Since 2004 Gwen Stacy has been climbing the ladder of extreme music starting in the Midwest climes of Indianapolis. "Growing up in Indiana was awesome," exclaims bassist and founding member Brent Schindler alongside drummer TJ Sego. "We all grew up in surrounding areas of Indianapolis and moved closer to one another when things started to pick up with the band."
After the release of their debut full-length The Life I Know (2008) on Ferret Music, the band spring-boarded from a Buzz worthy DIY touring act to an internationally recognized force to be reckoned with. The album debuted on the Billboard "Heatseekers" Chart and was hailed by media touchstones like Absolute Punk.net who claimed "if you need something to kick your current music rotation in the ass, then The Life I Know is what you want to check out." The album was recorded with top notch sound makers, Brian McTernan (Circa Survive, Thrice, Converge, etc.) and Paul Leavitt (All Time Low, The Bled, From Autumn to Ashes) and established the band’s ability to merge furious aggression of metal and hardcore with more melodic and soaring sections.
Earning steadfast devotion across the continents they blazed the roads of the US and Canada, selling over 16,000 copies and launching them onto non-stop touring with The Devil Wears Prada, Unearth, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Drop Dead, Gorgeous, Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster, 36 Crazy Fists and Haste The Day. The band also completed a full European tour with hardcore legends Poison the Well, it seemed like Gwen Stacy was well on the right path. "I would say the best part about the tours that we've done is that we've gotten to travel and play with bands that are, above all else, our friends," Schindler commented.
With a new home at Solid State Records and a core group built around members TJ Sego (drums), Brent Schindler (bass) and Patrick Meadows (guitarist), the group re-armed themselves with an equally passionate vocalist Geoff Jenkins formerly of Solid State Records’ artists Once Nothing. “It hits close to home for us to be on Solid State. All four of us got into the music we are in now through Solid State Records bands.” Sego commented. “All of us were in the ‘Solid State Generation’. I remember being 14 and the only label I knew of was Solid State and the only label I wanted to be on was Solid State. It feels like we’ve come full circle as a band.”
With their lineup solidified, the band went into the summer of 2009 to record A Dialogue, their Solid State Records debut, with producer Andreas Magnusson (Haste the Day, Oh Sleeper, Black Dahlia Murder, etc.). A fully realized affair, the band merges metal-tinged technical assaults with driving anthemic melodies emerging like the dawn over the remains of a smoke filled battlefield. “This record is a lot more of everything we were doing before but at the time, we didn’t have the time, knowledge, experience, or tools to accomplish this record.” Sego remarked. “We studied a lot of musical theory and every song on the album has some form of musical theory in it. We didn’t just sit at a guitar and bang out some riffs, everything has purpose. This is the album we always wanted to do. This time around to us, we did it right.”
“The entire record is a dialogue; every lyric on the record is in quotations. The entire idea of the record is a conversation between God and man on different subjects, perseverance, asking questions, dealing with doubt, having different trials like abandonment, a lack of compassion and mercy, etc. ” Sego explains about the album’s lyrical content. “When I wrote the lyrics for ‘Creation and How I See It’, I was in a pretty bad place, lots of people I had depended on had given up on me. It was my chance to voice my opinion to God in anger, crying out that if no one was going to show me mercy, I was just going to watch the world burn.”
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