Sleeping With Sirens‘ frontman Kellin Quinn set an ambitiously high standard for Madness, the group’s upcoming fourth album.
“I wanted to make a record that reminds me of the albums that kind of inspired me to make the type of music we make and be part of the scene we’re in,” Quinn tells Billboard. “I wanted it to be like the albums that remind me of a time in my life or maybe a moment or a feeling or whatever. I just wanted to create an album that not only brought me back there but brought our listeners back to that time in your life and say, ‘Man, that was a good record. That was part of my growth process.'”
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For Quinn, those albums included debut albums by Muse, Fall Out Boy, Finch and the Starting Line. So not a tall order at all, right? “Y’know, I guess it’s trying to figure out a way to expand on what we’ve already been doing as a band,” Quinn explains. “I think there’s a progression from our first album to this one, definitely. I always feel like, as a songwriter, it’s important for me to surprise myself and prove I can evolve musically. I want to impress myself, and I want to be able to continue to progress and I think if you can do that, other people will as well.”
The path to Madness, which comes out March 17, wasn’t smooth for the Florida modern rock outfit. During the interim since 2013’s Feel, the group parted ways with guitarist Jesse Lawson, bringing in Nick Martin, and switched labels, from Rise to Epitaph. Then, Quinn says, “we wrote a record, went to Nashville to record there and ended up scrapping 15 songs and going back to L.A. and making this album. So there was a lot of growing and songwriting that was done in that time.”
Hooking up with producer John Feldmann was key to making Madness, Quinn says. “He’s a very talented producer, and I think he and I connected very well, and the band as well,” Quinn says. “He was the kind of producer who could notch up our sound and help us discover what that was. He’s kind of notable in our world; he’s done a lot of those records I named before, so it made sense to work with him.” Madness quickly got on track, according to Quinn, with the single “The Strays” coming early in the process while “Gold” offers a bit of stock-taking about Sleeping With Sirens’ six years so far.
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“It kind of goes back to those early days of us touring in a van and the experience of touring, getting where you needed to go, not being afraid,” Quinn says. “When you’re coming up as a band you have this excitement. The only place to go is forward. So that was kind of the idea for me, thinking about the climb and the getting there, some of the most exciting parts of the journey of being in a band and being an artist, creating songs in your garage. That’s where the song started for me.”
Listen to “Gold,” which Billboard is exclusively premiering below.
Sleeping With Sirens begins the European leg of its world tour with Pierce The Veil on March 20 in Belgium. More dates are currently being arranged for the late spring and beyond. “Yeah, dude, as long as there’s people wanting to watch us and coming out and wanting to see shows and hang out with us, we’re down to keep playing as much as possible,” he says. “There’s an excitement, an eagerness to play a lot of these new songs live. I felt that way about some of the songs on Feel, but this album I can’t wait to play all of them.”