Written by Tabitha Timms
Sylar brought their first headlining tour in America to The Outpost in Kent, OH on May 9.
Sylar put on an aggressively entertaining set, showcasing all of their musical abilities in a strong passionate way. The band's set is everything a fan of theirs could have wanted from them.
We got the chance to sit down and talk with lead vocalist, Jayden Panesso about Sylar’s current tour, their newest record and more.
You’re currently on your spring tour, how has the road treated you so far?
It’s cool man, it’s more about getting back in the routine, we had a couple months off from touring last year. But it’s been good since it’s our first headliner so it’s something completely new.
Your 2018 record, Seasons, shows contrast in songs, while still keeping the same sound throughout without being repetitive, is there a process you stick to while writing music?
In a way we do, we just kind of go with the feel, every record we go into it differently but it’s always in a way of how we’re feeling at the time.
Your sound is very unique, combining rap and clean vocals along with very clear presence of rock, what influences this sound?
It has to do with a lot of the bands that we’re listening to like Deftones, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Emmure all these different bands but at the same time we also listen to a lot of hip-hop. When we were doing Seasons, Post Malone just dropped Beerbongs & Bentley's and I was stuck on that for a long time even those things influence us in different ways. We try to put our own vibe but we also make it work.
While your sound is very rare, it’s also well structured, how do you keep all your creative ideas organized?
With Seasons, even a year before we went to the studio we were already writing stuff so when we did Warped Tour in 2017, two weeks after we went right into the studio and recorded a bunch of stuff that actually ended up making it on the record. So we’re always taking things differently like even now, I’ll sit in front of my laptop everyday and if I come up with a vibe I’ll just save it because you never know what could make our next record. It’s almost like fishing when it comes to music, if you visit it everyday you might not catch something but sometimes you will so it’s more about doing it constantly.
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Photos by Tiffany Roberts
What is a song you want old fans and new listeners to take note of off of Seasons?
I would say "Seasons" and "Sick Minded," I think both of those songs represent everything we’ve done and what we’re about pretty well, but both those songs give you the best of both worlds.
Before signing with Hopeless Records, you were on Razor & Tie Records, with your production sound inspired by Caleb Shomo of Beartooth and Attack Attack! who both helped produce your EP, Deadbeat, what was it like working with them in the studio and what did you learn from them?
Working with Caleb was awesome because we were already friends going into a project like that you already have so much comfort. When you go to work with someone new it’s not like, awkward but you just never know people are different. So you have to go into a studio with someone knew, you don’t know what to expect. With Caleb it was cool because we already such close homies at that point that we just went into the studio and discussed what we wanted to write about and it would happen. So it was a great experience, even though we haven’t worked together in a couple of years, we’ve already toured a bunch already and we’ve already talked about working together again even if it’s just a collaboration for the next album. It’s awesome working with friends is always cool.
Now producing two records with Hopeless, how has your experience with them been?
It’s been good. Honestly they’ve gotten us a lot of stuff that we didn’t think we would get, like Monday Night Football and they’ve gotten us some radio play and they get us these pretty cool placements that we weren’t getting before we joined them so it’s been a pretty cool ride.
What can fans expect to see from you on this tour?
Since it’s the first time we’re headlining our fans get enjoy a full show because this whole time we’ve been touring out here in America just kind of like playing a 25 to 30 minute set so our fans to actually expect to see a full solid show for the first time in America. So it’s very exciting but besides that we’re giving it our all and we’re having a good time.