Interview with Within Shadows

Recently I sent some questions to Within Shadows to be answered. These were the responses I received.

Who are you and what is your band name?

We are Within Shadows, a Canadian metal variety band.

Vocals – Sean Farias

Drums – Jordan Heffernan

Guitar – Brad Tiessen

Bass – Jacob Bailey

What does your band name mean and where did it come from?

Our band name was created by Sean back in 2012. It came to him since it fit well with the theme of what he wanted the music project to be. The name represents the shadows of negativity that surrounded him through his life as he uses music to break through them.

What are you working on right now?

We are currently finishing our full length LP “Mind = Enemy”. We are excited because we have been putting so much time and effort into this LP, raising the quality immensely to make our fans satisfied 100% with our work. Our band also just recorded our first music video. It is in the process of being edited.

What are your songs about?

Our songs are about life experiences, hardships and also randomness at times. We structure some songs to relay messages, sometimes to express our personal feelings and then sometimes go along with a theme we are interested in. Since we bring a variety aspect to our band through our genres, we also correlate the lyrics to those specific genres at times.

Who are your musical influences?

Sean – Protest the Hero, Beartooth, Slipknot, Lamb of God, Attack Attack!, Van Halen, and MANY MORE.

Jordan – Slipknot, Pantera, Cannibal Corpse, Lamb of God, etc. I could go for days.

Brad – WhiteChapel, Slipknot, Lamb of God, Hatebreed, Thy Art Is Murder, Pantera, etc.

Jacob – Slipknot, Rings of Saturn, Lamb of God, etc.

History of the band?

The band was started by Sean as a solo project in 2012, and then grew over the years. In 2014, Jordan and Sean met and began working on recording improve tunes. He quickly joined the band as the drummer. Over the course of a year they put our EP called “Release the Disease” and wrote more material. In the summer of 2015, Brad joined the band as the guitarist. The band continued to write new content now with Brad writing some awesome solos. We then donated $500 to our local food bank from the collection of money we had gotten through our EP sales. Now in 2016 we are in the process of completing our full album. We have also recruited another member since the end of the summer, which was Jacob filling the part of bass.

Who writes the songs?

For the most part our band writes songs and riffs together during our practices. We record everything we do via GoPro so we have it on record. Sean will take the riffs and jam ideas we collect via GoPro and turn them into structured songs. Then the lyrics are mostly done by Sean, sometimes by Jordan as well.

What is your opinion about downloading music online?

Downloading music online is very important. It is how you help support the bands that you listen to financially. Illegally downloading is killing music. We hate to see people losing their favorite bands over this because it’s disheartening. A lot of respectable bands don’t do music for a living because they just want money; they do it because they love doing to. However, in the end all musicians need money to stay financially stable in their lives, keep putting out more music for their fans to listen to and do simple everyday things like eat. So please support the bands you listen to by purchasing their music. If you listen to a song enough and love it, purchase it to add it to your library. All musicians will greatly appreciate it.

What is a day in your life like?

We aren’t all doing music for a living yet, but we hope to be one day very soon. For the most part we are all currently very busy people. We all have jobs, some have school and we all have family events. Throughout all the stress and hard work, we always push forward; work on music by ourselves on our own time or as a band for practices. Since music is so important to us all we always make time for it. We most certainly need to continue our educations and creating incomes as a priority though every day.

What are some pet peeves of yours?

We have a few minor pet peeves. Being around negative people that tell us we can’t achieve what we want to do, or try to bring people around them down. It’s not worth acknowledging them. We also don’t like when people don’t purchase music to help support the bands they really like. If you like a band so much, you would support them instead of stealing from them.