AS IT IS

“WE NEVER EXPECTED TO GET EVEN HALFWAY THIS FAR ” AS IT IS

BY SUZUKI KAYOMI TRADUTOR FRAN ALBINI PHOTOGRAPHY PROMOTION

Bringing nostalgia to top, AS IT IS is a trio that immerses us in the classic emo-punkrock style we all heard as teenagers. Their new album “I Went To Hell And Back” tells us the journey of Patty Walters (Vocals), Patrick Foley (Drums) and Alistar Testo (Bass) in their recent years and makes it clear that AS IT IS still has more to say and share with your fans. In an interview with Patty Walters, we delve deeper into what it was like to express himself on “I Went To Hell And Back”!

So, first of all, I’d like to first ask, you guys have been in this emo-punk, rock scene like, have been in it since 2015, right?

Patty Walters - Yeah, so, we released our first album in 2015, we formed the band in 2012, we started releasing our early EPs back then, that’s when we started playing tours. And because we formed the band in 2012, this year we’ll be turning 10 years old, as a band, since we started writing and releasing our first songs. So, it’s been a while now, I’m grown up now, crazy!

It’s a crazy journey, so how do you evaluate this journey?

We never expected to get even halfway this far, we just started this band to play a couple local shows, may-

be if we were lucky do one single tour in the lifetime of the band. But here we are. We’ve toured North America probably more than ten times, we toured the UK and Europe, even more than that, we’ve been to Japan four times, and Australia three times. This has been truly a dream come true, we’re so fortunate to be in this position, and we never take it for granted, you know, through the pandemic I missed live music, missed my band mates, missed my fans and our families, so so much, and to be out here again, it feels just as exciting as the first ever tour!

Yeah, I can imagine, you mentioned that you already did concerts in Japan, how was doing a concert on the other side of the world?

Phenomenal, this is the thing, I have never been to Japan before, we were there playing our first ever shows, and the fact that there were hundreds of people who knew the words to our songs, wanted to meet us after the show, get autographs on their CDs and their merch, unbelievable. We’ve been fortunate enough to be there four times now, and every time it is bigger and better, and it’s one of my favorite countries. I love being in Japan, I love live shows in Japan, and, yeah, we’re so lucky.

Walter, you have mentioned before the release of “I Went To Hell And Back” that maybe your fans would not be the same person they were before since the last time you released an album, do you think your audience have changed?

You know, I think so. So much about my life and who I am, and my outlook on navigating life, going through the pandemic, I’m sure that’s true for all of our fans. Since we’re now releasing singles and subsequently our 4th album, our numbers on digital streaming platforms, like Spotify and Apple Music, is growing pretty substantially. I think we reached new people as well, and that’s exciting, it’s nice when you reach a new audience, but it’s even nicer to maintain the audience that supported you

for three records, if not longer, now we’ve been doing this for 10 years. Like I said, being able to maintain, and keep, some of these core fans for all 10 of those years… that’s something we really do cherish and is very important to us.

Yeah, and you even said that you call your fans as friends, so you actually see them as a friend, right?

Absolutely, when I imagined larger shows with thousands of people, I imagined I’d see as anonymous faces, but in fact the matter is I’ve come to know many of our fans on a first and last name basis. I know where they call home and how far they travel to attend the show, this is the thing, you get up there and you know these people, you’re familiar with them, you know their stories, you know their favorite songs, and you just love to see them coming over and over and over, travelling and supporting the band, and being part of this universe.

And about your new album, “I Went To Hell And Back” was released already, and one of the songs that really got into me was “I MISS 2003”, which is pretty much a tribute, it’s like a homage to the style that was part of so many people’s lives, especially me, when I grew up listening to this type of music; where did this idea come from?

That was the final track to be written towards the record, and when you are finishing, finalizing such a substantial project… I mean we’ve been writing and recording this record for over two years at this point, because of the pandemic. On the one hand you’re extremely proud and extremely relieved that the hard work is over, and then you have something to be proud of and you show to the people, it seems intangible for all that fear, the doubt and the pain, and equally you’re a little sad that this really magical time has come into a close. I think we were feeling a little sentimental and nostalgic for all the bands that inspired us to pick up instruments in the first place, all those many years ago, and are without a doubt the reason that we are in this position that we’re so thankful to be in, I think that is what inspired that song, we were so much in tune, were so many emotions, so it is pretty sure touching talking about writing this one. It was a lot of fun to write.

Seems pretty fun because, as I say it’s like, as you mentioned, it’s pretty much a nostalgia all the way through the whole song!

That’s right, I think because of the pandemic we were all sort of missing and mourning a simpler time in our life, let that be as recently as two years ago, or back in twelve years ago, or fifteen years ago, when we were younger, when there

were fewer responsibilities and our life was more exciting and promising, you know what I mean?

For sure, and continuing talking about the album, another song that I really like is “In Threes”, and this song have a more dark, kind of gloomy tone, compared to the other tracks, and the lyrics really speak to many people who maybe feel the same, or they already felt the same before, how music has helped you clear your mind?

Absolutely, so, historically the band has written probably even sadder and sober songs, with sad and sober lyrics, and I always gravitated towards sadder artists and lyrics, because I find them to be more helpful, I find them to be more sincere. There are songs and artists that try to guide you out of the darkness, you know what I mean? When somebody is dueling in their sadness, their depression, and their struggles, I find it comforting know that I am not alone. That’s what we have always been inspired to do through our art, through our lyrics, and “IN THREES” is not different, that’s a song that is truly placed in the suffering and the struggle, not searching for a way out, just searching for answers, searching for a feeling, and that is absolutely one of those songs, one of the darkest on the record, musically and lyrically, it was such a joy to write, so much fun to write with Cody Carson who are here on tour now, with Jordy Purp involved, it’s one of my favorites from the record, for sure.

It’s actually one of my favorites too, and the way you say “right now” feels like the whole album “I Went To Hell And Back” is you speaking your heart out to everyone, maybe someone can relate to that and help someone, was

that the intention?

Absolutely. These lyrics, they’re always written in hope that they’re going to resonate with somebody, but first, and for most, it is written from a place with authenticity, sincerity, transparency, and I do them for myself before I write for anybody else. This is my truth, my catharsis, my therapy, to transport these thoughts from my head into a piece of paper and then to the microphone. Then they find the audience, but that’s really at the back of my mind, for me this is just self-expression, and if that resonates with somebody then I appreciate that, but it’s never the intention, it’s just about self-expression, it’s about honesty at the end.

I see, and talking about self-expression, another track that really got my attention was “I Want To See God,” which in the other hand have a heavier kind of tune, is there any specific reason why this song sounds a little bit more aggressive, especially because of the title, there’s any reason why?

Yeah, so that song “I Want To See God” at the core is about desperation, it’s about feeling like you are a passenger in your own life, that you have no autonomy, and that’s a song where, you know “I wanna see God, I wanna go blind”, you’re so desperate for answers, for an escape-through, that you would rather be behind the wheel of destruction, than a passenger going somewhere that you have no sort of say or sway, over when and how we get there. The aggression in that song, musically, is directly inspired by just how desperate, angry, and frustrated those lyrics are, and I think was pretty effective and fun to piece it together. Is one I’m most excited to be playing live, I feel like that one is going to just have a ton of energy and that totally gonna re-

lease myself on stage tonight, I’m looking forward to that.

That probably will be good, especially because you talk about you being in a place where you don’t control much of things, do you ever feel like that in your life, like, you lost control or that you have no control of anything?

Absolutely, it’s a frustrating feeling, sometimes you have to dig in deeper, be stronger than you have ever been, and try to navigate out of that.

Yeah, I think that that was clear in “I Went To Hell And Back”, the whole album, because as you mentioned before, the album was actually idealized two years ago, and you also mention there was a moment when the whole band was questioning your decisions, can you tell us more about this?

Yes, as soon as we began to tour our album, our guitarist was wanting to withdraw from the band, and we thought “how we going to fight this?” and was sort of the most extensive cycle we ever done. Probably did over 200 shows. By the time that tour was done, our good friend and guitarist and vocalist Ben just separate from the band. We were writing “I Went To Hell And Back” when our drummer separated from the band. We’ve gone from five members to three, and each of us individually thought, is this something that still worth pursuing? Is this still the same band? We still have the drive, still have the desire to create and say something new. And in fact the matter was that through the pandemic, there was nothing but time, nothing but raw emotion and fear and doubt, there was so much to say, and we choose to channel that into this record, and to not look away from the pain and the fear, and instead channel it into something productive, something

that we could heal from. This record is a product of that, in a way it’s a product of that uncertainty, like I told you, find and create answers out of uncertainty, and this record is a light when there’s only darkness. It was a joy to create, honestly, with everybody.

So now that you released the album you feel, I don’t know, a little more light, more relieved that you decided that “no, we’re going to continue the band, we’re going to continue doing this”? Absolutely, it feels great to be finally sharing this record with the world, we spend so long, and this record was ours and only ours, sharing it with a few people who shared few thoughts on it. So, to see the overwhelmingly warm reception that this record has received, in less than a week after I shared it with the world, it’s extremely humbling and extremely gratifying to see and to read.

Now, we can see that a lot of people are reacting pretty well to the album, and one thing that is pretty common in doing the whole record is the balance between more positive kind of tunes, the lyrics are a little more gloomy, a little more dark, a little more sober, and one perfect example for me was “I Hate Me Too”, which has a lyric that is pretty much “I hate myself” but the tune is super exciting and you just wanna have fun. How you balance between these two opposites, to not end up with an album that’s too dark or too gloomy?

It’s something that ever since in our early EPs, our first record, which comes really natural to the band. Music that is fairly upbeat paired with lyrics that are particularly pessimistic, and I find that is a really effective combination, a really effective pairing, I think duality of

the tune balance each other out extremely well. So, it’s something that historically we’ve been doing for some time now, and I enjoy doing, and I continue to do and implement it on this record.

So is something natural for you. That’s actually pretty cool, and you mentioned that before you released “I Went To Hell And Back” you said that As It Is still has more to say, you guys have any more plans coming out, what people can expect for the future?

So now that the album has been released, the plan is to tour as much as possible, as

safely as one can do in 2022. Now we’re out here in North America currently, supporting our best friends and later in the year we’ll be supporting other great friends Mayday Parade in the UK, playing in the biggest venues we played, and we are looking forward to that. But most of all I think we are looking forward to headline again. We just couldn’t wait to be reunited with so many friends that we haven’t seen in such a long time, there’s so much to catch up on and out, and hopefully this record means as much to them as it means to us.

Yeah, definitely, you guys have a lot to catch up on, I think everyone after the Corona times, nobody was stepping on stages, and how does it feel being back on stage again?

Yeah, it feels really surreal, really wonderful. There are some moments where it feels like no time has passed, but we’re just doing what we do best, just being on stage giving every show 100%, and then there are moments when you are aware of how not normal this is, frankly. It used to be so normal, playing in shows more days than we were home. And now that’s a rarity.

It kind of feel like a distant reality, you know? But thank you so much for your time and have fun on stage!

Absolutely. I appreciate your time for us, thank you so much!