Donning a black leather jacket, Shane Told, frontman of Silverstein, says he’s learned one consistent thing over the course of 22 years of being a punk scene torchbearer: good songs always win. “At the end of the day, that’s the one thing you know you kind of can’t get wrong if you do it right.”
On the band’s 10th album, Misery Made Me, Told dug deep to get it right, writing some of “heaviest, catchiest, and most emotional songs in 22 years of band.”
For Told, the theme of misery on the band’s new record was more than something to explore— it was inescapable.
“Misery was what we all felt for the better part of two years. Especially the way we came into the pandemic. We were firing on all cylinders.” Their last album, A Beautiful Place To Drown, had been released, celebrating 20 years of being a band and selling out the biggest places they’ve ever played while on tour. Told was further cementing his status as an emo legend, at the peak of his career.
Then the pandemic “pulled the rug out from under them.”
“Ten shows into that tour, we find ourselves at home where it’s not only depressing that we had to stop at the peak of our momentum and our career, but there’s just all these uncertainties going on in the world. It was frustrating, scary. I think all of our mental health suffered from that. In some ways, we’re still not recovered.” Told is unsure if they will ever totally recover.
Every Friday, all five band members would catch up and check in with each other on Zoom during the early days of COVID, which lead up to writing the record. These calls were something that let Told see they were all going through the same feelings and struggles. “I think that brought us closer together as friends, not just bandmates or colleagues or business partners.” Being there for each other put them all on the same page to “start putting together creative things” like livestreams and recording Redux II, which was done over the pandemic.
Fans were even involved in writing sessions for the record on Twitch, something that Told said was “rewarding for both the fans and the band.”
“We missed them from not being on tour for so long and being able to log onto Twitch and interact with them was so awesome… It taught us a lot about how fans hear music and what gets them excited.”
However, when it came time to write a record, there was no room for hope and happiness after what they had gone through. The last record Redux had hopeful, upbeat tracks like “Just Say Yes” but when Told sat down with a guitar, pen, and pad, and asked himself ‘What’s inside right now?’ He concluded “It’s not fucking happy.”
Hailing from Ontario, Canada, Silverstein exploded onto the scene in the early aughts, categorized as everything from screamo to post-hardcore during their early days. Named after the children’s author Shel Silverstein, they honed their sound with the debut album When Broken is Easily Fixed and came onto the scene with their second album, 2005’s Discovering the Waterfront, a record with energetic and emotive songs that incorporated elements of punk rock. 2019’s effort, A Beautiful Place to Drown, continues to see Told embracing his heartfelt emotions.
For their newest record, Misery Made Me, Told says the band “truly put it all out there” and went in with “no rules and no preconceived notion of what Silverstein is or what it could be.” Although they’ve always been able to experiment vocally— Told embraces his range—he admits that there’s a lot of gatekeeping in punk rock. “In the past we would be worried about the ‘rules’ we had to comply with to fit in a certain box or scene and we’d end up limiting ourselves creatively sometimes.” On this album, Told was able to feel like “our vision was fulfilled instead of stifled.”
Told says the key to maintaining such a strong fan base comes down to authenticity and finding methods of reaching people in meaningful, new ways, whether it’s through Tik-Tok, Discord, NFTs, or other means. “There’s always some new shit coming out that we’re like ‘Okay, this is the new audience and this is a new way to get our music out there.’ We’ve always embraced it.”
Don’t expect Told to participate in a dance challenge though. “I don’t dance,” Told quips, before admitting that he does dance a bit in the video for “Ultra Violet” but it’s not his personality and would feel “contrived.”
As they’ve matured, Silverstein has been inserting politics and anger with the system over the past few albums, something that Told admits wasn’t the goal when they were younger. “We’ll leave that to bands like Propagandhi and Strike Anywhere or other bands that we admire. They say it better.” Now it’s important for them to speak out.
“Bankrupt” is perhaps the most political track on the record, with lyrics such as “The deck is stacked / The game is rigged / The only rope they give / Chokes us when they pull the strings!” screamed by Told in an angry tone. Told thinks that it came from not wanting to “get into our own emotional state” and “finding it easier to write about something else that we were angry rather than being super self-reflective right away.” “The fact that we all have to play this stupid game of capitalism and everything to live” being kind of “disgusting” brought this anger to the forefront.
For Told, his podcast Lead Singer Syndrome, which boasts over 300 episodes, is a “cool thing to focus on aside from Silverstein” It’s a “little boat that I pushed into the water and took on a life of its own and it sailed away to places I never thought it would go.” Over time he’s realized that others go through the same feelings, making him feel like he’s less in his own bubble because “being a lead singer can be isolating.” which can be difficult for others to grasp. On this, Told says that this makes being lead singer the hardest job in the band, saying “I don’t care how fast you have to play the drums. Being lead singer is harder.”
Watch the video for “Die Alone” featuring Andrew Neufeld here:
For more from Silverstein, find them on Bandcamp, Facebook, and their official website.
Photo courtesy of Kristin Breitkreutz
