favourite albums so far this year. You must be stoked with the final product?

Mike Fuentes
Yeah man we worked our asses off on this record. We didn’t want to put it out when everyone was rushing us and telling us it had to be out at a certain time. We were like when it’s ready it’s ready. We called the shots on this record and did what we wanted to and took us much time as it needed. I think people realise why we were taking all that time and they tell us that it was worth the wait. That’s good news to us.

SCENEzine
You recently released a video for the super catchy track “Circles”. Was that fun to make?

Mike Fuentes
Yeah, videos are always kind of tough for us. We get these treatments from directors and they don’t necessarily know us as people or our vibe. So it’s always a struggle because we end up having to come up with our own treatments. When it comes down to it we know ourselves the best and know what direction we want to go to. For this one it took a while to come up with a treatment for it. We just started looking at old movies and there’s a movie called nothing but trouble that I’m a huge fan of and we kind of based it off that. We took one day in LA and we did a sixteen hour day and shot it all in one day. It was super exhausting but I’m stoked how it came out.

SCENEzine
What does the album title Misadventures represent to you?

Mike Fuentes
To me it’s the whole process we had during creating this record. It was so mellow going into it we had these songs we were super stoked on and we felt comfortable going into the studio with our producer Dan Korneff, he did Collide With The Sky. We already knew how he works. He gets us and we get him we just grind it out everyday. But we got in there and ended up having to cut two songs that we had out of the eleven. So we ended up having to write two songs in the studio which was way different for us. We usually spend months and months on each song sometimes to be in the studio and have to write two on the spot was crazy for us. That became the last two songs off the record which is “Sambuka” and “Song for Isabelle”.

SCENEzine
There’s a really cool beat behind “Song for Isabelle” did that take a while to develop?

Mike Fuentes
Yeah that song was super hard to write. We kept just messing around with parts. It always started with us setting up in a circle in the studio and there were times we were switching instruments Tony was on drums and I was on Bass. It was the worst thing you could ever imagine (laughs) it was horrible I hope those recordings aren’t out there (laughs).

But we kept hacking away and I found this beat that I kept playing over and over, it caught their attention. We ended up laying down the beat and some stuff underneath it with other guys and came back to it. We kind of wrote that song off the beginning drum beat which was kind of cool.

SCENEzine
Is there a story behind the “Some days I sit and wish was a kid again” lyric towards the end of the song?

Mike Fuentes
(laughs) Me and my brother we just remember that from back in the day on the radio. Being down at the beach and hanging out with all of our friends and hearing it.

It was just a cool vibe. When we writing I the studio we had this ending that was kind of a jam ending Vic just started singing that out of nowhere and we were like whoa that sounds cool. We all remembered it right off the bat and we were like we probably can’t use that. We went to the label and sure enough they got clearance for it and we were allowed to use it.

SCENEzine
You guys are celebrating ten years as Pierce The Veil is it crazy to look back and see how far you’ve come with the rise and fall of myspace to nowadays stuff like instagram and twitter?

Mike Fuentes
Yeah we’ve always tried to just work as hard as we can and push ourselves in any aspect. I remember when myspace was going on me and my brother have a buddy who is a computer programmer that’s a super smart dude. He told us back in the day there’s this thing called twitter that’s about to blow up and I’m going to sign you guys up for it because it’s going to work great for bands. I was like what? He explained to us what twitter was and I was like that sounds so weird, people are just going to talk about their day how will that help us out?

But we trusted him and ended up signing up for it and all of a sudden it blew up. We’ve always tried to keep on top of not just the music side but also the business side. You have to be smart to be successful in this industry it’s kind of a no brainer.

SCENEzine
You’ll soon be back in Australia touring. Do you have any particular memories from past visits?

Mike Fuentes
Yes when we played Soundwave (rest in peace) we played Perth and that was the last show of the tour and the show was going off. We were three songs in and the stage manager came on stage and shut us off. He basically just made us stop playing. Apparently Metallica wanted us to stop playing because they wanted to be the only band playing at that time. So we were forced to stop and we only got to play three songs, it was such a bummer. I’m pretty sure I kicked my whole drum kit over. So we are going back to Perth on this tour with Beartooth, Silverstein and Storm The Sky it’s going to be a good time to get back there.

SCENEzine
Maybe give the Perth audience one more song than the other cities?

Mike Fuentes
(laughs) yeah we’ll give them an extra couple of songs. It wasn’t our fault I swear.

SCENEzine
Your coming with Silverstein and early on you in your career you would support them. Is it cool that you can now return the favour?

Mike Fuentes
Absolutely, we were talking about it the other day. We did a tour with Silverstein when we were babies and they used to have these things called tour books. They don’t have them anymore but basically the headlining band makes them and they hand them out to the openers. It like the tour routing and sometimes they will have headliner rules (laughs).

We got one on that Silverstein tour and they had some pretty funny ones. We are definitely going to get them back for it. They had like scheduled showers when we only had like an hour window to shower the whole day. Some silly, funny headliner things that we were like come on guys. Now it’s our turn to get them back. I think we are going to give them a fifteen minute window for showers (laughs).

SCENEzine
Is there anything else you want to do in Australia besides play shows?

Mike Fuentes
I think this is the first time that we are going over when it’s going to be your winter. I always like going to the beaches there I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go this time because it’ll be a little chilly. I just want to have a good time and hang out with the locals.

SCENEzine
Being that your from San Diego have you had a chance to hear the new Blink 182 album?

Mike Fuentes
Oh yeah, it’s good.

SCENEzine
Was Travis an influence to you growing up?

Mike Fuentes
Oh hell yeah. Travis is a beast. I read part of his book it’s interesting to hear some of his stories. It was cool to hear about back when he played with The Aquabats. He says he wanted to play in any band he could and he ended up taking any gig he could. Every single weekend a band would hit him up asking him to play and he would say yep send me the songs.

The next weekend a different band. He was hustling so hard because he wanted to make it. He just wanted to find a band and Blink picked him up at the perfect time. Then it talks about how he started buying a different car every weekend with all the money (laughs). I though that was cool too (laughs).

SCENEzine
One of our favourite Pierce The Veil songs is “Hold on till May”. It sounds equally awesome when done acoustic. Are you surprised how well your songs translate acoustically?

Mike Fuentes
Not really because a lot of the times songs will start off acoustic. Vic will just come up with a couple of chords and a melody and write it on acoustic then switch it over to electric.

A lot of times recently we’ve been doing acoustic stuff for radio which is brand new to us. So it’s been kind of cool rearranging certain parts to play the songs acoustic. I’ve been playing with a tambourine and a shaker. I think we are actually going to do something like that live with all four of us up front. Like a stripped down version of one of our songs, it’s fun.I think it’s different and a lot of bands can’t really do that. It’s cool to get intimate every now and then.

SCENEzine
Also being from San Diego you guys are known for your Mexican food. Do you have any tips for Aussie tourists when over there other than Taco Bell?

Mike Fuentes
(laughs) That’s funny. I’ve actually had some good Mexican food in Australia but I forget what it was called. It was kind of like a chipotle but not as good. We are so spoilt over here with our Mexican food. When we get other places we are craving it. But definitely don’t go for that Taco Bell shit go for the real shit (laughs).

SCENEzine
Can you leave us a last message for your Australian fans excited to see you live soon?

Mike Fuentes
Yes Australian tour with Beartooth, Silverstein and Storm The Sky come to the shows and let’s hang out. Get in the pit.

(interview by Christian Ross)