Band of the Week #310 - Bloom
This week's Band of the Week is Melodic hardcore group Bloom - who have just released their new album 'The Light We Chase' via Pure Noise Records.
Steeped in emotion, nostalgia and experimentation, album #2 for Sydney melodic hardcore collective Bloom vigorously cleaves together the group’s past, present and future, relishing in self-reflection and searing musicianship and ultimately facing the darkness with open arms. A significantly personal and musically diverse collection of songs, it’s fitting that this brand new chapter for Bloom captures them in an entirely new light. Enter: The Light We Chase.
They took a moment to talk to us about how the album came together.
Hey there Bloom, how are you? So your album is out now – how does it feel to have it out there?
Jono - I’m great! It’s really exciting to have gotten over the hurdle of a sophomore album. It’s incredible how quickly this album went from an idea to a finished product. We didn’t want the album to be a long, drawn out process so we all locked in and pushed ourselves to not only write our best material to date, but to also work towards a much tighter deadline than we ever have before.
We started tracking it in the first week of January and chipped away at it between a bunch of touring and then finished it in June. To be in October and able to share the entire album with the world is a great feeling. All the songs still feel fresh to us and we’re excited to be able to tour all the new material.
It is called 'The Light We Chase' – what is the meaning behind that?
Jono - I think the title encapsulates a bunch of different concepts and themes throughout the record. It’s an umbrella for the two main ideas we explored with the lyrics of the album. Initially, the concept for the album was deeply rooted in nostalgia and was a bit of a nod to our childhood/teenage years.
We all grew up in the same area - Belrose in Sydney, Australia and the surrounding suburbs - so between the 5 of us we have a lot of shared memories from our youth. To me, nostalgia is something light and almost dreamlike, and we tend to remember only the best parts as we age. The title ‘The Light We Chase’ is a yearning for those simpler times, desperate to go back to the warmth and comfort of a childhood memory.
The flip side of it as well, is The Light We Chase is also representative of the goals and aspirations we’re trying to achieve, and the future in front of us. I think now that we’ve been a band for a significant amount of time it’s very easy to start questioning yourself and the steps you’ve taken to reach where you are. We’ve been friends since high school and have been really fortunate to experience a lot of incredible things together, but I think there’s a part of all of us that wonders what our lives would be like without this passion project we’ve invested so much time, energy and resources into - if it all ends today, who would we be? We’re constantly striving to create the best thing we can and always looking ahead to what’s next, but in a way the goalposts move forward with every step. The dreams and accolades we set out to achieve as naive 19 year olds are very different to what we want to achieve today. The Light We Chase is an acknowledgement of the anxiety and fear that comes with looking towards the future.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories you are willing to share with us?
We started the record January 3rd in Melbourne in a garage-converted-studio with our producer Sam Bassal. It was a hot summer with some days hitting the high 30s (celcius), and spent a lot of hours sweating up a storm while the afternoon sun would cook us alive. It became a bit of a routine that at 4:30pm every day we’d go down the road and get energy drinks - mostly White Monsters - to give us the second wind we needed to finish the day. It was nice to get outside and touch some grass, and we often would come back from these breaks with a fresh set of ears and new ideas for whatever it was we were working on. The routine was nice and forced us to stop and reset, although drinking half a litre of a very caffeinated drink at 4pm maybe wasn’t the smartest idea when it came to trying to get to sleep each night haha. We broke up the recording process into 2 chunks, we had the aforementioned dates in January where we wrote the album, and then some more dates in April/May to track once we got back from touring in Europe & Japan. We were back in the studio, however this time it was Autumn and had gotten much much colder in Melbourne. There were no more 37 degree days in the studio and instead it was big jackets, beanies and a little heater in the corner. The sun had started setting earlier so our 4:30 walks to get our white monsters got darker and required a few more clothing layers to keep warm. The visual identity of falling leaves and an autumnal colour palette we’ve used for the album really came together in this period as well as the album was mostly finished and our focus had shifted to what we wanted it to look like.
All in all I think it took about 23 days to start and finish the project and there are a lot of fond memories I’ve taken away from the process. One of my favourite moments was right at the tail end when we were doing vocals, it was just Sammy and me in the studio on that day and we’d set up a little monitor that was playing Family Guy episodes on shuffle. I tracked the vocals for ‘Life Moves On Without Us’ while watching Da Boom out of the corner of my eye. At this stage, the cabin fever had truly set in and it felt like we both had a case of the sillies, making each other laugh and watching dumb shit. We had almost entered a flow state where we were flying through vocal tracking and were able to relax and joke around while still being incredibly productive.
What are the key influences behind the album?
Jono - We’ve always drawn influence from a wide pool of artists & different media and it’s pretty all over the place. Some songs have a more direct inspiration, whereas others feel like a natural culmination of our own ideas and the sound we’ve refined for ourselves. I’d say ‘Forget Me Not’ has a bit of a nu-metal bounce sound to it inspired by Soulfly and the like, ‘Keep You’ has a Title Fight Head In The Ceiling Fan/Hyperview feel to it with a touch of early 2000s Aussie Rock you’d hear on the radio and ‘Tongue Tied’ was born from a love of Lizzy Mcalpine. We all also love musical theatre and I think our style of writing in a very literal first-person way that is influenced by our love for big and dramatic musical sequences.
If the album could be a soundtrack to any film – which one and why?
Jono - I think probably some sort of coming of age teen movie - especially the softer songs. ‘Keep You’ and ‘Show Me Who I Am’ have a nostalgic sound to them that feels like running through a field with friends in summer - slowmo sequence while the credits start to roll type feeling. I’m not sure about the heavy songs though, I think modern metalcore breakdowns don’t really work unless we’re talking about some high octane action movie. Maybe if Doom gets a remake we could slap the ending of ‘Withered’ into an action sequence.
Do you have a favourite lyric on the album? If so, which one and why?
Jono - There are a few lyrics that stand out to me, I think the lyric at the end of ‘Glen Street’, “I’ll visit you in your home in my head” is a really pretty way to visualise so much of what the song means. It’s a bittersweet line that feels really visual to me. In ‘Keep You’, the chorus “I keep you, like a fly, trapped in amber in my mind” is another one that I love. Preserving memories in stillness and beauty, it feels like an encapsulation of so much of the album’s theme of holding on to what’s gone.
Now the album is out there – what is next for Bloom?
Jono - A whole lot of touring haha. I’m not sure where we’ll be when this comes out but we’re heading to Europe with Thornhill & Ocean Grove, and then straight across to North America with Silverstein, Thursday and Free Throw. We’ll be getting home on Christmas eve, so it’s about 70 odd days away from home. It’s exciting to be able to release an album and tour it right away, so we’re gonna carry that momentum into next year as well. We’ve got plans for an Australian headline tour to celebrate the album back home as well - I think it’s announced by now - either way, the ball is going to keep rolling! I imagine we’ll take a little breather to reset and recharge but we’re looking forward to another big year of playing music across the globe.
