Ghosts Again – The Highwire Daze Legacy Interviews

Ghosts Again – The Highwire Daze Legacy Interviews

Originally published: May 9, 2016

From the press release: Ghosts Again is a post hardcore outfit, sonically booming with aggressive, “in your face” riffs, and anthematic, emotionally driven melodies. Formed from the ashes of former projects, Close Up on the Quiet Ones and Messenger Down, these 3 musicians have come together to push each other to their limits to create a sound that’s all their own

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Ghosts Again, and how long the band has been together.
Arun: My name is Arun and I play drums in the band. We’ve been together since July of last year.

Where is the band based out of and what is your local music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
Arun: The rest of the band is from Greenville, NC but we pretty much consider Charlotte, NC our hometown. And there are tons of great bands around North Carolina right now. Off the top of my head there’s Eyes Eat Suns, Something Clever, Never I, Vices and Vessels and probably a couple dozen others that I’m blanking on right now.

Is there any story or concept behind the album title The Closest Thing To Closure?
Arun: Honestly, that would be a better question for our singer, Alex. Alex was most behind The Closest Thing to Closure conceptually; the rest of us helped out a lot more with the musical aspect.

Alex: Mostly for me, it a very literal title. The last year or so has been rough for me and these were the first songs I’d written in a while. So I wrote about a lot of things I wanted to get off my chest, and for me, writing those songs was closure on a lot of struggles I’d been through.

Select two songs from The Closest Thing To Closure and what inspired the lyrics.
Alex: The first one would probably be Skeleton Boy. I actually wrote most of this song 2 years ago. It was about my best friend (a guy) who was taking advantage and sort of “playing” another friend of mine (a girl), and it put me in a really weird situation so I kind of wrote this song to vent about it at the time. The lyrics also take some inspiration and quotes from one of my favorite passages from the Chuck Palahniuk short story “Guts”.

The second would probably be Eleven. We actually had written the entire song musically before even touching the lyrics and one night, Arun sent me a paragraph of some lyrics he thought could fit into the song, which later became the outro to the song. I then wrote the rest of the songs lyrics based around the topic he had wrote about which was a sort of frustration with religion and “God”. In the end it was really cool to see how our efforts molded together.

Who did the cover art on The Closest Thing To Closure and how much input did you have in it?
Arun: Our friend Bailey Zindel at Halfheart Media did the album art for it. When we were having it made, we basically walked him through the EP conceptually and lyrically and really let him have free reign with it. We all ended up loving what he came to us with so we really didn’t even need to change it a whole lot after we got the first draft of it.

What could one expect from a live Ghosts Again show?
Arun: Us making some silly faces while playing and probably around a half dozen broken drumsticks.

If Ghosts Again could open up for any band either now or from the past, who would it be and why?
Arun: There are easily hundreds of bands that I would love to open for. But the first one that comes to mind is probably Pierce the Veil. They’re one of my (and the rest of the band’s) favorite bands and they always put on one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen.

Any strange or scary happenings while on the road or at a show?
Arun: Well, we’re still a pretty young band so so far nothing too bad has happened. Yet.

Have you ever played in Los Angeles or plan to do so in future days? If so, what was the experience like?
Arun: Not yet but that’d be pretty swell. Hopefully we’ll get out there sooner rather than later.

If your music was a donut, what kind would it be and why?
Arun: Boston Cream. Because those are the best kind of donut and we make the best kind of music.

What’s up next for Ghosts Again?
Arun: We’re always writing stuff so currently we’re planning out our next release and booking shows and all that good stuff.

Any final words of wisdom?
Arun: Nope I’d say that that just about covers everything!

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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