Modern Life Is War made a short video documenting the making of their upcoming record, Midnight In America, out August 21 on their new label Equal Vision. The video is pretty much exactly how I thought it was going to be; more shots of what they do while they are wasting time on the road and less informational scenes about what inspired their songs and recording with J. Robbins.

The new tracks that can be heard in the video hint that they’re taking the new album in a much different direction than Witness (Deathwish). The songs are much slower and even include a cover of the folk song “Stagger Lee.”

In the past two years MLIW have toured almost nonstop. The beauty of their previous releases was that the lyrics focused on the day to day life of living in a slow town in middle America. By being away from their muse I wonder where they will draw inspiration from for this new album. Speaking of touring, the band is currently on tour with He Is Legend, Maylene & The Sons of Disaster, and Paulson. Click read more for dates and the video of the making of their new CD.
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Modern Life Is War tour. They tour A-L-O-T. Tuesday marked (correct me if I’m wrong here) the fourth time in the last year the band has played in NYC. Even though they tend to stick with their standard set list, the band still inspires me to throw my shit to the side, run up front, and scream along. But on this go around, three new songs were sprinkled in.

Now for the new new songs. “Stagger Lee” gives a hardcore spin on the folk classic. “The Motorcycle Boy Reigns” is a slower song reminiscent of their song “Hair Raising Accounts of Restless Ghosts” off Witness. And lastly, “Midnight In America” is a fast pace song with rock n roll influences, similar to a Cloak/Dagger song. These songs will most likely appear on their still-untitled third full-length and Equal Vision debut, which is due on September 4th. Witness is most certainly a tough act to follow but the new tunes sounded just as crushing and uncompromising. In fact, I thought they sounded even more epic. It was an interesting little peek and it made me look forward to the new album even more.

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So how are the plans coming along for the new album?
We’re trying to book it. We want to book studio time for March or April and we’ll try to do the full-length then. We have this tour (with Strike Anywhere), then we have a month off to write and then we have a tour with Converge and Some Girls in November. The rest of the way we’re just going to devote to writing songs and working on the new record. We’ll record in the spring and it’ll be out by next summer, hopefully.

How many songs do you have guys have so far?
We have five right now. We played one new one tonight. The lyrics, (I am) still working them out. I have two of them down solid and the other three are still in the works.

Are you guys going to work with Kurt (Ballou-producer of Witness and Converge Guitarist) again?
We’re not sure yet.

Are you guys going to work with Deathwish again?
We don’t know about yet either. We had a one record deal with Deathwish for Witness. So, we’re not sure. Everything’s up in the air right now.

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