Sleeping With Sirens: 'This Is A VERY Important Record For Us'

“Lots of whiskey!” is Kellin Quinn’s cheeky reply, when MTV UK asks the Sleeping With Sirens frontman how the band are surviving the epic World Tour they’re on with Pierce the Veil, Mallory Knox and PVRIS.

With both headliners having been on the road since late 2014, the World Tour finally comes to the UK at the end of March for a string of sold out (*sob!*) shows, when fans will hear Sirens play songs from their new album, Madness. “This tour has been great, the fans have been awesome and the shows have been really fun. It’s been a pleasure, really,” says the ever-charming, suuuuper confident Kellin, a man standing on the brink of next-level success with the already massive Sirens. 

Madness is already getting major hype – after their last album, Feel, debuted at #3 on the Billboard Chart, Kellin (and his trademark high-pitched vocals) knows he has a lot to live up to as the band’s main songwriter. But right now, speaking backstage at a show in Oklahoma City, he’s being unusually modest. Gone is the swagger from Sirens’ early days (back in 2013, he told MTV “we’re the band that inspires other bands,”) and instead, Kellin is appreciative of the fans that have got them to this point. 

“It is a little surreal,” he laughs. “We are so thankful for how much our fans care. Up until recently, at least, our success has all been thanks to them telling people: ‘hey, check out this band Sleeping with Sirens’; our band has grown just on that alone.” 

“People my age [Kellin is the ripe old age of 28] don’t make the effort to find new music anymore,” he continues. “But our fanbase is constantly checking out new music, and that is why we are so successful, why people talk about bands like us, because there is such an energy and a fire in our fans.”

Sirens’ latest video for ‘Go Go Go’ appears to be a none-too-subtle dig at Rise Records, the band’s former record label before they recently signed to Epitaph. That track, along with ‘Kick Me’ and ‘We Like It Loud’, both released post-Rise, are screaming loud and clear about Kellin’s burning desire to move on and be allowed to grow into the band they want to be. 

“I’m being more vocal about that on this album; I’ve painted the picture a little bit better,” he agrees. “There is definitely the theme of growing up, because I still feel like I’m discovering who I am. That is the journey of life: figuring out who you are and why you are here, what your purpose is.”

But does growing up equal a whole new sound for SWS? Kellin definitely hints at big changes ahead with Madness. “To grow and evolve as an artist has always definitely been the goal for me. I always want to surprise myself, more than anybody else,” he says. “I am ALWAYS thinking about writing music; my wife is constantly asking me: ‘is there any way you can turn off the music part of your brain for a minute?’ but I really can’t! It’s my form of therapy.”

That constant stream of songwriting means that Sirens wrote and recorded an album in 2014, before scrapping it and starting from scratch [hmm, we wonder if we’ll ever hear those tracks?] “I grew up listening to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and every record those bands put out was very unique in its own right,” Kellin starts to explain, “I have that mentality too: if a song sounds like something I’ve already done, then I’ll throw it out, because I want each record to be a progression.

“This is a very important album because we are finally coming into our own with our sound; we found a producer (John Feldman) who really understands us, and it’s a really important record for me because I put a lot of work into it - that is gonna show.”

Apparently, even Kellin’s mother-in-law likes the new record, mainly because “she can hear what I am singing on this one,” he laughs. If that’s not the biggest hint that Madness is going to offer up some huge, pop-led bangers, with clean vocals, then we don’t know what is. But while he admits that he’s always been determined to take Sirens to the next level, Kellin can’t – and won’t - predict just how mainstream this record could make them. 

“For any band that ends up becoming really big, yeah, hard work has something to do with it,” he says, “but a lot of it is just pure luck. I can’t say that my band is going to be the next biggest band because I don’t know that. All I know is that what we are doing right now seems to be working.”

The new album Madness by Sleeping with Sirens is released on Epitaph on March 16, and the Sleeping with Sirens/Pierce the Veil World Tour comes to the UK from March 29 - April 11.

By Georgina Langford @george_langford