Everyone Dies in Utah have been getting some slack for their new sound. The band’s latest album Neutral Ground came out last week, and it’s left a bunch of devout fans unsettled with their new musical direction. Being the nosey rosies that we are, we asked guitarist Keaton Smith to weigh in on all the criticism. And despite what anyone thinks, he says EDIU are just doing their own thing.
What’s different about this album versus the previous two?
It’s a lot heavier. We have a different singer but it’s still Everyone Dies in Utah.
I’ve heard the album and noticed the new sound. Why did you decide to go in a new direction with your music?
Keaton: It’s not necessarily a new direction for us it’s just like us trying to figure out. We write what we like and we don’t try to fit a certain style. We did want to bring more of the synth stuff back.
What was the theme of the album if any?
Not necessarily. I had a basic idea of topics I wanted to write about but I kind of just ended up with certain things that were a little more angry but still had that positive message.
What were some of the topics you covered?
Heartbreak, bullies, just because I’ve seen a lot of that stuff recently and it’s angered me. I feel like if we all came together as people we could stop all that. That’s pretty much what I wrote about on this album.
I’ve been reading comments on Facebook and some of the fans are responding to the new songs negatively. How are you dealing with the negative comments?
Well to me it just seems like it’s more production wise, which I didn’t understand because I didn’t know there were so many audio engineers in this world (laughs). We went to Platinum Recording and so we tracked all real instruments and used all real drums. People are just used to hearing overly produced albums and since we used real instruments it’s just going to take people time to get used to it but we think it will grow on people eventually. Pretty much all the negative comments we’ve gotten were on production.
What’s next now that the album has hit stores?
We’re going to do a small album release tour that starts tomorrow and after that we’re going to start the New Year and promote the cd. On top of that over the holidays we’re actually going to start writing a new album.
Do you have any big tour plans for next year?
Not yet but we are working on getting something big set up for next year.
Are there any goals for the band as a whole or individually as far as music is concerned?
I want to put out another album pretty soon actually which is a pretty big goal… the real goal is to just keep putting music out and constantly doing what we do.
Any message for the fans? Or any last thoughts?
Don’t ever ever cook bacon without a shirt on. Just please let everyone know that.