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Mike Hranica Of TDWP Talks Make Or Break New Album ‘The Act’ And The Toxicity Of Merchandise Commissions

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Of the mid 2000’s-2010’s metal scene, metalcore was the seemingly dominant subgenre. At its peak, metalcore spawned a litany of innovative and monumental bands, but it eventually grew into somewhat of a formulaic tragedy. The subgenre became more of a trend or opportunity for copy-cat bands to rinse and repeat the genre’s stereotypical tropes; relentless breakdowns, contrasting melodic and aggressive vocals, and synchronized crab-squat-headbanging. However, with the overabundance of metalcore bands, many of the subgenre’s pioneering acts have taken to evolving and reinventing their own sound, i.e., The Devil Wears Prada.

Between 2007-20011, The Devil Wears Prada were at the forefront of the metalcore wave, but they’ve since evaluated their own artistic integrity. The band has developed and parted from their dominant metalcore roots with The Act; the TDWP’s newly released and seventh studio album. This album marks the beginning of a new era for TDWP both sonically and existentially. Having Spoke with vocalist Mike Hranica, The Act is make or break for the band, and while “break” isn’t clearly defined, TDWP are sure enough, dead set on their creative rock ambitions with The Act.

What inspired or sparked you guys to reinvent your sound with this new record, The Act?

I’ve always made such a point about being non-complacent with my work and what [The Devil Wears Prada] does and everything, and lo and behold I think we did grow a little complacent with where we were sonically. Musically and songwriting wise, I think Jon [Gering] and Kyle [Sipress] really put a stop to that when they started demoing out stuff and basically reviewing everything they had demo wise for the seventh LP. Once they started getting into it, it felt like it was playing it safe or doing things we’ve already done. We just had this vision and depiction of how standstill and exhausted rock music has been for a while, and we wanted to try and approach it with a little more inventiveness than what we see across the board.

Is that why you supposedly scrapped 60 songs when writing the Act?

I think that scrapping so many songs exemplifies how challenging the record was, and I would certainly credit The Act as being the most challenging record we’ve done as far as exiting our comfort zone, disciplining, and being so highly critical. I think scrapping all those songs certainly marks that.

Root genre’s of music may never die, like rock or metal for instance, but do you think sub-genres like metalcore are inherently meant to die out, or at the very least be reinvented?

It has been a little reinvented, we don’t track our seasons of music so well. I think it’s very bold and obvious, especially with what I’m personally doing with releasing The Act and our collective band. There are such seasons in music and people have such cravings, and it swings and it’s very trendy. I think right now metalcore is really hitting one of those swings, like it’s on the up. You see that with a lot of bands that are just so break-down obvious and very heavy, and there’s also this total reinvention of early 2000’s metalcore. Even down to visually, there’s this nu-metal 90’s visual thing happening, and I think all of that is to testify for where listeners are at, as far as collectively favoring these certain seasons of these certain sub-genres. With that, and it’s not to totally discredit a sub-genre such as metalcore, but I would like music that out stands trends, and I think to a certain extent metalcore does seem to hit a trend. That’s not to say there’s not being great work being executed in the metalcore realm, but it’s also to say a good bit of metalcore is just trendy and not so much outstanding work.

From a business standpoint, how have the economics of touring and record sales changed for you as band, in relation to where you’re at now?

You know we’re all still trying to digest what streaming is versus selling a CD. For me I feel almost a little more comfortable right now as far as streaming actually generating sales and generates money for feeding my dogs, paying electric bills, and my mortgage, versus where we were at as total downloads only a few short years ago. I personally don’t subscribe to any streaming services, but with the death of Itunes I think it’s inevitable. As a vinyl consumer and someone who consumes 99% of my music via download card from vinyl, if I’m listening to an mp3 or spinning the physical record, I’m kind of being put in a weird spot with Itunes. As far as the economics of touring and merchandise, bands know that you have to be really smart and not package your merchandise with your record deals because bands need to get by via merchandise sales on tour. I think one of the biggest things that I personally perceived is it’s more so fuel, and basically everything transportation wise has upped so much as far as being out on tour. I’m one of the members of the band that does have a look at spreadsheets and budgets as far as how things look with settling out a tour and preparing for a tour. The cost versus the reward as we look at the past 50 years for how much a CEO makes versus the average worker, I like to use that example as how I’ve seen transportation costs versus how much the band is making via tickets and merchandise, and also the total unfairness of venue commissions as far as merchandise. It’s always been a hot topic for touring bands, why are we giving 20% of our merchandise sales up to venues when we’re not getting 20% of bar and booze commission?

Has the 20% merchandise commission always been present in the industry? Or has this become more frequent in recent years?

Not to bite the hand that feeds me, but I think it’s largely the fact that AEG and Live Nation have taken over so many venues and so many of the bands touring are doing these corporate shows rather then ‘punk homie’ throwing a gig. We have so many shows, and it’s not just selling 2,000 tickets for house of blues, of course that’s always been Live Nation, but it’s down to these little dive bars that we frequent or play, and still having a corporate promoter throwing the gig. Every time you have a Live Nation or AEG show or festival at least 20% is going to be likely mandatory.

With that in mind, what’s the future hold for TDWP come 2020 and post release of The Act?

It’s entirely up in the air. I‘ve publicly mentioned that this record is make or break. I had a phone call with someone and they said “okay what is break?” That’s a very challenging inquiry that I can’t accurately answer, but that’s where we’re at. It feels compromised to our honesty to go on and try to make records that only answer to trends or to answer to what fans want, as far if they want heaviness or if they want catchy, or if they want only electronic. We’re not in the business to answer to that, so with that we did something that we know is our best effort being The Act. We’re dead set on touring this thing the next 2-3 years and I think maybe in 3 years I can answer that question with less transparency and abstractness.

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