When recording a sophomore album, bands commonly have two options; maintain the sound they delivered on their debut, or go completely left of centre and deliver something unexpected and new. Gold Coast’s Awaken I Am have led with the latter, dropping their most experimental and diverse release to date.
“We wanted to maintain heavy elements but then we also wanted to add some funky bass riffs and a few different genres and elements in there, which turned out really cool,” explains amiable front man Adam Douglas. “It’s a bit more Pop/RNB style, which I really enjoyed doing. The biggest thing for us was that we wanted to do our own thing and not just follow the scene.”
After being signed to the esteemed Victory Records in late 2016, 2017 saw Awaken I Am head over to America to record Blind Love with the revered Taylor Larsen, who has previously produced albums for bands such as Periphery and From First To Last.
“At first it was pretty overwhelming,” responds Douglas when asked about the process of recording, “but he was so awesome to work with.
“He has a completely different ear to anyone else and had extremely valid advice to input. He was also just a really awesome dude, which made it so much easier. We never had a schedule, we would go into the studio and record some stuff and if the vibe wasn’t as good as we wanted we would duck out for a bit and then come back more level headed, it was a very chilled out recording process. When you stick to a schedule it becomes pretty stale and tedious and you lose a lot of creativity, so I was glad we had a lot of flexibility.”
The finished result sees Awaken I Am stepping into uncharted territory as a band, delivering a unique and technical post-hardcore release unparalleled to many other acts within their genre. Propagating themes of love and loss, Douglas decided to construct the albums lyrics around a specific and personal motif.
“Love is blind; which is a pretty common saying but I think it is for a reason,” he says. “The whole album is based around broken relationships and trying to mend problems and accept other’s faults. It is all written about my relationships, so it’s pretty personal which is cool. I find it comes across a lot more real and lets you put a lot more emotion into the songs that way, but it’s also hard because I wanted to make sure I could write it in a way that anyone could relate to it.”
With Blind Love set to drop on September 29, Douglas couldn’t be more excited for everyone to hear it.
“I am so stoked,” he says, “I cannot wait to get it out as it’s been quite a bit of a process but we are all really happy with how it’s turned out and we can’t wait for people to hear it. It’s a lot different from our usual sound, so that’s exciting!”
Release: Blind Love, available September 29
Written by Alex Callan