Last Night of Solace: Raging Metalcore from Texas

Last Night of Solace is an amazing metalcore collective ready to break out way above and beyond the great big state of Texas!  The band recently issued their debut album entitled Too Far Gone, jam-packed with intensively heartfelt songs that will make you want to jump headfirst into the nearest mosh pit.  With tunes as memorable as Shards, Writhing, Archetype, and the devastating title track, Last Night of Solace is an entity you’ll remember long after Too Far Gone spins to its thrilling conclusion.  Highwire Daze recently interviewed lead vocalist Cameron Foley to find out more about this exciting new band on the rise.  Read on…

We’re here with Cameron from Last Night of Solace. First of all, give me a little background on the band and how long you guys have been together.
With this project, we’ve been around just a little bit over a year. I met all of the guys in various different places in life. I met our guitarist Jeiden when we were in high school actually. So, I’ve known him quite a while. He was in one of my first projects that I was ever in. Met my other guitarist Kennedy from Guitar Center. We and him worked there together. And then my drummer Seth, I met through a mutual friend at this boat club that I’m a part of because we go sailing together.

Where are you guys based out of and what is your local music scene like there?
We’re based out of Dallas, Texas and to be honest, I love the local music scene over here. It’s great. We’ve fought tooth and nail, played those smaller shows that nobody’s at and it’s gotten us to where we’re over here opening for some of our idols and gotten us a bunch of great opportunities. I’m super appreciative of the Dallas local scene and I think it’s honestly a great place for any musician to start out.

Let’s talk about your album Too Far Gone.  First of all, is there any overall story or concept behind that title, Too Far Gone? I know it’s one of the songs as well.
That title our drummer actually came up with and the song itself. I ultimately wrote the lyrics for that, and I think the lyrics for that song also fit in and kind of follow along with the rest of the album. It all follows this same kind of theme and that’s fighting yourself and finding out who you are. This album may be called Too Far Gone, but ultimately nobody is really too far gone. Even though we may have dark times in our lives, there’s always a way to come back from that and always a way to find yourself. The song Too Far Gone itself is about my experience with social media and kind of losing myself in that, and ending up basing my entire life and ideology around getting likes and about getting engagement and all that. But that’s not really a life, at least for me, that’s worth living. It started to really drag me down and I wrote that song about breaking free from that and about finding myself outside of just what other people want me to be. You know what I mean?

Oh yeah. And I think we can all agree that social media as a whole is too far gone.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I just got through watching your video for Writhing and it’s such a powerful song.  Give me a little background on that song, including what was the inspiration behind the lyrics.
So that song in particular – I actually wrote that about two years ago. It was one of the first songs that I was really coming up with before the whole project was finalized. The lyrics at least I wrote by myself. And then once we got down to it and we got into the process of finishing up the album, I thought those lyrics would be a perfect fit for the album. And all in all, the song itself is really about losing yourself to depression and trying to find a way out of a hole. Because I feel like I speak for everyone when I can say we’ve all had times in our lives where we feel like we’re just trapped in this pit that we can’t get out of. And the song is about trying to find your way out of the pit, you know?

Absolutely. We’ll talk about a few more songs. Shards, tell me a little about that one.
So that’s definitely one of our favorites to play live. I really love that song. That’s the first song me and Jeiden sat down and wrote together. We wrote that actually before we had our final lineup and actually, we wrote that before this band was even a thing. Me and him just wrote it together and it ended up being kind of the concept for what the whole project itself – the whole band was going to be. And that song, it takes a lot of inspiration from progressive metalcore acts like Erra and Architects.  Basically, the whole 2010’s modern metal sound. And on top of that, the lyrics, my guitarist really wrote it. Started to write the lyrics about how he was going through this really rough time. I’m not going to get into it because it’s more his personal business, but just a really rough time with family, stuff like that going on. And I kind of just piggybacked off of him and my own experiences and the whole idea of shards of glass and feeling like you’re crumbling into shards of glass, feeling all of this pressure and all of this stress and all of these things just coming in down around you all at the same time and feeling like glass breaking. And that’s really where I came up with the idea for Shards being the name of the song and also the overall vibe and tone of the track.

Archetype, tell me a little about that one.
Archetype is about a toxic relationship and that’s another one of my favorites to play live because it’s one that usually a lot of people can relate to. It’s about being trapped in this relationship with someone you really like, that you’re seeing them slowly lose themselves and slowly just not be who the person you fell in love with is. Watching them start tearing down their interpersonal relationships, watching them alienate the people around them that care about them and want them to succeed. And that’s ultimately what I wrote that song about, feeling trapped watching someone you love lose themselves and then realizing I don’t have to be in this situation. I can be fine on my own and I’m not required to take care of this person anymore if they aren’t willing to help themselves.

We’re hitting some powerful topics here, that’s for sure.
Yeah, when I write it’s definitely all I guess darker stuff, particularly with this album, it’s not as much so with the newer project we’re working on. But with that album, it was all a really personal experience for me. I really wanted to get some of these emotions out into the world to maybe help people who needed to hear stuff like that, you know?

Now The Paths I noticed on Spotify that Tom Barber’s name is attached to thatsong. Are you talking about the Tom Barber from Chelsea Grin and Lorna Shore?
I am talking about that Tom Barber. He has the final verse of the track.

How did Tom Barber become involved with The Paths?
We wanted this first album that we dropped to have some really good solid features on it from people we really respected in the scene. And I just simply reached out to Tom Barber because I’ve been a big fan of his work. I think he’s one of the better heavy vocalists in the scene period. Like his work with Darko and Chelsea Grin and Lorna Shore is all really amazing. And I wanted his vocals on my song. So I hit him up and was basically just like, “Hey, I’m a big fan of your work, wanted to see what you thought of the song and if you might want to hop on it with us.” And he sure enough was happy to hop on the song with us. Within a week he tracked everything and sent it back to us and that was that.

Aaron Isbell from Concepts produced your album.  What was that experience like and what did Aaron contribute to the overall recording process?
Honestly, Aaron was like our fifth Beatle starting out. We were new to the scene. We met some great people that got us connected with the people that we needed to be in talks with to really make a solid product. Aaron, despite how young and how small we were starting out, looked at us and saw that we had a lot of potential and wanted to work with us. And I put in the hours, put in the grind, and was able to pay off the album and make all that happen. And honestly, Aaron added a lot to the album, not just in terms of production, but there’d be songs where I would be sitting in the studio with him and the rest of the band would be with us, and we’d co-write it together. Aaron would help us edit the riffs and get them exactly how we wanted. Aaron would basically, we’d give him an idea and he’d help us see that idea to completion. He was honestly a great help in the writing process.

What could one expect from a live Last Night of Solace show?
A killer fucking mosh pit.  I love bringing out energy in their crowds. My favorite thing about performing is getting to interact with people. Sometimes in some of our earlier shows and maybe when we headline a few times that we’ve done a cover that everybody knows. So even the people out in the crowd who maybe don’t know all of our music can still scream along and jump and have energy with us. So, in the case of doing a cover or one of our bigger songs, sometimes I’ll just bring somebody up on the crowd to do guest vocals and scream along with us or sing along, or I’ll just hand the mic to somebody in the crowd or whenever there’s a breakdown, I’ll jump into the pit and start pushing everybody around. And my guitarists, since they have wireless systems, will sometimes do the same as well. We really like just interacting with the crowd and making sure they have a great time, because that’s the reason we’re out here. We’re out here to make sure everybody’s having fun and everybody’s having a good time. And by interacting with the crowd to that extent and by actually physically being around them, I feel like we’re more inclined to give them a great experience.

What was the experience like playing the So What?! Festival and what were some of the highlights? There were definitely some killer bands on your stage.
It was absolutely amazing. I’m super grateful for the opportunity. I mean, when we played, I made so many great connections meeting people. For example, I met Kellen Quinn from Sleeping With Sirens backstage and just talked to him for a while and he was a really great guy. And I won’t get into details yet because it’s not fully announced, but we have something we’re working on with him as well. So we have that. And I met a lot of great people, like the guys from Enterprise Earth, the guys from The Browning, Invent Animate, Fit For An Autopsy. All those guys were just great guys and we were just talking to them – and even though we’re just like a smaller band in the scene, they were all super welcoming to us, gave us great advice, and interacted with us, which was really cool to see. We also had like our merch table right next to great acts like Woe Is Me, Alesana, Until I Wake all this stuff. So it was really cool to see all these great bands right next to us and it was awesome getting to talk to them and learn their experiences – and to be able to grow and use that knowledge to be better as well.

Our actual performance, we played in 115-degree heat, so it was pretty hot! I feel bad for the guys in the pit, but we had some great action. I loved everybody in the crowd. They were all super into us and it made me feel really loved and appreciated to be up there. But two of our guys did actually get heat stroke from playing in such hot weather. They’re okay now, but we did have to get one of them an IV drip.

Oh no. Oh wow.
Yeah, it was rough.

And you’ve got the humidity in Texas as well.
Oh, yeah. It’s humid. It’s really bad.  Yeah. It was rough. But all in all, despite the heat we had a great turnout, and we made a lot of new friends that day and it was a great experience all in all. I’m really happy we got to play that show.

If Last Night of Solace could open for any band either now or from the past, who would it be and why?
That’s an interesting question because I’d say we all have different influences and different favorite bands. For example, Kennedy is a big guy in tech death. He really likes the super technical extremely hard rifts that those tech death bands like Archspire and stuff will write. Me, Seth, and Jeiden are all more towards the, I’d say metalcore side of things. And we all, I guess would have different bands that we would open for, but I think as a whole the band would best fit – opening for a band like Wage War. Wage War is a band that got me to really love live shows. They put on one of the best live shows I’ve seen, and I feel like our music is a great fit for their audience.

How far along are you on the new EP and how will it compare to Too Far Gone?
So with the new EP we actually just finished recording. We’re essentially just waiting for that last song on the EP to get finished being mixed and mastered and then that’ll be that. At the moment we’re looking more for a label to distribute it because I’m not going to lie personally, I think this EP all the songs on it are really some of our best work. I think this is definitely the highest quality production we’ve put in and I’m really excited to see where it goes, which is why we kind of wanna have a label backing us. But even if we don’t I do have some plans of how we can go about releasing it and we’ll likely also have a tour alongside the album to help promote it.

Is there any chance of your band doing some shows out here in Los Angeles or the West Coast or doing a tour?
Absolutely. Actually, we’re in talks with several bands. I’m great friends with a lot of bands, particularly in San Francisco, but all over California and we’ve already been offered some shows up there. The thing is all of us are just busy with school and have other stuff going on, but that being said, we already have some tours in the works that’ll be Southern United States, East to West Coast, that sort of thing. So, we’ll be up there pretty soon. I can’t talk about it too much, but we definitely have some plans to get up there.

Tell me about the other band Lanticblue and how your other band compares to Last Night of Solace.
So, it is a bit of a tricky question. Lanticblue is essentially me and my drummer’s side project. We have some great friends in the local scene, and they needed a drummer and a bassist, so we wanted to help them out and be part of the project.  Lanticblue, I would say is more traditional deathcore or I would say progressive deathcore, think Invent Animate, or After the Burial, but like with more vocals, I would say akin more to like early Chelsea Grin. It is at least how our new stuff is turning out. But Lanticblue is a fun project. It’s been around a lot longer than Last Night of Solace has in the local scene. Our vocalist in that project, Kirby has gotten us some great connections and he’s been super helpful to us and it’s always a great time playing with the boys in Lanticblue.

Has Last Night of Solace and Lanticblue ever played shows together or is that something you’d like to do?
It is actually something we’ve done. We played a festival in July called Y2K Fest and both last night I saw us and Lanticblue were on the bill and we also have two upcoming shows throughout this year that Last Night of Solace and Lanticblue will both be on the same bill for it.

How do you and your drummer do both fans in the same day?
Hard working commitment is all I can really say. For me, it’s a bit different since one band I’m the vocalist, and one band, I’m the bassist and I do some backing vocals in, so I don’t wear myself out too much because it’s a different instrument and if the sets are a couple of hours apart, it’s not the biggest deal. My drummer is just a beast, that’s all I can really say. He’s awesome.

What is it you would like a listener to remember after hearing the music of Last Night of Solace for the first time?
Honestly, that’s a good question and I’m glad you asked it. I want a listener to hear one of our songs and to really just vibe with it. I want somebody to listen to it and for it to actually change how they might see things or help them get through a rough time in their lives. Because that’s really what the music is about. It’s about talking about these heavy topics and expressing it through music. And I hope that listening to some of these songs that I’ve created can help people go through their trauma or whatever they’re dealing with in their life as much as it’s helped me writing them.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

Last Night of Solace on Instagram