ASTRONOID: Into The Noid

Interview with Brett Boland, Daniel Schwartz, Casey Aylward, and Matt St. Jean by Jeremy Saffer
Photographs by Jeremy Saffer

There are few bands as varied in sound and audience as Astronoid. Having spent the better part of the last two years opening for unholy metal champions Ghost and Zeal & Ardor, as well as prog heroes Periphery and Tesseract, the Lowell, Massachusetts quartet is gearing up to hit the road with Between the Buried and Me. With a unique sound known as dream thrash—an atmospheric mixture of Coheed and Cambria with black metal and thrash—Astronoid is releasing its self-titled follow-up to 2016’s universally praised Air. We talk to the entire band—Brett Boland (vocals, guitar), Daniel Schwartz (bass), Casey Aylward (guitar), and Matt St. Jean (drums)—about the new album, recording and producing their own records, as well as finding out what makes Astronoid the band they are today. 

What are the biggest changes from Air to the new self-titled album?
Brett: Thinking about the dynamic element through the whole record and approaching it more from a vocal perspective rather than shoehorning vocals into songs. We rewrote a lot of parts, really formed the songs, and cut the fat out that didn’t need to be there. We took a lot more time refining everything.
Casey: Air was like flying down the highway until it ended. This one has a lot more ebb and flow, which is nice. I think the biggest difference is that some of the songs for Air were written and then lyrics were put to it. This time the vocal melodies inspired the songs in a big way, which is how you want a song to be in my opinion.

Were you able to spend more time writing and recording the new album than Air?
Daniel: No, Airwas over a longer period of time because we were doing other things and we were working on it when we could. 
Casey: Air was chaotic, and that record was recorded twice, because when we started recording it, it had a different set of songs.
Brett: No, I recorded demos of the songs, but we took so long making the record, we kept writing after we recorded the drums and changing vocal melodies and adding parts. For this one, we had the demos, then we recorded it for real, and nothing changed.
Casey: The demos were very fleshed out. The demos of this would sound like the record, more or less, which is interesting. That’s how prepared this new record was. The actual recording process was very quick. 
Daniel: We were really grinding to get it done towards the end.
Brett: He was getting married (points to Daniel).
Casey: Married four days before we went on tour. 
Daniel: Yeah, we finished the record a couple days before I got married, then we went on tour a couple days after I got married (laughs).
Brett: You got married, and I went home and had to do the final stuff because I couldn’t let him work on his wedding.
Casey: Talking shop at the wedding.
Brett: No, we did not talk shop. 
Daniel: That’s not true (laughs).
Brett: Did we? 
Casey: Yeah, the beers started flowing, and there was a couple of shop talkings. Actually, when I picked you up in the van to leave for tour, you were still at your parent’s house and the tents were still up and you brought a bottle of champagne out to the van (laughs). 
Brett: I guess it was a little different than Air (laughs).
Daniel: Yeah, the process was very different (laughs).

Were there any specific changes you made on the new album?
Casey: Definitely the vocals, for sure.
Brett: I didn’t want blastbeats. If the song called for it and it fit, I would have been cool with it, but it didn’t serve any of the songs. It didn’t make any songs sound better. I wanted this record to breath more and have more of a dynamic to it. I didn’t feel like we needed them, and if we did, they would have been there.
Casey: It was a soft rule that ended up sticking.
Brett: I put them in the demos. We tried them.
Casey: They stuck out like a sore thumb. One thing about this record, to speak to the no blastbeats thing, was because we played so much over the past two years, it was a conscious decision to now go forward with these new songs. Every song isn’t kicking you in the face constantly. You can actually bring it down. It doesn’t matter how good the songs are, you have to look at it not only as a performer, but also if you can go to see your favorite band and if every song is the same velocity, it’s like you get that fatigue. I think the good thing about this record is, not that you write a slow song because this will translate live, but it certainly helps when you’re thinking about a set list and you’re trying to take people into that.
Brett: Me writing a slow song, I’m surprised it even happens (laughs). 
Daniel: I feel like your slow song is instead of 160bpm, it’s 158bpm (laughs).

Since you produce, record, and mix your own albums, is it more laid back process?
Daniel: I think we are pretty hard on ourselves. 
Casey: Dan and Brett hold themselves to such an insane standard, which really works out for us, because it shows in the end product. We all care, obviously, and we expect nothing but the best. At the same time, I do make the joke if no one gave these two dudes a deadline, they would still be mixing Air.
Brett: Oh, yeah, absolutely (laughs). 
Daniel: We spent a lot of time trying to make everything pristine.
Matt: You guys are harder on yourselves because you’re invested in it. 
Brett: Yeah, I would love to work with a producer. I think it would be fun to have someone else’s input on what we’re trying to do. 
Casey: Right, but we also talked about bringing in someone so we can all focus on the task at hand. So, you’re not clouded by the, “Well, if we do this, then I’ll have to fix later.”
Brett: But we still love doing it.
Daniel: Yeah, that’s my favorite thing to do.
Casey: I know, but wouldn’t it be cool to see where this would go without that. It’s not like you would be relinquishing control. It doesn’t affect the artistic outcome, but the fact you guys are so hard on yourselves makes it way better that we’ve never had a budget. 
Brett: I do love what Dan and I add to it. I really think that if anyone else recorded any of this or Air, it wouldn’t be the same. 
Daniel: I just love the process, and I love mixing and doing all of those things.
Brett: I love it and hate it. We killed ourselves that last month and a half before tour, because we were getting ready for tour, we were practicing, and we were finishing the album to be ready for mastering. We actually did a master ourselves, and Magnus [Lindberg] from Cult of Luna ended up doing it. And it was so awesome having someone so important having another set of ears at that level. It’s nice to have your own mix, and then you get engrossed in your own mix and you lose objectivity.

Was it a conscious decision to make the vocals more prominent in the mix?
Casey: Absolutely, 100 percent.
Brett: If you asked, “How are you going to mix this record different?” like before I started, I would have said the vocals would be up.
Casey: We even talked about it. The blastbeat thing aside, the one thing about Airthat often got the comparison from the genres that we were compared to was that things were not flat in mix but the vocals were down even though it was big.
Brett: We took a more black metal approach. 
Daniel: It was perfect for that record, but for this record it needed something that was more up there.
Brett: The songs are more, not poppy, but they’re catchier. 
Daniel: The melodies are the most important part of what’s going on.
Brett: I took more time with these vocal melodies. The way we treated the vocals and recorded the vocals on this record was really cool and a lot of fun. I was still going for more of this that Def Leppard wall of sound harmony thing.
Casey: Yeah, that and if someone were to ask us what separates this record beyond Air, I would say something people might not notice as a casual listener is the vocal up treatment.
Brett: That was also something we were told. People in the industry that I was talking to after Aircame out would be like, “Love the record, wish the vocals were higher.” We wouldn’t have done it, though, if it didn’t aesthetically work.
Daniel: Yeah, it was the right choice for Airdefinitely.
Brett: But for this one, they’re right.

Air delved into a more extreme metal realm, while the new album goes in a progressive and open sounding direction. Was that a deliberate evolution?
Brett: Kind of, because if you take away the blastbeats, you need to fill it with something else, and I love playing with rhythm. I was a drummer first, so rhythm has always been important to me, and playing with that in interesting ways that aren’t too busy is important. I’m trying to fill that space in with something that is more interesting, since it’s not just fast. That’s what it was on Air. It was just blastbeats, but the guitars are doing more interesting rhythm things than you just hear the drums doing. On this record, I tried to reflect that back with the drums, so now everything’s more together and playing as one unit of getting this feeling or emotion across.
Casey: Once you slow things down, there’s automatically more space, not necessarily that you have to fill it, but there’s no way you can convey a thrash or blastbeat feeling without those two things.
Brett: And it served the vocals better. 
Casey: That’s where it opens it up, that’s where it was filled in—vocal melodies and the texture. Airwas layered, but this is a lot of counterpoint and counter melodies.

Do you feel like your sound is becoming more focused and refined?
Casey: I feel like this one has more than Airdid.
Brett: Yeah, but in terms of the record, I feel like it has a theme. 
Casey: Sure, it has a line running through it.
Brett: Yeah, because Airyou could say those are vignettes of different things going on, each song has it’s own character. This is like an arc. It’s more of a journey than Airwas. It has more ups and downs, and it has more to say. From an emotional standpoint and things that are going on in our lives and my life, this is the most I’ve opened up on an album, so it was a lot different for me. Airwas more surface level for us. This is way deeper into who we are as people and what’s going on in our lives. I think that just came though in how the songs came out.

With the vocals being higher in the mix, how did that affect the lyrics? Brett: I went at it the same as I usually do. I write the music first, I try to make vocal melodies to it, and then I attach lyrics to those vocal melodies. I ended up saying things that were more reflections of the past two years since this all started. Actually, a lot of this record is about writing the record. We started working on these songs, and they sucked, were emotionally hollow, and didn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t even write vocal melodies. Then we course corrected, and we were going to write the record we want to write. That’s how everything started to fall into place.

What are your favorite songs on the record?
Brett: “Breath,” “Water,” and “Beyond the Scope.” 
Daniel: “Lost.”It’s been my favorite since it was written.
Casey: “Lost,” “Breath,” I like them all. “I Wish,” which was my least favorite song for so long, but now it feels good. 
Matt: “I Wish” does it for me. I like the way it goes. It’s nice because it’s unique and in its own way straightforward, but it’s also complex.
Casey: Yeah, it’s almost the most Astronoid song on the record.

Who are currently your biggest influences?
Brett: Mew, just the way Jonas Bjerre writes his vocal melodies, he pushes me to come up with something more interesting. The theme of this record for vocals is what would Jonas do? I don’t like to follow the melody of the song vocally. I want to make my own melody like a guitar part. I usually start with an instrument. I rarely start with a vocal melody, so it’s how can I counter this main melody or expand upon it in some way that’s like a theme in variation. That’s really important in our music.
Casey: That’s true. If someone was listening to us for the first time, I can guarantee they couldn’t hum the next part before you sing it.
Brett: I was listening to a lot of Peter Gabriel while we were working on this record, lots of Genesis and also Yes. I’m always listening to metal, so I feel like it’s just always there. Metal has always been a part of my life. The metal foundation is always there. It’s more like what can I add to the foundation?
Matt: It’s always finding the metal in other music. That’s what makes Steely Dan so awesome—you can find all these parallels in what they do. 
Brett: Want to know what I was listening to a shit load while we were working on this? The newest Cradle of Filth record. I fucking loved it, and I loved the one before it. 
Casey: Hammer of the Witches? 
Brett: Yeah, and I thought the new one [Cryptoriana] was even better. That was one of my favorite records.

The new wave of post-metal with crossover bands like Chelsea Wolfe and Ghost Bath is becoming bigger. How do you see that affecting Astronoid?
Brett: I think that it works for us. I feel like we are parallel. We are separate from those bands.
Casey: We play to potentially a few different groups. If you were to put down four different tours and they were vastly different, I could find a way that we could fit on all of them. But as those things continue to rise in popularity, it will obviously work for us. I don’t know what our roll is yet in it, but we’ll find out this year. If you look at the tours we have done, they have been very varied, and it’s bands that you wouldn’t think make sense even in the same sentence.
Brett: If you had told me we would be going on tour with Animals as Leaders when we put out Air,I would have been like, “What?” But it made sense. That Periphery/Animals as Leaders tour felt like we filled a little pocket of something that was missing and it added a little bit of diversity to that lineup.

Will you be sticking with two guitar players moving forward, or looking to find a third guitarist?
Casey: Yes, we will be sticking to two guitarists. I’m sorry to everyone who’s messaged us on Facebook and Twitter, we will not be filling the position. I’m sorry (laughs).
Brett: We have a really good dynamic right now. We have been practicing all these new songs, and I don’t feel like we need to fill that even from a live standpoint.
Casey: The two guitars right now are really filling a lot. It’s striking, it’s very powerful, and there’s not a lot of fat in it. Not that three guitars had fat, but we are executing ideas more distinctly and better right now.
Brett: It sounds more focused.
Daniel: Airwas a lot denser, and that was a part of the sound we were going for with that record. With the new record, it’s a little bit more refined and clear with his vocals.

Brett: I think that it works for us. I feel like we are parallel. We are separate from those bands.
Casey: We play to potentially a few different groups. If you were to put down four different tours and they were vastly different, I could find a way that we could fit on all of them. But as those things continue to rise in popularity, it will obviously work for us. I don’t know what our roll is yet in it, but we’ll find out this year. If you look at the tours we have done, they have been very varied, and it’s bands that you wouldn’t think make sense even in the same sentence.
Brett: If you had told me we would be going on tour with Animals as Leaders when we put out Air,I would have been like, “What?” But it made sense. That Periphery/Animals as Leaders tour felt like we filled a little pocket of something that was missing and it added a little bit of diversity to that lineup.

Will you be sticking with two guitar players moving forward, or looking to find a third guitarist?
Casey: Yes, we will be sticking to two guitarists. I’m sorry to everyone who’s messaged us on Facebook and Twitter, we will not be filling the position. I’m sorry (laughs).
Brett: We have a really good dynamic right now. We have been practicing all these new songs, and I don’t feel like we need to fill that even from a live standpoint.
Casey: The two guitars right now are really filling a lot. It’s striking, it’s very powerful, and there’s not a lot of fat in it. Not that three guitars had fat, but we are executing ideas more distinctly and better right now.
Brett: It sounds more focused.
Daniel: Airwas a lot denser, and that was a part of the sound we were going for with that record. With the new record, it’s a little bit more refined and clear with his vocals.

Brett: I think that it works for us. I feel like we are parallel. We are separate from those bands.
Casey: We play to potentially a few different groups. If you were to put down four different tours and they were vastly different, I could find a way that we could fit on all of them. But as those things continue to rise in popularity, it will obviously work for us. I don’t know what our roll is yet in it, but we’ll find out this year. If you look at the tours we have done, they have been very varied, and it’s bands that you wouldn’t think make sense even in the same sentence.
Brett: If you had told me we would be going on tour with Animals as Leaders when we put out Air,I would have been like, “What?” But it made sense. That Periphery/Animals as Leaders tour felt like we filled a little pocket of something that was missing and it added a little bit of diversity to that lineup.

Will you be sticking with two guitar players moving forward, or looking to find a third guitarist?
Casey: Yes, we will be sticking to two guitarists. I’m sorry to everyone who’s messaged us on Facebook and Twitter, we will not be filling the position. I’m sorry (laughs).
Brett: We have a really good dynamic right now. We have been practicing all these new songs, and I don’t feel like we need to fill that even from a live standpoint.
Casey: The two guitars right now are really filling a lot. It’s striking, it’s very powerful, and there’s not a lot of fat in it. Not that three guitars had fat, but we are executing ideas more distinctly and better right now.
Brett: It sounds more focused.
Daniel: Airwas a lot denser, and that was a part of the sound we were going for with that record. With the new record, it’s a little bit more refined and clear with his vocals.

Brett: I think that it works for us. I feel like we are parallel. We are separate from those bands.
Casey: We play to potentially a few different groups. If you were to put down four different tours and they were vastly different, I could find a way that we could fit on all of them. But as those things continue to rise in popularity, it will obviously work for us. I don’t know what our roll is yet in it, but we’ll find out this year. If you look at the tours we have done, they have been very varied, and it’s bands that you wouldn’t think make sense even in the same sentence.
Brett: If you had told me we would be going on tour with Animals as Leaders when we put out Air,I would have been like, “What?” But it made sense. That Periphery/Animals as Leaders tour felt like we filled a little pocket of something that was missing and it added a little bit of diversity to that lineup.

Will you be sticking with two guitar players moving forward, or looking to find a third guitarist?
Casey: Yes, we will be sticking to two guitarists. I’m sorry to everyone who’s messaged us on Facebook and Twitter, we will not be filling the position. I’m sorry (laughs).
Brett: We have a really good dynamic right now. We have been practicing all these new songs, and I don’t feel like we need to fill that even from a live standpoint.
Casey: The two guitars right now are really filling a lot. It’s striking, it’s very powerful, and there’s not a lot of fat in it. Not that three guitars had fat, but we are executing ideas more distinctly and better right now.
Brett: It sounds more focused.
Daniel: Airwas a lot denser, and that was a part of the sound we were going for with that record. With the new record, it’s a little bit more refined and clear with his vocals.

Brett: I think that it works for us. I feel like we are parallel. We are separate from those bands.
Casey: We play to potentially a few different groups. If you were to put down four different tours and they were vastly different, I could find a way that we could fit on all of them. But as those things continue to rise in popularity, it will obviously work for us. I don’t know what our roll is yet in it, but we’ll find out this year. If you look at the tours we have done, they have been very varied, and it’s bands that you wouldn’t think make sense even in the same sentence.
Brett: If you had told me we would be going on tour with Animals as Leaders when we put out Air,I would have been like, “What?” But it made sense. That Periphery/Animals as Leaders tour felt like we filled a little pocket of something that was missing and it added a little bit of diversity to that lineup.

Will you be sticking with two guitar players moving forward, or looking to find a third guitarist?
Casey: Yes, we will be sticking to two guitarists. I’m sorry to everyone who’s messaged us on Facebook and Twitter, we will not be filling the position. I’m sorry (laughs).
Brett: We have a really good dynamic right now. We have been practicing all these new songs, and I don’t feel like we need to fill that even from a live standpoint.
Casey: The two guitars right now are really filling a lot. It’s striking, it’s very powerful, and there’s not a lot of fat in it. Not that three guitars had fat, but we are executing ideas more distinctly and better right now.
Brett: It sounds more focused.
Daniel: Airwas a lot denser, and that was a part of the sound we were going for with that record. With the new record, it’s a little bit more refined and clear with his vocals.

You have a crossover appeal to the more extreme metal crowd, as well as the prog audience. Where do you see yourselves fitting in?
Brett: I feel like that’s it. We’re right in the middle.
Matt: We are either the heavy band or the light band. 
Brett: But we’re fans of all that stuff, and all that stuff is in our music. It might not be up front all the time, but it’s there, especially with bands like Between the Buried and Me and Tesseract, even though there’s a lot we don’t have in common with them.
Casey: We’ll be able to tell more where we are fitting in or where we will be accepted. It’ll be interesting to see this year where it takes us.

What type of crowd do you prefer to play to? Is one easier to win over than the other if they don’t know Astronoid?
Casey: Ghost was a tough crowd, but here’s the thing, we had a lot of repeat people at shows. You get a lot of crossed arms and that was intimidating, but almost every show we have played since, someone has come because they were either at that Ghost show or saw we were playing with Ghost and checked us out and then ended up coming, so it’s hard to say.
Brett: I thought we had a really great response at that Ghost show.
Daniel: Yeah, we did.
Casey: It’s not like we walked on stage to roaring applause, but by the end we could tell we had won them over, but the first two songs were just like (inhales deeply).
Daniel: Those shows were intimidating.
Casey: But the Tesseract shows were an easy fucking crowd. Every show was like so sick. That’s right in the wheelhouse.
Brett:I wouldn’t say any of them were easier than the other.
Casey:You don’t think so?
Brett:No, I feel like people found what they were looking for, but they were all different things that we offered.
Matt:What it really comes down to is there is a crowd of people that is open to music. When you have to win people over because they are there for one specific thing, that is tougher.

Has touring with different bands and playing for their fan bases had any effect on how you perform or write?
Casey:The performance thing is funny, because if you look at us, we love The Dillinger Escape Plan and we grew up going to see that band, so there’s a little bit of us that feels like we have to perform. But when we get on stage, we have been playing in bands for so long, it kicks in and that is where we shine, because it’s probably a little more chaotic than you would think it would be if you just heard our band. 
Brett:I grew up watching James Hetfield, and that’s how I stand and that’s how I play the guitar. I’m just a sad caricature of him playing this dream thrash (laughs).

Weren’t you guys in a band called Hetfield & Hetfield? Did it have anything to do with James Hetfield?
Brett:No.
Casey:It has everything to do with James Hetfield. 
Brett:(laughs)
Casey:I was living in Seattle at the time, and I was sending ideas to Brett back and forth about guitars I wanted. I wanted to get an Explorer, and he was like, “I was also thinking about getting an Explorer.” And I’m going, “I’m getting the Explorer, and I’m going to be Hetfield.” Then he goes, “No, I’m Hetfield,” so we decided to start a band called Hetfield & Hetfield, where we were both going to be Hetfield. Then I started sending songs to him, and when we jammed, they worked. The ironic thing is I never got an Explorer (laughs).
Brett:Ironically, I didn’t either (laughs).

Do you change your set list depending on the band you’re opening for?Brett:Definitely, we try and tailor it. We have to cater to the audience, but not outside of what we would normally want to do. 
Casey:If we are touring with an outrageously heavy band, we try to be a little heavier. Right now, we are in a position where we are going out on this tour and only wanted to play new songs, and we realized that we can’t do that.
Brett:We were sick of playing Airsongs, and we thought this would be a very great time to bring out Stargazer [2013], because the Zeal & Ardor tour was more of a black metal audience. The crowed really loved it, and it was something that we had never done the way we did it. It opened up our fans to older material they may not have checked out. 

What have been some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned over the past couple years of touring?
Casey:We pride ourselves on being to be the most professional opening band that any band has ever brought out—being on time, getting our shit set up, and we probably have the fastest stage breakdown. The tour managers are telling us to breakdown slower (laughs).
Brett:We try our hardest. We’re not perfect, but we try. The thing that I’ve learned is, I can’t understate how important Dan [Tompkins, vocals] from Tesseract is to just how I am as a musician now. When we first started touring with them, I asked him if he could give me some pointers, and he’s, “Yeah, man, we’ll talk.” And then he came back after the show and was, “You have a few minutes?” And he showed me all this stuff, really took his time, and helped me out and told me to relax and not to go as hard as I was going and just how to take care of myself. It was very beneficial and really helped us a lot. Every show after that was better for me and everyone else in the band. 

If you were to headline a tour, what bands would you want to bring with you?
Casey: We’re talking about that right now (laughs). 
Brett: I would love to tour with Health. I think that would be a lot of fun. It would be a really interesting genre that we would reach our hand into because they do a really great job at coming over to us in the metal realm, where I feel like they are more EDM and electric focused. 
Casey: I remember as a kid, you go to a bill and it’s four fucking different bands. I mean, from a downbeat hardcore band, a crust punk band, and then you might have a Shadows Fall metalcore band to a ska band, that’s literally how shows used to be. I don’t want it to go back to that necessarily, but I’d like to see more varied bills—us and Health, or us and Mew, or us and Big Jesus. Something that’s not too far removed, but at the same time you don’t get that fatigue of four bands doing the same thing the whole time.

What are some bands you would love to tour with?
Casey:Any day of the week, Ghost again, 100 percent. Metallica, that’s bucket list and a big ask.
Brett:Sigor Rós. 
Daniel:Yeah, that would be cool.
Matt:Yeah, they’re the obvious.
Casey:Smashing Pumpkins, anything that has even a hint of ethereal would be so awesome. 
Matt:David Byrne. 
Brett:I want him on a song. 

Are any new songs on the set list for the Between the Buried and Me tour? 
Casey:Four.

Which four?
Brett:Not telling. It’s primarily new stuff, but the hits are there. It’s really hard. I don’t want to play those songs, but I understand that people like those songs.
Casey:It’s a natural transition of you release a record, then you want to get as far away from that record as possible. 

What are your favorite songs to perform live?
Brett:I love playing “Up and Atom.” 
Daniel:I really like “Incandescent.” That’s the one we open with.
Casey:Yeah, me too. It sets the tone. I’m digging “Dream in Lines,” the new single. That one feels really good, really locked in, and it feels like it won’t be so strange going from any of the old songs into that one. 
Brett:My favorite new one to play is “Fault.”
Casey:That’s a good example of how you can be moody and also thrashy and heavy at the same time. 

What do you have lined up for 2019?
Brett:I don’t know. It’s all up in the air right now. There are things in the ether, and there is rumbling.
Casey:Yeah, we either know what we are doing until the fall, or nothing’s happening (laughs).
Brett:We’re going to have a busy year. I just don’t know how it’s going to unfold. 
Casey:It’s like you have five cards, and they are all facing away from you. And one by one they are going to turn over. It’s like a game show. It’s like don’t make any solid plans until November, but also what are they? It’s exciting.

Pick up Astronoid on Feb 1st or pre-order by clicking the album cover below and don’t miss them on tour with Between The Buried And Me this winter!