A Tale of Two Bands: Kevin Conway from East of the Wall

After a brilliant sophomore release, East of the Wall are entering the studio once again in May to record their third full-length, entitled The Apologist. I went out after work and caught up with guitarist and vocalist Kevin Conway, after hearing a great live set at Union Pool, where they played a few songs from their upcoming record, The Apologist (Translation Loss Records).

Read the interview after the Jump.

Your first record, Farmer's Almanac (Forgotten Empire Records) came out and earned East of the Wall a decent reputation in the instrumental music scene.  Two years later, the full-length followup, Ressentiment, was something of a departure.  I loved it, but when we talked at the show with Rosetta, Fight Amp and Kylesa, you told me that there was a mixed reception. Can you tell me  little more about that?

I mean, there is a certain segment of people who were into The Farmer's Almanac and were a little put off by the fact that there were vocals on [Ressentiment], but I mean the way we look at it, we always try to react to the last record we wrote and after doing an instrumental record, we wanted to bring a different element into the sound, so that was just the natural progression of the band.  I think most people were on board with it. There were a few who weren't psyched but hopefully, people will come along for the ride with us when we change it up, you know? Sometimes it won't work out like that, but we're generally really happy with the way the record was received.

With that change, are you going to be going in a new direction again on your third record, The Apologist?

In terms of the vocals, it's going to be more like a half and half split; about half of the songs are instrumentals, a quarter have a little tiny bit of vocals on them in little parts here and there, like some of the stuff you heard tonight and there are some songs that are more covered by vocals like Ressentiment was.  In regard to the sound itself, it's not as discordant of a record; you know what I mean? There was a lot of amelodic stuff on Ressentiment and there's still a hint of that in what we're doing on The Apologist, but it's not as front-and-center to the sound as it was on the first record.  It's still a very heavy record, but it is heavy in a different way than Ressentiment was.You're going to record in Brooklyn on May 8th?

Yeah, it's either May 8th or may 9th, we're loading into Translator Audio with Andrew Schneider, who's done just a million great records.  He's done Cave In, he’s done Keelhaul, he did the last Rosetta record, the last City of Ships record, Made out of Babies, the dude’s done a million records that sound great by really rad bands and we’re really fucking excited to be working with him.  It’s like a dream come true for me.  He’s one of those guys who, any record he’s done, I can just pop it in and it just sounds amazing, so I’m really proud that we’re going to get to work with him.