Interview and Photo by Kenneth Morton

Opening up night two of Facedown Fest 2006 with a winning set of tunes, there is little doubt that Kingston Falls are on their way to the top.  Their new CD The Crescendo Of Sirens has just been unleashed on the Strikefirst label and they have just finishing up a tour with War Of Ages.  Prior to their show, we spoke with a few of the Kingston Fall Guys to find out more about this up and coming band.

Introduce yourselves, tell me what you do in Kingston Falls, and tell me what your favorite heavy metal song is of all time. And we’ll start over here.
Josh: Crap! I’m Josh, guitarist. And my favorite heavy metal song is Ozzy Osborne’s Mr. Crowley.
John: I’m John, I do the vocals. My favorite heavy metal song – I’m getting into Avenged Sevenfold lately, so anything on their new CD. Beast And The Harlot by Avenged Sevenfold. I don’t listen to that much metal.
Josiah: I am Josiah, I play guitar in Kingston Falls. And I would have to say my favorite heavy metal song is Dialogue With The Stars by In Flames off of Whoracle.

How has this tour been going and is this your first time out here?
Josiah: Second time.
John: The tour has been going super cool. We just did a two-month tour in January and February and now we’re out with War Of Ages, who is a label mate of ours. California has been super cool. Last night we were at Facedown Fest, but we didn’t play. Everyone seemed to dig the bands, so we’re pretty stoked for tonight.
Josiah: We’ve had a lot of totally horrible van problems. We’ve gone through two transmissions, an alternator, and a fuel pump.
John: And I broke my ankle a couple of weeks ago. I can kind of walk a little bit.
Josiah: Overall it’s been an awesome experience.

Does your van have a name?
John: Piece of crap?
Josiah: Yeah! POC!

Where did you get the name of the band?
John: Gremlins the movie. It’s the name of the city.

So today is April Fools. Any good April Fools jokes that you’ve played on anyone?
John: Our drummer’s dad called him today, woke us up and said that Brett’s younger sister, whose like 17 or 18, went to Tennessee last night and got married. And we were like, “Holy crap!” And two minutes into it, he was like, “Uh, April Fools.”
Josiah: We told a lot of people that our equipment was stolen. And I wanted to call my mom and tell her that I lost an appendage. I think I’m still going to do that.

You have a few more hours left. So where are you guys from and what is the music scene like?
Josiah: We’re from Northern Indiana, from a city called Goshen. It’s good. It was a good scene to start off with, but it’s gotten weird. It’s one of those scenes that changes every year. It goes from punk rock to skunk core to hardcore to metal and it always changes. And right now, it’s gone through the daze of glammy hardcore people to tough guy. It’s never permanent.
John: I think when we started, metalcore was the cool thing. And now real tough guy gangster hardcore with gold teeth is the cool thing.

Let’s talk about the new CD. Where did you get the title?
Josiah: It’s called Crescendo Of Sirens. It’s actually from the video game Max Payne. The game is an awesome story. A friend of mine beat it in one night, and after that we were so inspired by the entire game, that we just had to name the CD after that game. So Crescendo Of Sirens is part of that game. We just got the copies of the CD today, and we’re real excited about it.

How does the CD differ sound-wise from the EP?
Josiah: We experimented with a lot more things. We really opened ourselves a lot more. Rather than constricting ourselves to one sound, we were just like have fun with it. Just keep it catchy and heavy all at the same time. We’re really happy with it.
John: It’s weird, because it came out catchier than the old album and it came out heavier than the old album – and it came out fuller than the old album.

What were some of the lyrics inspired by on the new CD?
John: I pretty much do most of the lyric writing. I try and keep it all at different themes. I write stories about people. You can almost picture our CD as a big comic book or a big novel. And then every once in a while I’ll do an opinionated song about things I don’t like. I wrote one about when the hurricanes were going on. But besides that, it’s mostly just stories about people. I want people to read the lyrics and envision different things in their heads. Different rooms and different people – almost like reading a book.

You’re on Strikefirst and they are known as a Christian label. How influential is Christianity in your music?
Josiah: The reason we don’t label ourselves an actual Christian band is just because we find it separates us from other bands. We’re friends with bands that aren’t Christian bands. And we feel like if we’re a Christian band, then people will think it weird that we’re playing shows with them or are friends with them – just because people are weird like that. They can be very opinionated like that. We don’t want to cause anything that’s weird. But we’re all Christian guys – we’re all definitely Christians. Our music may have metaphorical things about like morals and life, but we don’t really write specially about scripture or anything.
John: We’re just about having fun in a positive way. We don’t write about anything from the Bible so much, other than good morally things I guess

So who in the vans listens to the worst music?
John: The worst music? He (Josiah) plays all the music. But I must say, we pretty much have the same five CD rotation pretty much the whole trip.
Josiah: Yeah, I listen to a lot of Chumbawuma – which I’m not embarrassed about – in the least bit.
John: We’re actually thinking about covering one of their songs on the next CD. We don’t know. Maybe.

If you guys were invited to do a Metalcore Tribute to Madonna, what song would you want to do and why?
All chime in: Like A Virgin.
Josh: (Who hasn’t spoken since the start of the interview) Because it’s like her best song! Well second to that new one that came out, but I don’t remember what it was called. It’s her latest single that came out. (He sings) Time goes by so slowly, slowly, slowly. No time to hesitate.

Okay, I’ll look that up. (Editor’s Note: The song is called Hung Up.) So what’s up next for you guys after Facedown Fest?
Josiah: We have a week after this and then we have a couple months that we’re gonna be home. John our singer has school – he’s just finished school because he graduated early. And I think our drummer might go to Ohio for school for recording. So we’re just gonna work for as much as we can in that time, because we’re not planning on taking any long breaks until the band has to.
John: We’re hoping to get in nine months of touring in this year. We’ve already got about three months, and probably from June on we’re gonna tour more.

Do you guys have any messages for the kids out here in the LA/OC area?
John: We’d love to come down here and play again.
Josiah: Yes! Because all of the people we’ve met and have seen so far from yesterday have been pretty awesome people.

Kingston Falls Links

Kingston Falls: Their Official Home Page!
Strikefirst Records: The Record Label for Kingston Falls!
Kingston Falls on Myspace: The Official Myspace Page!
The Highwire Daze Home Page: Return to the Main Page!

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