Sonny Moore recently checked in with an update on his upcoming album. He comments:

"...I'll be finishing up the ALBUM.. Yes .. the real album... its happening... and its awesome! Really aggressive... I've been listening back to a lot of aphex twin and prodigy and rage against the machine lately... so its been inspiring sort of a cool new direction."

Sonny has issued an update on his current happenings, as well as gives details on future releases:

"I've been tied down in record label issues for the passed 1 and a half years which has kept me from being legally "aloud" to release "Bells". I have more than 2 records worth of tracks recorded for the full length, but have not been able to release anything for those reasons (other than the EP I released earlier in the summer).

With that said, In the mean time I've been having lots of fun doing remixes and DJing. It's another artistic release for me. I know it's not primarily what I was put on this planet to do, BUT non the less It is a creative outlet for me that I really enjoy to do especially in this current grace period of not being able to release my record.

I know i've said the record would come out so many times over and over again in the past and it obviously hasn't yet, nor have I even gotten a concrete release date either, but I can say that I can not see how it wouldn't come out next year no later than summer. But then again... who really knows right now.. I haven't had much luck regarding labels these past couple years.

But in the mean time while all of this stuff with the album get's sorted out, I will continue to DJ and produce tracks. It's something I love to do and If you're also into it then awesome. If not, that's cool too. I'm going to continue to do what makes me happy regardless while this record thing sorts it self out."

December 29, 2007

MATT GOOD: Well, what happened was: we were making our first record for Epitaph in Georgia, and Sonny wanted to play guitar. I met Sonny on Myspace, so it’s funny you bring that up about Drop Dead. I knew Sonny from Myspace, because when it first started it was like a “scene only smaller kind of community” thing before it had blown up into the mainstream world. He used to leave me comments all the time—all these weird things. He was just some kid that had a lot of friends on Myspace. I was like, “oh, cool whatever.” He kept calling me like, “dude I wanna come play guitar.” So he came down. We were making some vocal melodies, and I was like “dude, why don’t you try out to be the singer, because I like playing guitar.” Then he sang the song, and we were like cool, this is cool – and we just kinda went with it for whatever reason. We didn’t even know the kid. We were just like “fuck, let’s just do it. Be in the band. Sure, why not, we’ve got nothing to lose.” That’s just how it all started right there.

RYAN MINIC: So he just took over vocals for a while? What happened, why is he not in the band anymore?

TRAVIS RICHTER: He just wanted to make his own music. We were working; he was in LA recouping from his latest vocal surgery at the time. We were writing a record in Orlando, and all of us were together, the four of us, and he called us and was like, “dude, I don’t want to do this anymore. I really just want to work on my own music and make my own stuff” and everything. We were just like “wow, okay are you sure?” And he was. So we said okay, and just kind of rolled with the punches so to speak.

RYAN MINIC: What did that feel like when you got this call, and he’s like hey dude I just can’t do it anymore? I mean you guys just released – you just had an awesome record out that you did with Ross Robinson.

MATT GOOD: Yeah, we put out “Heroine” and we did one tour off it.

TRAVIS RICHTER: And we didn’t go back into the record with him.

RYAN MINIC: And you guys were just on the cover of AP…

MATT GOOD: It was kind of crazy because we cancelled Warped Tour because he lost his voice. Then we cancelled the Atreyu tour because he lost his voice – so that was a whole debacle in itself. And then when he quit, we were just like “wow, so this is happening.” For a while we just didn’t really know what to do. We were just like “screw it, we can’t just stop playing now. I mean, we started without him. It’s not like we can’t keep going without him.”

RYAN MINIC: That’s good that you guys did that, man. That’s awesome that you were still kicking it.

TRAVIS RICHTER: We have so many memories with just me, Derek, and Matt just being in bands. Just the EP, and our first tours and all that stuff before Sonny even came into the band. So it wasn’t baffling when he quit, but it was just one of those things where we looked at each other and thought “okay, you want to do this again, you ready to do this? Because this is going to be hard.” Of course we want to do it. This is how we exist. We don’t even feed ourselves out of From First To Last.