Past Lives
When Thursday drummer Tucker Rule sent Circa Survive and Saosin vocalist Anthony Green some songs to check out during COVID lockdown, the singer wasn’t aware that he was being recruited for an emo supergroup. “When the pandemic hit, every band out there was trying to figure out how to stay alive,” Green tells Apple Music. “I was freaking out, so I was trying to stay busy. Tucker said he had a project with a couple friends and asked me to sing on it. The songs were really good, so I went for it.” It wasn’t until after Green had recorded vocals for a few songs that Rule revealed the rest of the band’s lineup: My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero, Coheed and Cambria guitarist Travis Stever, and Thursday bassist Tim Payne. “I’m glad he didn’t tell me,” Green says. “I would’ve felt so much more pressure.” Below, the singer details each track on L.S. Dunes’ debut. **“2022”** “It’s definitely one of the most personal songs I’ve ever written. I guess all the songs are personal, but the heaviness of that song is about wondering if I would’ve been better off dead than alive. I know a lot of people go through that—it’s not just me—but it’s a hard song for me to play because it makes me feel all the feelings I had when I wrote it. All that insecurity and all that fucking heaviness comes back. If I could not play it, I would, but the band really loves that song.” **“Antibodies”** “That was one of the first songs I put vocals to for Dunes. It was at the beginning of quarantine, everyone was isolated, and there was a rift between people who were like, ‘I’ll do whatever I can to try to make this thing less brutal on people with compromised immune systems and people that are more susceptible to getting bad COVID’ and people who were like, ‘I don’t give a shit, and I don’t think it’s that bad.’ So, the song comes from feeling isolated and trying to get my head around the idea that some people didn’t give a shit if someone’s grandma or father or mother was gonna die.” **“Grey Veins”** “I’ve been in a lot of projects with a lot of people, and when I sat down to write this song, I was thinking a lot about whether or not I was doing too much. Sometimes I wonder, ‘Am I going to make people sick of me? Am I doing too many things?’ I kind of answered that question with this song being like, ‘Fuck, no.’ I’m just going to fucking play and make as much music as I can here, and I don’t have to explain it to anybody or to live up to anybody else’s standards. I just need to do what makes me happy and to do it as fearlessly as I possibly can.” **“Like Forever”** “I’ve been going through addiction stuff my entire life. As you get older and the more you work on it, you get a little time clean and then something happens, and you relapse. That’s not part of everybody’s story, but it was part of my journey—and man, it sucks. Having to explain it to somebody, having to deal with the hurt and confusion you cause other people when you relapse…maybe some people don’t want to talk to you after that. They don’t want to be in your life because they don’t want to deal with the stress of loving you. This song deals with that shame and trying to figure out how to get back on a healthy path.” **“Blender”** “This song is so stoney and heavy. Lyrically, it has to do with my mental health issues and being bipolar. It’s funny because the song is bipolar in and of itself because the verses are very low, and then the choruses are at the very top of my range. It’s not an accident that it goes from one extreme to the other. It very much symbolizes the theme of the song, which is me wrestling and coming to grips with the nature of my mood swings, my personality, and my fears.” **“Past Lives”** “This song was inspired by the statues of Confederate soldiers and Christopher Columbus coming down, and the idea of history writing itself rather than going down this lane of total bullshit. Being able to change the narrative in schools so that people are learning the truth about the foundation of this country and the violence at the core of it. It should be taught in school that we massacred people and decimated cultures. I have to deal with parents in my kids\' school who think that it’s bad to teach kids about slavery. It’s wild that people don’t want to teach the truth about something.” **“It Takes Time”** “I wrote this song about Frank. He was in an accident and really fucked up his wrist and hand, and he had to get surgery during the recording of the album. We had to take a big break from sharing music because he couldn’t play guitar. I don’t think he knew if he was ever going to be able to play again. So, I was thinking about him and his relationship with his instrument. The song opens up with, ‘Hello? I’m not sure if you remember, we connected a long time ago.’ That’s him talking to his guitar and his muse. I don’t always write a song for someone else from their perspective, but I did that with this.” **“Bombsquad”** “This is another one that came up around politics during COVID. I was thinking about how people were lying through their teeth about stuff just to save face—just making shit up, essentially. And the ability that some people had to just detach from reality and pretend that their shithead president was actually helping. It has a lot to do with QAnon and some of the people in my life that were falling for that shit.” **“Grifter”** “This is one of my favorites. I wrote this song about trying to start over. With each of these projects that I’m doing, I’m digging and I’m trying to find something. Music is a religion to me, and I think that ‘Grifter’ is questioning whether I’ve made it into a religion in a way that’s unhealthy. I center everything around music and rely on it a lot, and it’s turned into something I worship. I’m sort of questioning whether or not that’s a healthy thing.” **“Permanent Rebellion”** “This is another song that’s 100 percent about trying to drop the baggage of our old bands and trying to do something a little bit different with different people.” **“Sleep Cult”** “I did an interview where I talked a little bit about suicide, and then I realized that my kids were going to see that. There’re things that I’m realizing my kids are going to see and hear, and I want to jump in front of it and go to them and explain myself and really let them know me, so they don’t ever see or hear anything where they’re like, ‘Oh shit, this is really heavy.’ I just want to make sure I’m creating an environment for them where they know me and they can talk to me about anything they need, so they don’t ever feel like they’re alone in this world.”
Luminaries from rock's thriving post-punk, and hardcore scenes, guitarist Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance), guitarist Travis Stever (Coheed and Cambria), vocalist Anthony Green (Circa Survive), bassist Tim Payne (Thursday), and drummer Tucker Rule (Thursday) have joined forces to create L.S. DUNES. Unshackled from the expectations and aesthetics of their already successful careers, L.S. DUNES super-charge their heavy anthems with punk energy into a sound unlike anything that has come before it. From the gripping, theatrical opener "2022," and the crunchy, frenetic earworm "Like Forever," to the pummeling, expansive "Permanent Rebellion,” and the disarming album closer, "Sleep Cult," Past Lives is an electrifying and emotional ride. Past Lives was produced by Will Yip (Turnstile, Circa Survive, Quicksand) and recorded at his Studio 4 Recording in Philadelphia, PA. Going deep on issues of fearlessness, dependency, nonconformity, and impermanence, writing for the album was a collaborative effort. After the shock of the pandemic shutdown, the close friends and mutual admirers urgently realized that ‘tomorrow’ is not promised. “We never knew if we would ever get to play these songs together, in fact none of us lifelong musicians really knew if we’d ever be able to play music for a live audience ever again,” Iero recounted. “Permanent Rebellion” is about taking back what is rightfully yours.” Rule added, “We wanted to do something where you can hear all our bands in it and yet, not have it sound like any one in particular. Our roots are punk rock and hardcore, and the vibe is hope for all the lost souls.” The seeds of L.S. DUNES were planted during rehearsals for Thursday's Christmas livestream event in 2020 which included friends and acquaintances from some of their favorite bands. The chemistry at the serendipitous, impromptu jam sessions was instantaneous. With the addition of Circa Survive vocalist Anthony Green, it was organically clear, this time, the music formed the band. Original, aggressive, and intense, L.S. DUNES is the next great leap in rock's grand evolution.
No bigger or smaller than the sum of its parts, L.S. Dunes' individual seasoned musical components seemingly adds up to Past Lives simply sounding like good music
Past Lives is the debut album from the post-hardcore supergroup featuring members of Circa Survive, Saosin, Sound of Animals Fighting, My Chemical Romance, and Coheed and Cambria.
Dunes day is finally upon us; in an armageddon blaze of glory, L.S. Dunes are forging the future of post-hardcore from the ashes of their ‘Past
Millie Warwick reviews the debut album from emo supergroup L.S. Dunes! Read the review of 'Past Lives' here on Distorted Sound!