Story Of The Year are back with their highly anticipated new album Tear Me To Pieces, their first in over five years. We caught up with guitarist Ryan Phillips ahead of the release to delve into the band’s recent single WAR, discussing the song writing process, themes and stories from behind the scenes.
Can you give us your quick elevator pitch on this track? Why does this one standout for you?
It checks all of the boxes for what people love about SOTY: big guitar riffs, anthemic choruses, interesting production, and lyrics full of metaphor and sung with conviction.
How did you tackle the writing process for the song? Was there anything unique about this track compared to your usual/previous approach?
The musical composition for this song started how almost all of our songs start: with a simple demo that I write/record and then send the band. Dan takes that demo and writes melodies to it and it becomes a SOTY song. In that sense, there was nothing really unique about how this song came about. That said, there was one huge difference on this album – it was the first time we’ve ever collaborated with outside songwriters. So while the music, riffs, etc came from band demos, the lyrics were written by us sitting in a room with some really talented writers, just letting ideas flow.
Can you tell us how the song’s theme came about?
The theme, or lyrical content of the song happened how all of our best songs happened: we (or Dan) just started writing without agenda or without a specific theme and we just let it flow and the song almost writes itself. It’s kind of difficult to articulate, but sometimes songs just come out in a stream of consciousness, and it’s not until you are half-way finished writing them until you start to figure out what the song is about. The theme presents itself, and it’s random, and it’s just this pure thing that happens. All of the sudden you know what the song wanted to be about, and you change some words here and there and finish it.
Tell us about the video, do the themes of the single transfer to the video?
Haha, no. The video has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrics, we just thought it would be super fun. I’ve been waiting years to make a music video that is a terrible 70’s action movie, but we needed a song like WAR that would stylistically lend itself to a video like this. This wouldn’t work with Until the Day I Die, or really 95% of our songs. It took a song called WAR with a chorus about a person trying to get revenge to be able to do a video like this.
Do you have any behind the scenes stories from the video shoot?
Nothing specific, just that it was without question the most fun we’ve ever had making a music video. I’ve waited my whole life to be in a bad action movie!
Anything else you’d like to add for our readers?
After many years of being a “part-time” band we are back! We’ll be doing more shows/touring this year than we have in the last 10, so keep an eye out for that!
Story Of The Year’s new album Tear Me To Pieces is due for release on 10th March 2023 via SharpTone Records, available to pre-order/pre-save HERE.
