Interview with Daniel Daponde - guitar

UN: Let’s get the boring one out of the way first because I know very little about the early days of The Acacia Strain. How exactly did the band come together?

Daniel: TAS as we know it officially started in late 2001. Although everyone in the band had already been playing together for a while in various other bands, the real beginning was when Dan Laskiewicz broke his shoulder playing football and not being in any band at the time and being friends with them I was asked to fill in on guitar until he was able to play again. When it came time to play the first show with this lineup D.L. was convinced he could play but instead of telling me to hit the road the guys decided that since I went to all the practices and learned the songs that would be retarded not to have me play this show. So, we went on as a six piece and the sound was noticeably heavier and thicker and that’s the sound they wanted to go for so everyone was pretty much in agreement that 3 guitars would work and a heavier sound could be achieved. That’s pretty much how we came to be.

UN: Is Mark from Bury Your Dead still filling in on drums, or have you found a drummer that’s not in another band?

Daniel:We have found a permanent drummer. Kevin Boutot from A Thousand Falling Skies has moved into the position. ATFS have parted ways with each other and we took the opportunity to grab him before someone else did. He’s incredible and as long as he can handle us he’ll be in it for the long run I’m sure.

UN: I just have to say that The Acacia Strain is possibly the heaviest metalcore band of all time. How low did you guys tune for 3750. It must be B or lower. It’s one of the sickest sounding albums I have heard in a long time. It’s bowel rattling if you listen to it at high volumes!

Daniel: Haha well thank you for those kind words. It is always flattering to hear such positive things about the album and our music. I don’t know about heaviest of all time but we are trying. As far as tuning goes, we actually tune to drop A# which is C standard with the bottom string dropped a whole step to A#. We have been experimenting with some different tunings lately but that is still the most comfortable for us.

UN: Do you think the three guitars help keep things heavier then most bands? Did it take a long time to work out the different tones and getting three tones that worked well together? Or did you guys mainly just want it to sound like one massive wall of guitar attacking the listener?

Daniel:A lot of people ask us “why do you have three guitar players” and some say it’s just a gimmick but the truth to the matter is that having the third guitar player gives us a lot more ground to write parts over parts meaning that two of us can be playing more lead riffs and still have an underlying rhythm instead of emptiness there that only the bass would usually fill that you hear from a lot of bands. We don’t get too crazy with lead riffs but it’s always nice to have that third guitar to back everything up. It also serves as more of a wall as you said more so than actually sounding more heavy.

UN: I was wondering if there was a concept behind the album name, 3750. It definitely isn’t a very common sounding album name. The layout of the CD is also very different then what people expect from heavy bands. It’s nice to see a layout that doesn’t have blood spots, hearts and or skulls.

Daniel:The album defiantly isn’t meant to be a concept although the listener may tend to disagree. A lot of bands these days sway more towards singing about love and relationships and all that jazz, which I mean there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever because we can all relate to it because we’re human, but I think that the flipsides of those topics are also just as important and are easily related to. The lyrics aren’t necessarily the opinions of all six of us but we think these things should be heard just as well. Bringing back the pissed off attitude that goes with heavy music. And a lot of the words are metaphors and but at the same time they do mean what they stand for. Overall without it being a concept album 3750 is about the disgusting things in our lives that we just want to make rid of. The meaning of 3750 is kind of a play on that but some things are better left as mysteries. As far as the layout goes, we just aren’t into the whole hearts and skulls thing even though I do believe that it sells merchandise better but we don’t want to rely on that.

UN: Do you think that the new album is a big progression over the last album? It definitely is improved in the songwriting department in my opinion. You guys have really forged your own identity with the new record.

Daniel: We found our groove while writing this album. Being around each other more and more helped us be comfortable and have less clashing interests in where we wanted it to go musically. ALIVL was overall a clusterfuck of everything we wanted to do individually and not as a whole and 3750 is an overall collaboration of everything we all want to do but all the differences in the music have been cut out an a middle ground has been reached for the writing. Heavy and simple.

UN: What made you guys decide to record the album with Adam D? It seems like he obviously would understand what you guys were aiming for with the album. Are you guys satisfied with the end result? Like I mentioned earlier, I think it’s one of the heaviest albums I have ever heard.

Daniel: Personally I wanted to get close to Adam because I think he is so damn sexy. But for serious, we have heard a lot of his work with other bands and decided that he does an incredible job plus he is the brother of Toby who put out ALIVL on Devil’s Head Records. I can speak for everyone in the band ad say we are more than happy with the end result of 3750. I have read some review and heard people saying that the record sounds overall muddy in tone criticizing Adam’s work on it but I think our tones on this record are far from muddy. We told him that we wanted it heavy as fuck and that’s what he made this record for us.

UN: One aspect of the band that definitely stands out is the mixed bag of influences. There is everything for metalcore, to death metal, to even some slower almost doom styled riffs. Do you think that with three guitar players each player brings something different to the table as far as songwriting goes?

Daniel: Definitely. We all have totally different styles of music tat we love and that helps are far as ideas go for songs. Not that we are trying to sound like a certain thing or band but knowing what we like and what we want helps.

UN: Just a short one here, where exactly does the band name come from? I’m sure you’ve been asked that a million times but I have no idea.

Daniel: Well, I’m not as good as explaining it as let’s say Vincent so I’ll give you his number and you can call him. I’m just kidding! I wouldn’t do that haha. I’ll try my best though. Let’s see, there is this tree that grows in parts of the world like Africa called the acacia tree and it is a pretty tree, I mean I like it, but in it breeds these bugs, locusts if you must tat carry this disease, or strain, that can kill a man. So in short it pretty much means ugliness in beauty.

UN: The bands next tour is with Into the Moat, The Red Death and From a Second Story Window. Are you guys excited to be hitting the road with such amazing bands? I just got a copy of the new Into the Moat album and it’s sick. This is definitely a line-up of four bands that are playing heavy and unique music.

Daniel: Yah we are really excited and can’t wait. We are already friends with into the moat so it will be good to see them. Awesome musicians in all those bands as well.

UN: Are there any touring plans for after this new tour? I’m assuming you guys are planning to be on the road for most of the year to promote the new disc.

Daniel: Immediately at the end of the FASSW tour we are going out with our good friends in Twelve Tribes and Since The Flood right straight through and including the New England Metal Fest.

UN: What do you hope for people to get out of The Acacia Strain? Obviously it’s beyond heavy music, but do you want people to dig deeper and realize that there is a lot more going on within the songs?

Daniel: I personally want people to realize that there are more issues in life other than heartbreak and I would like to see more kids getting a sense for themselves instead of doing what everyone else does. I mean we are all guilty of following trends but overall I want everyone to think more for themselves. But besides that I want everyone to put in their 3750 cd in their stereo and just start holding hands and dancing in the streets and living rooms across the world and after that I want everyone to hold a little baby puppy and pet it for me. We could all learn a lot from puppies.