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Artist Interviews
Q&A: Set Your Goals
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 14 August 2009
Playing pop-punk, though with 90s skate punk and melodic hardcore influences to flesh it out a bit, beyond the other run-of-the-mill stuff that clutters the genre, Set You Goals released their second album, ‘This Will Be The Death Of Us’, earlier this month via Epitaph. Currently on tour in the US, they will be over here very soon for a slot at the Reading festival on 29 Aug and a headline show at the Garage in London on 31 Aug. We spoke to co-frontman Matt Wilson to find out some more.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
This is my first real band, but I met Jordan, Dan and Mikey through going to hardcore shows in the San Francisco Bay area. They were already playing in a hardcore band together at the time. Jordan and I started jamming out some demo songs that were a little more melodic than what was going on in the local scene. One by one we stole all of his bandmates and filled out the band roster. We’ve had a few line-up changes over the years but the 4 of us are original members and we met Junior and Joe through other bands we toured with on some of our first few tours.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
The trials of life and the confusions of reality.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Typically Jordan will present a ‘skeleton’ to a song and he and Mikey will structure it by piecing together drum parts. From there, Jordan and I write the vocal melodies then put lyrics to them that we’ve written independently using a central thesis. Somewhere in there, Joe writes bass parts. Then, for this record, we did the leads and all the minor tweaking of the song last.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Saves The Day, New Found Glory, Lifetime, Gorilla Biscuits, The Police, Pantera, Metallica, Bane, Reach The Sky, the list goes on and on. All kinds of stuff really.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
I would urge them to see us live.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest single/album, and for the future?
Complete global dominance.
MORE>> www.myspace.com/setyourgoals
