Vic Fuentes of Pierce The Veil explains in depth what each song on their new record, Misadventures means and the message behind the lyrics. Check out what he had to say below…
Dive In
“This was the last song that we finished. We felt that it had no other place on the record other than at the very beginning, because it was a good example of who we are. If you wanted to introduce somebody to Pierce The Veil, you could play them that song, and they’d get it. Being on tour or even just being in the music industry can bring a lot of frustrations. You unfortunately see the realities of how it all works. We’re the kind of the band who try to keep everything very grassroots between our families and friends. When people try to belittle that vibe or taint that beautiful thing about music, it brings a lot of anger and frustration. The bridge of the song where I say, ‘Kill me if I end up like you,’ ties it all together. I never want to lose this honesty and passion for what we’re doing. We’ve toured with people who seem to have lost it and just do it for money. They don’t even want to go on stage every night. I don’t want to be around that, and it really brings me down.”
Texas Is Forever
“That’s a purely self-indulgent song for us because it’s really fast and that’s what we grew up listening to. We love all of the Fat Wreck Chords artists, NOFX, Lagwagon, and the bands we cut our teeth on when we were in high school. It comes naturally for us. With my brother Mike playing drums, he owns those types of beats. I actually had an interview with John Oates of Hall and Oates. The first thing he said was, ‘I want whatever your drummer is taking because I need some energy!’ [Laughs] He loved how fast it was. Lyrically, it closes the book on a topic I’ve been singing about for the last three records. It’s about a relationship that kept going and had a lot of ups and downs. We were both able to stop thinking about it and have a mutual respect for each other’s lives. That was the end of it, which is nice.”
The Divine Zero
“The title comes from a movie called The Grand Budapest Hotel. The character’s name is Zero, and in the movie some- body goes, ‘Oh, the Divine Zero!’ I loved that line. To me, it had a concept. It’s about an insecure feeling I’ve had throughout all of our music career, always feeling like me or our band are still always trying to prove to ourselves that we have something to offer. Sometimes, I’ll feel like I’m not good enough for this or certain people. Inside, I feel like I have so much to offer, and I’ve always felt that way. It’s for a person who doesn’t have the confidence but knows they can change the world inside and out. They’re waiting for their chance to breakout. That relates to a lot of our young fans. It’s about being ‘The Divine Zero.’”
[ads1]
Floral & Fading
“That song was the one standout track on the record. We all knew that it was a big risk. We love having at least one song like this, where it’s almost an experiment musically. It’s about the public tormenting my girlfriend. We’ve been dealing with a lot of people straight up harassing her and threatening her. She’s the nicest person. She didn’t know how to handle it. There were times when she’d call me crying because people were saying all of these horrible things about her and mak- ing fucked up Instagram photos and Photoshopping all of this crazy shit about her. It was rough. I’m used to stuff like that. She’s not. She didn’t know why these people were attacking her so brutally. It really pissed me off that people were acting like that towards her. I sort of wrote it telling her that if it was just her and I on a different planet, I would be happy with that. Or, if we threw away our phones and went and lived in the woods together, we would be fine. None of this shit mat- ters. None of that talk matters. I was trying to relay that to her in a song. There’s a line that says, ‘We can fake our own deaths here’ and disappear.”
Phantom Power and Ludicrous Speed
“That was the culmination of the pressure and stress that people were putting on me to make this record. I usually don’t write songs about making records, but I had so much going on throughout the last two years of doing this that it just felt right. I wanted to be left alone to make these songs. I always considered making an album as similar to creating a painting or writing a poem. There are no rules. There should never be anybody telling you what to do. That song is just me speak- ing about the process of what I was going through. The isolation was pretty brutal. I took things too far at points, being alone and working on things. You need your friends. It summed up what I went through.”
Circles
“That was a special one because I got to co-write it with my friend Curtis Peoples and my other buddy Steve Miller. We wrote that in L.A. at Steve’s studio. I let that one sit lyrically. I didn’t touch it for a while. I didn’t want to have any pre- conceptions about what it was about. In Seattle at the end, I wrote it in a matter of four hours at a coffee shop. I had been waiting for the right topic to write about. When I found what I wanted to write about, it came so easily. Basically, I wrote that for the people who lost their lives in the Paris attacks at The Bataclan. What affected me the most was when I watched the Eagles of Death Metal talk about what happened. They said a lot of people died trying to save their friends. That was so crazy to me, thinking about these kids at a show trying to save each other, risking their lives, and losing their lives. We’d played that venue two years previous to that day with Bring Me The Horizon. That got me thinking too; that could’ve been any of our bands, any of our friends, or anyone of us. The whole situation just hit me right at home. I wrote the song about two kids at the show. It’s a story about two friends trying to save each other as it’s all going down.”
Today I Saw The Whole World
“I’ve never had this situation happen to me. When it did, it was pretty hard. It was about a girl who basically cheated on me with one of my friends when we were on tour. We weren’t exclusive, but just the idea of a person you care about get- ting with one of your friends when you’re gone was rough. It felt like being betrayed by both parties. You feel like you’ve been kicked in the stomach by two of your friends.”
Gold Metal Ribbon
“It was about a friend that passed away. She was my first girlfriend. She passed during the making of this record. It was hard because she was the first person I ever fell in love with and said those words to. It’s a song for her, letting her know I still think about her. ‘Gold Medal Ribbon’ was her favorite ice cream flavor. We used to go get ice cream together all of the time in high school.”
Bedless
“The title comes from the fact I’ve never actually owned a bed all of these years [Laughs]. Our life is always moving and being on the road. When we’re home, we’re not really home. I never really have a chance to settle down. It’s actually about a relationship that I had. It was one of those things that kept dragging on for a real long time. Neither of us ever said anything about what we were together. It went on for years between us. We were super good friends, and we shared so many amazing experiences, but it never really went anywhere. It’s an apology for her basically saying, ‘I never meant to waste your time, but I still loved what we had together.’”
Sambuka
“It’s about trying to make relationships work from tour. Over the years of our touring, I’d build something with someone every once in a while from another state or another country, and it was sort of unrealistic and difficult to do. It caused a lot of pain and frustration. I spelled the title wrong, because I thought it was spelled like that [Laughs]. It looks easier to say so I left it.”
[ads1]
Song For Isabelle
“Isabelle is a real person. She was somebody I met on tour. She’s a really beautiful girl who’s a friend of ours and would hang out at our shows. The last time I saw her, she had become really depressed and told me she couldn’t understand why people treated each other the way they do. She just couldn’t handle that concept of people treating each other so badly all over the world. It tore her apart. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this. She told me she wouldn’t be here in a year. She thought she would end her life because she couldn’t take what was going on out there. It blew my mind. Here was this pretty girl who seemed to be fine, but she had all of these internal struggles going on that she just couldn’t handle. For a year, I was wondering if she was okay. It was crazy. It consumed me for a while. I eventually found out that she was fine and she pulled through. Hopefully she found something or someone to show her the joy in life.”
[ads1]