Springfield, Massachusett’s metal band All That Remains have had a busy year.
The band released their fifth studio album For We Are Many in October of 2010 and have been touring in support of it ever since.
On Sunday the band wrapped up the Share the Welt Tour, which they were out on supporting headliners Five Finger Death Punch along with openers Rains and Hatebreed.
On Friday the tour was in Plymouth at the Compuware Arena.
Before the show I sat down with All That Remains’ guitarist Mike Martin, who was enjoying the fact that the tour was almost at its end.
Q: How has the tour been going?
A: The tour is great. It’s long and it’s almost over! There’s only three days left but it has been amazing. It’s probably the best tour we’ve ever done in America. We’ve made great friends and the shows have been huge. It’s just one of those really easy tours. The crowds are great for every band. It’s just fun.
Q: It’s been going on awhile hasn’t it?
A: 10 weeks! 10 weeks and this is it; the last three days. We left on October 13 and it’s December whatever, the 16th? I was counting in my calendar yesterday because it was Thursday and we left on a Thursday. So we left like nine Thursdays ago. There was four more days left and I was like wow! Kind of crazy.
Q: And you were touring quite a bit before this one.
A: Yeah for 15 months. 225 shows in the last 15 months. It is probably the busiest year we’ve ever had which is a good thing in a sense but everyone wants to go home now.
Q: So you are going to take a break?
A: Yeah we’re not gonna tour for awhile actually. We’re gonna do another album and kind of just go away so you know you can kind of make people miss you for awhile. We’ve been through every city on this tour like four or five times. If you keep on saturating and saturating yourselves people will be like oh we’ll just go see them next time. They’ll just stop coming to see us.
Q: I was thinking today that this will be the third time I’ve seen you this year. I saw you in Flint and then with Black Label Society in Detroit.
A: Yeah we’ve been through a bunch of times. We headlined here last year at this time too. We headlined at that bowling alley place.
Q: The Majestic?
A: Yeah, the Majestic. I kept thinking the Emerald. [laughs]
Q: So you’ve pretty much hit everywhere at this point?
A: Yeah we did Europe twice. Did Japan and Australia. We’ve supported every kind of band in America. We’ve done so much support and have barely headlined. We supported Hollywood Undead, Buckcherry, Black Label Society and now Five Finger Death Punch. It’s been non-stop support tours which has been great because it has been different crowds all year. I’m sure when we come around and headline we’ll probably see a different bunch of people.
Q: This tour is nice because it’s pretty much all metal bands besides Rains.
A: Yeah tours like this are easy because with all the other metal bands it’s just your crowd. If you go out and play you know people are going to have fun. You get spoiled on these tours. With Black Label Society you go out there and you know that you have to win people over. I’d go out there expecting people to hate us and then when everyone clapped at the end I was pleasantly surprised.
Q: I was in the balcony at Saint Andrews for the Detroit show and it was funny because Black Label draws that heavy motorcycle gang crowd and they were quiet at first when you came on but by the end they were pounding on the ceiling and pumping their fists.
A: That was cool. I remember that show specifically because there was this dude right in front of me. He was this humongous guy and he was standing right in front of me with this angry look on his face and he wouldn’t even move his head or anything while we were playing. Then towards the end he just nodded his head with his approval and just put his hand up for a second. He looked at me and it was like cool, we won him over! A lot of those guys are too tough. They didn’t want to act too excited. It was a funny crowd to watch; an interesting crowd.
Q: Since you have done so much supporting is there anyone you still want to go out with that you haven’t yet?
A: That’s a good question. We’ve never done a real tour with Lamb of God. I think that would be good. We’ve toured or played a show at least with every band. Everybody says it would be great to tour with Metallica but I think it would be cool to just say it but I don’t think the shows would be very fun. It’s a bunch of diehard fans and they just want to see Metallica. They don’t want to hear us screaming. A lot of those people aren’t into new bands. They just want to hear Metallica for two or three hours.
Q: You mentioned touring with Buckcherry and Hollywood Undead this year. Do you find it harder to tour with bands whose styles are so different from yours?
A: It’s more fun in general to do a straight metal tour like this. It’s interesting on tours like that though because it’s fun to see how people react to you. You see old ladies in the front row getting their heads cracked open by crowd surfers and stuff like that. It’s weird because I love Buckcherry. They’re one of my favorite bands and I went out and watched them everyday. We’d just go to the merch table and watch. It was so much fun. We knew all the banter in between songs by heart. It was ridiculous! Yeah, we get bored so we memorize very stupid things on tour.
Q: For this tour when I recently interviewed Jeff Rains he was talking about Montreal being the best date of the tour so far.
A: Oh god! There’s been a hand full. Montreal and Toronto were both unbelievable! Orlando, Milwaukee and Iowa. The two shows we just did in Iowa combined I think drew 14,000 people. It was like 6,000 one night and 8,000 the next night. So it’s just hard to pick. It’s easier to pick the bad shows because there’s only been like two out of 53 or something like that for us.
Q: You’ve been playing a lot of arenas on this tour.
A: Yeah a lot of arenas. This is actually the last one. I actually like this because you have this spacious room. [gesturing to the massive hockey locker room serving as the band’s dressing room] I’m gonna miss that going back into like 500 person clubs. We’re playing Piere’s in Fort Wayne tomorrow which is the tiniest place so it’s one extreme to another. This tour has been like that. One night it’s like 1500 to 1800 kids and the next night is over 7,000. It’s kind of back and forth.
Q: They just started booking concerts here actually. The Hollywood Undead show was here last month.
A: Yeah with Asking Alexandria. We toured with both of those bands this year too. Like I said we’ve toured with everybody!
Q: Do you know when you will be going in to record the new album?
A: I think we’re going to try to get into the studio in April. We’re going to take January, February and March to write and hopefully get in there in April and just get it done. Hopefully in a month or two and by the end of the Summer it’ll be time to hit the road again.
Q: So you are done releasing singles off of For We Are Many?
A: Yeah the three that are out are the only ones that could go on the radio. That’s how we look at it. We go okay which ones will get played on the radio?
Q: How did you go about picking the setlist for this tour?
A: Well you know there’s so many radio driven people on this tour because Five Finger Death Punch is such a big radio band. Most of the shows have been put on by the radio stations so we put the radio songs in there first, which you know we’ve only got like 4 or 5. So we put those in first and then we just pulled whatever we felt like. For a crowd like this we can’t really play a lot of the old stuff because a lot of people in this crowd think that “Two Weeks” was our first song and that was in 2008. That was our fourth album. So if you play too much old stuff it’s not good. You can’t get all obscure on these people because they’re just gonna be like I don’t know what that is. We play like two or three songs off of Fall of Ideals and the rest is pretty much newer stuff.
Q: When you headline you can pull out that older stuff.
A: Yeah you pick up more old songs because you’re seeing the diehard fans. When you play a hometown show most of the requests are for the old songs that we haven’t done in like ten years or so. The ones nobody remembers. We’re doing one of those shows at the end of this month and I’m sure that people will be like oh play this one and we’ll be like we don’t even know how!
Q: So you are doing a headlining date?
A: Well this is a Christmas show for a radio station in our hometown. This is the third year in a row that we’ve done it. It’s just a one off and then we’ve just got to stop doing shows.
Q: So you have enjoyed being out with the other bands on this tour?
A: It’s great. We’ve known Hatebreed for over 10 years and those guys are just the coolest guys ever so it’s cool to have friends out with you. They’re from home pretty much; right in Connecticutt. They’re basically just hometown friends for us. We’ve known Ivan [Moody, vocalist] from Five Finger since he was in Motograter. We toured with them in 2004 so we’ve known him forever and we’ve been doing shows on and off with Five Finger Death Punch for years now. It was like you just kind of showed up for this tour because you already knew everybody. It’s just a piece of cake. The Rains guys are great. Everybody’s having a blast hanging out with each other. I’m the boring one. I’m the first one in bed every night so I don’t know about being on the buses after and the drinking parties. I keep hearing a lot and everyone seems to be having a great time. Rains seems to have the bus that everyone hangs out on.
Q: Yeah Jeff mentioned that and he actually said that there’s a lot of times when he’s in bed and the party is still going.
A: Yeah they call it Club Rains. [laughs] Everybody just goes there and they have the iPod on and everyone drinks beer. I’m not though. I can’t drink everyday. My body can’t handle it!
Q: So do you have any plans for New Year’s?
A: I get home Monday from this tour and the first couple of weeks at home is where noone wants to see each other. It’s bad enough that we have to do this one show. We play that one on December 30 and then we’re just going to enjoy the holidays off. I might fly to Arizona to go see Guns N’ Roses.
Q: I just saw them a couple of weeks ago. It was a great show!
A: I am so jealous! I missed every show. I live in the Northeast obviously and I just missed every show because I was out on this but I might fly out there just to see the show. I want to see it that bad. God, they’re my favorite band of all time! I’ve got to see them because they don’t do enough U.S. tours. I have to take the chance to see them when I can. Their band is amazing. It’s unbelievable and Sebastian Bach is opening. I’ve known him for a little bit now and he’s a great guy. His new album’s awesome. I came from the Eighties. I love all that stuff.
Q: So those were your influences?
A: Yeah it was. Actually it was Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands On Me”. That was the video specifically. I was like oh my god! That and “Paradise City”. They looked so cool in those stadiums with girls everywhere and it was just so cool. That was it. I was like I don’t like school anymore, I like guitar.
Q: What would you have done if that hadn’t happened?
A: Oh god I’d probably be either working at Subway or at some kind of construction sh*t because I can lift heavy equipment but that’s it. I’m dumb. I was just so screwed. I had a family business for awhile. We had a beer and wine store in our hometown and that closed around four years ago. That was my initial fall back plan but now it’s like I got to figure out something. I’ve gotta start teaching guitar. I need to learn my theory though. Oli’s [Herbert, ATR guitarist] taught me for three years. He’s a great teacher. He knows his theory up front and back but I don’t know if I can teach it yet. I don’t know if I have the patience. One of these days I’ll try it out.
Q: What can people expect from your show tonight?
A: Just that everybody’s in a good mood because it’s the end. I think everyones going to have more fun maybe because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t undestand how these fans do it. They go nuts for four bands. I watch them just during Hatebreed’s set alone and Jamey [Jasta], their vocalist does not let the crowd rest. He doesn’t let people put their hands down or stop jumping. He’s one of the best frontmen that I’ve ever seen. And we have to go on after them! Sometime it’s just like dude let them save some energy! Sometimes by 10:30 when Five Finger comes on I just don’t understand how these people have anything left. Let alone for three bands but then Five Finger comes on and they go nuts for them too. If you’re one of those people who just likes to stand and watch the show and crowd then you’re going to be entertained by them because the crowd is so crazy. Plus it’s a Friday night. Weekend shows are always better. I mean we played Tuesday night in Boise and you know it’s hard at the start of the week like that.
Q: Seems like more shows are coming through on weekdays lately.
A: Yeah which sucks! The weekend vibe is just way better. It’s going to be nuts.
Q: Has there been a song standing out in your current setlist?
A: Well you know the radio songs because the people want to see them. We open with “Hold On” and that’s on the top 10 so people react to that right away and then “The Last Time” is the most current single. We’re starting to get people asking about the acoustic track, “The Waiting One”. We’re not doing that on this tour but you can tell that it’s been on the radio a little bit because people are asking us to play that one.
Q: Have you started working on stuff for the new album at all?
A: No. People have just been playing individually so maybe there are parts floating around but nothing is final until we start getting together. Nothing will get done until we actually get home and can decompress for a little bit and then can say okay let’s get in the same room. It’ll be quick though. We can write stuff pretty fast.
Q: You’ll be staying in the same direction for this album?
A: Yeah and just let it flow naturally. I think that’s what has worked for us. I think people have stuck with us over the years because of that. I mean there’s always gonna be people who are going to say oh this song is too soft and you sold out now or whatever. However, I think that there has always been so much heavy stuff and so much melodic stuff and it’s always been like that. We just do whatever feels right. It’s never been like this has to be this way because of this reason. It’s more like this sounds cool so let’s do that. We don’t have meetings. It’s just go play!
