Shawn Zyvoloski - Survive This (07/11/2013)
When The 59th Sound caught up with Survive This! vocalist Shawn Zyvoloski, you could still hear the excitement of this week caught in his voice.
After all, it was this week that saw the release of Survive This!’ debut album The Life You’ve Chosen worldwide via Epitaph records, so it’s no wonder that excitement is there. Still, we wanted to know how he felt about the launch.
“It feels great! I’ve been waiting for this day for like, 10 years now. Since we started writing and recording in November, it’s great to see it out a year later. Seeing responses from kids, it’s the greatest feeling. Whether it’s a negative or positive response doesn’t matter, that they’re listening to it is great knowing.”
The album, filled with a dynamic mixture of pounding synth lines and crushing break-downs, has undergone much tinkering during recording process from none other than Survive This!’ producer, Falling in Reverse’s Ronnie Radke. We asked Shawn what it was like working with Mr. Radke.
“It was actually really cool! The guy is so huge; he’s a very inspiring person. He would be working on songs with us, and then he would go home and write a song. Being around him just makes you want to be a better musician. He just lives and breathes music.”
Though it seems this is not the first time Ronnie and Shawn have crossed paths, as we soon learned.
“We were friends before he signed to anything and I watched him grow and I’ll always see him as like a mentor to me. Because of that, when we were working on the record together I felt like he could be really really honest and he would tell it like it is. Like he would tell you “Man, you are really onto something right here” or he’d say “You know what, you can do better”. It really helped.”
Of course, this isn’t the last project that the two groups have planned together. Survive This! have recently been announced to join the Bury the Hatchet tour across the states. The tour will feature Falling in Reverse, Escape the Fate and Chelsea Grin, and Shawn is absolutely in awe being able to join such a line-up.
“Oh man, it’s awesome! The Bury the Hatchet tour is two other Vegas bands and Chelsea Grin,who are an awesome band, so it feels like a home tour. It’s a really cool feeling when you see these bands come out of your city and now you’re on tour with them. It feels like we’ve made it, like we’re there right now; it’s a very humbling feeling.”
We put Shawn to the ultimate test however, and cruelly made him chose his favourite tracks from an album he is already immensely proud of.
“That is a hard question! (The track) Sail Away is a really important song for me. My grandfather, who was the main male figure in my life and who made me want to play music passed away, so I put a lot of effort into that song. It’s about how I feel like I’ve been sailing since he’s been gone and how I want to tell him about everything he did. I also love our title track; you can just feel the struggle when you listen to it. It’s really just taking a step back and looking at my life, what I’ve done with it and where I’m going, and if I’m happy with everything I’ve done to get where I am now, so both of those tracks are really close to me.”
Of course, we ended our conversation with Shawn with a question that needed to be ask, if the band had any plans of coming to Australia soon.
“We want to really bad, we’ve been talking about it and we’ve all been waiting to get to get to Australia. We just think everyone there is so kind and the fans who write us from Australia are always just the raddest people, so we want to be there. We would go tomorrow if we could!”
The Life You’ve Chosen is available nationwide now through Epitaph Records.
Ben Spencer
After all, it was this week that saw the release of Survive This!’ debut album The Life You’ve Chosen worldwide via Epitaph records, so it’s no wonder that excitement is there. Still, we wanted to know how he felt about the launch.
“It feels great! I’ve been waiting for this day for like, 10 years now. Since we started writing and recording in November, it’s great to see it out a year later. Seeing responses from kids, it’s the greatest feeling. Whether it’s a negative or positive response doesn’t matter, that they’re listening to it is great knowing.”
The album, filled with a dynamic mixture of pounding synth lines and crushing break-downs, has undergone much tinkering during recording process from none other than Survive This!’ producer, Falling in Reverse’s Ronnie Radke. We asked Shawn what it was like working with Mr. Radke.
“It was actually really cool! The guy is so huge; he’s a very inspiring person. He would be working on songs with us, and then he would go home and write a song. Being around him just makes you want to be a better musician. He just lives and breathes music.”
Though it seems this is not the first time Ronnie and Shawn have crossed paths, as we soon learned.
“We were friends before he signed to anything and I watched him grow and I’ll always see him as like a mentor to me. Because of that, when we were working on the record together I felt like he could be really really honest and he would tell it like it is. Like he would tell you “Man, you are really onto something right here” or he’d say “You know what, you can do better”. It really helped.”
Of course, this isn’t the last project that the two groups have planned together. Survive This! have recently been announced to join the Bury the Hatchet tour across the states. The tour will feature Falling in Reverse, Escape the Fate and Chelsea Grin, and Shawn is absolutely in awe being able to join such a line-up.
“Oh man, it’s awesome! The Bury the Hatchet tour is two other Vegas bands and Chelsea Grin,who are an awesome band, so it feels like a home tour. It’s a really cool feeling when you see these bands come out of your city and now you’re on tour with them. It feels like we’ve made it, like we’re there right now; it’s a very humbling feeling.”
We put Shawn to the ultimate test however, and cruelly made him chose his favourite tracks from an album he is already immensely proud of.
“That is a hard question! (The track) Sail Away is a really important song for me. My grandfather, who was the main male figure in my life and who made me want to play music passed away, so I put a lot of effort into that song. It’s about how I feel like I’ve been sailing since he’s been gone and how I want to tell him about everything he did. I also love our title track; you can just feel the struggle when you listen to it. It’s really just taking a step back and looking at my life, what I’ve done with it and where I’m going, and if I’m happy with everything I’ve done to get where I am now, so both of those tracks are really close to me.”
Of course, we ended our conversation with Shawn with a question that needed to be ask, if the band had any plans of coming to Australia soon.
“We want to really bad, we’ve been talking about it and we’ve all been waiting to get to get to Australia. We just think everyone there is so kind and the fans who write us from Australia are always just the raddest people, so we want to be there. We would go tomorrow if we could!”
The Life You’ve Chosen is available nationwide now through Epitaph Records.
Ben Spencer