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In an exclusive interview with Mstars/ Hallels, Ryan Saunders, lead vocalist for These Hearts, spoke about the band's upcoming album, 'Yours To Take,' which will release on July 9, as well as the band's newest single, 'Been Through Hell,' which was released yesterday, July 2.
Saunders said that their newest single release, 'Been Through Hell,' was inspired by the band's experiences on tour. "[The song was inspired by] just touring life and being out on the road and all the hardships that come with tour life and just kind of saying we'd been through hell kind of seemed like an appropriate metaphor for what we were all going through," he said. "Just touring and missing the people back home and dealing with playing shows every day and not showering and not eating and not being taken care of."
Despite the hardships of touring, however, Saunders said that the band loves to tour an meet new people and fans can expect them to continue to tour as long as they continue to have a following. "We definitely love to go out and play shows and meet new people and make new fans and to interact with the old fans," he said. "We definitely love touring, it's kind of like a love/hate thing because you're away from your home and everybody you love and all your family, but at the same time you're out doing what you love and meeting new people."
Although the band has 'been through hell' in the process of past tours, they plan on continuing to tour throughout July in order to promote their upcoming album. They know that touring will be hard, although it their situation may be slightly improved since the last few times that they went out touring. "It will change a little bit, yea, I mean, we still are roughing it a little bit too," Saunders said. "I'd say touring life is never easy, it's just kind of been the last couple of years I guess."
As for the new single, 'Been Through Hell,' Saunders said that These Hearts has received an overwhelmingly positive response to the single since it has been released. "So far everybody likes it,' he said. "It's, I think I would say, more of a pop/punk song, but pretty much all of the feedback has been really positive on it. It's pretty up-tempo and up-beat and just a feel-good tune with a good chorus, that type of thing."
As for the upcoming album, 'Yours To Take,' Saunders said that he is excited to see how the audience responds to that as well. "Just to get the audience's feedback I would say, to just see what it does, who ends up hearing it, how well it does and just overall an audiences feedback," he said is the most exciting aspect of releasing the new album.
The new album will be a diverse mixture of songs. "I would say every song on the album has a different element and has kind of a different meaning behind it," Saunders said. "Each song has the chorus, which I usually call like the main point of the song and what you want the audience to get from the song and you basically come up with something that you can get a listener to grab onto and to latch onto and just kind of organize it around a point in the song and then you kind of write the verses and the lyrics, everything supporting and leading up to those points."
The album was inspired by Saunders' recent experiences within his own life. "It's, you know, the last two years of my life put into lyrical form and putting it on album. That's kind of how we came up with, 'Yours To Take,' I guess," he said.
Fans can expect the new album to be very different from albums in the past. "The biggest difference is recording quality," Saunders said. "This one just sounds leaps and bounds better. He really captured what sounds like the best parts of my voice and we got the best takes and so the vocals sound way better, instrumentals sound way better and I would say the songs are a lot more thought out and it's just better written."
Some improvements on the new album are actually related to some of the criticism that the band has faced concerning their past albums. "People have pointed out, you know, I'm trying to sing to high or the recording quality is really bad, and we just kind of take what they say and we learn from it," Saunders said. "Yea, it was kind of a learning experience and, also, our band never really received much criticism before until we got singed and then we just kind of got overloaded with it so we just kind of rolled with the punches and learned from the criticism. We were like, 'alright, well I guess we'll take the next step.'"
Saunders said that his favorite song on the album is a song entitled, 'Birds Of A Feather.' "It's probably the catchiest song on the album. The reason I like that song so much is that's the kind of music that I enjoy and so when I wrote that song I was really excited about it because it's more, I guess, mainstream but also very catchy," he said. "The message of that song, I thought it would be cool. Every kid growing up struggles with relationships, so I just kind of wrote that song about that. But more so, just, the instrumentals are fun. It just has a good vibe to it, a good beat, you know, great chorus, that type of thing."
These Hearts is comprised of small town band members hailing out of Fargo, North Dakota. "I think [our small-town backgrounds] drove us to push harder because all of us grew up in these small towns having these big dreams and we're not willing to give up that easily because we're putting everything into this and so it just drove us to push that much harder I think," Saunders said.
The band grew up knowing what they wanted to do and have worked toward those goals until they could reach them. "We all kind of grew up listening to alternative music and we all grew up going to shows and just loving that scene so when we all formed we knew exactly what we wanted to do," Saunders said.
In addition, the band members also all grew up with Christian background, and this too tends to impact their music in many ways. "The goal of our band is definitely to kind of use our music and our live performance and, most of all I would say, our personal relationships with our fans to spread God's glory, Saunders said. "And it affects some of the songs, like I said, not all of the songs are Christian, but more so the way we live and what we do on the road. I mean, we're not being stupid out there on the road, we're out there, you know, we know why we're doing it."
These Hearts just released their new single, 'Been Through Hell' on July 2 and is expected to release their upcoming album, 'Yours To Take,' on July 9. The new album is currently available for pre-sale at Victory Records and the band has been promoting the pre-order of the album by sending personalized thank you videos to fans who e-mail them a screen-shot of their confirmed pre-order purchase.
The Track Listing For 'Yours To Take' [According To New Release Tuesday]:
