Touche Amore: "Crowd participation makes us feel amazing, grateful, and at home"

The essence of post-hardcore can usually be narrowed down between very sharp lyrics, pure but hard musical soul and captivating emotion. This essence, Touche Amore is a band that embraced and embraced it from the beginning of their creation. Step by step, their path was plagued by personal events and experiences that, instead of leading to their destruction, unfolded into increasingly dynamic and jaw-dropping musical releases, perhaps culminating in last year's release, "Spiral In A Straight Line".

Known for their explosive stage presence, Touche Amore are coming to Athens for the first time, for a concert that is expected to be unforgettable just like any of their appearances that anyone is lucky enough to attend. On the occasion of this upcoming concert meeting, Touche Amore shares with us their impatience and what happened to their band in the last ten years.

Hello and welcome to Rocking.gr! It's been about ten years since we last hosted you here. A lot has happened in this time that we will specifically speak for, but what would you say to yourselves ten years ago if you could?

To myself ten years ago, you would not believe the opportunities afforded to you in the years ahead!

Last time we spoke, it was around the time "Is Survived By" was out, noting a more melodic approach for the band. A few years later though, the release of "Stage Four" noted a very important and heartbreaking experience, also making your sound more emotional. Looking back, how do you feel about releasing an album even more personal than the previous ones?

It feels great, and honest.

Jeremy's use of words are very easy to grasp on and relate to

Some time passed again, and then we face this global state where everyone had to face the same struggles. We face the global quarantine with "Lament", that stayed melodic, sad and emotional, but this time, even though its themes derived from personal experiences, it was even further describing the feelings of more and more people. Was it intentional to reach out to more souls like this?

I don't write the lyrics for the band, but I think whether Jeremy is speaking directly to people or not, his use of words are very easy to grasp on and relate to.

I found it really lovely to include all of your own and good friends' pets, or better, four-legged family in the video clip of "Reminders". How important were these souls for you in quarantine?

They were all extremely important! I'm still upset that my first dog Benny (who we adopted in November of 2020) didn't make it into the video. Maybe we should do an update / director's cut!

Quarantine presented an interesting problem for us

Since live shows, something that we will come back to later, are a very important part of your existence as a band, how was it for you to experience a lockdown with no concerts?

It felt very strange to release a record into a void of no touring. I'll say it presented an interesting problem for us, in which we were able to thankfully leaning into the highly visual nature of our band and find unique ways to make videos and other content such as the live streamed record release. You have to create energy and interest in new ways without a crowd!

We generally take the body of work we are most proud of and move forward with that to the next album

Slowly, the world got back to normal, at least kind of, and then the imminent release of "Spiral In A Straight Line" brought us your most inclusive work to date, and by inclusive I mean incorporating stronger, more hardcore approaches reminding your earlier years, along with the more melodic sound of your most recent releases. Were you aiming for that or did it occur naturally?

I think both - we generally take the body of work we are most proud of and move forward with that to the next album. At this point we just write what we feel without much preconceived agenda.

I know some people then and there are wondering, what exactly is a "Hal Ashby catastrophe" and where do you see it happening in life?

It involves a misunderstood character.

In this album, you've had a couple of features, with Lou Barlow and Julien Barker respectively. How did it work out for them to participate in your songs? Why did you choose them to have that part in each song?

Lou Barlow we did not know personally, so when we made the connection in the song that theirs could be sung over ours we went on a mission to seek him out and was pleasantly surprised that he wanted to be a part of the record. Julien at this point is an old friend, and so lovely and talented to be around. Natural fit.

The darkness felt like a natural visual companion to the music

Where does "Spiral In A Straight Line" album art come from?

We wrote the album during a historically and uncharacteristically rainy year in Los Angeles. The darkness felt like a natural visual companion to the music. The feeling of being in your own head, not wanting to face or address what's on the other side.

Again related with collaborations, since you are used to often releasing split releases with bands, how did the collaboration with Circa Survive on your latest split record came about.

We toured with Circa in 2012 and have stayed tight over the years. I can't remember if Two Minutes to Late Night (web series that hosted the collaboration) suggested us two, or if we came to the idea together. Really fun to learn a song I'm so familiar with so many years later and re-interpret it. I used a b-bender telecaster to mimic the glissando of Anthony's voice sliding from one note up into another. When placed behind Jeremy's melodic yell I think its quite impacting!

We all have very different influences, and they all come together to create our sound

We have followed your musical expeditions through the years, and going back, we can see you ever so slightly evolving your sound, step by step. How hard is it for a band to make slight changes in their sound instead of rapidly hoping between genres or keeping the same style over and over, how hard is it to achieve this balance?

Not difficult at all! It's quite natural as we all have very different influences, and they all come together to create our sound. We've discussed that the bands we generally all agree on liking (Converge, Envy, Rancid, Death Cab for Cutie, Jimmy Eat World) can vaguely sum up the breadth of our sound.

A thing I've noticed and I'm looking forward to personally experiencing, is that your live shows have a form of cathartic experience, a note that band and audience have to sing together as if they have one lung. How important for you is it to achieve this type of experiences in live shows?

Crowd participation makes us feel amazing, grateful, and at home.

You've played a lot of festivals and new places too! Which one was your favorite?

Like you said, we've had a LOT of experiences over the years and are always craving something new - those are generally our favorite as the crowds are generally excited that we haven't been there yet either!

On your most recent tour, we will finally have the opportunity to see you live in our home city of Athens, and it's going to also be the last date of the tour. Are you excited about this?

Extremely excited! Not only because we've not performed in Greece before, but my mother's family is from Ioannina and I would take any opportunity to visit. Curious if there's any kind of punk or hardcore scene up there!

Are there any artists that you easily recall were amazing while playing with you in a show or festival?

Too many to name over the years! We just played with a band called Smile in Germany that was really amazing. Partisan in Belgium. Moe in Oslo. Birds in Row in France. Bo Ningen stood out to us at Primavera several years ago.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer to our questions. Please, communicate everything you'd like to our readers and your audience in Greece.

We cant overstate our excitement. Θα τα πούμε σύντομα!