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    • Feb 15, 2021
    • 9 min read

THROUGH IT ALL new single 'Peace Keeper' | INTERVIEW

When your biggest fear is worrying that the band will get arrested because the drums are too loud… just in case you needed a little bit more context, the other day I caught up with Sean and Lachlan from NSW hardcore band Through It All. The lads chatted about the band, Sean’s military background influencing their new song, the risky filming of the ‘Peace Keeper’ music video, and what to expect and their FIRST EVER GIG coming up in Wollongong (Kublai Khan TX fans might want to invest in a ticket).


GENRE: Hardcore| FFO: Kublai Khan, Linkin Park, Saviour

What’s the story behind Through It All, how did you guys all meet and where does the band name come from?


SEAN: We’ve got me on vocals, Lachlan on drums, Josh the guitarist and Andrew on bass currently. The band actually started off as a side project in 2017, it was just a place for me to do my thing, by myself, to see how I would go as a vocalist. I wasn’t that confident as a vocalist and had no idea if it was even going to be a thing, and it wasn’t until the end of 2019 where I was like ‘I’m going to release a song’ and I had lots of help and support from those around me, and Andrew and Josh said they wanted to join, it just blew me away that they even wanted to be a part of it.


Through It All was a song title of a first track I made in a band back in like 2008 and it just resonated with me since forever, just that track and the name, and I was like ‘Yeah, that’s a hardcore name, I could get behind that’.


2020 happened and we released Breakthrough, but then Covid hit and put us back a bit like ‘well, what do we do now?’, and I thought that I would keep going with it, because it was still a solo project and what-not. We wrote some songs and then we ran into Lachlan who was going to play drums for us and we went ahead with our latest single Peace Keeper, and that leads us up to now.



With the new single ‘Peace Keeper’ which was released a few days ago (at time of interview) Congrats guys by the way! So, when you guys were doing the all the promotion for Peace Keeper particularly with the music video, that image of the clip caught my eye because it made me think of this German band called Empty Home, and the lead singer in that band wears a yellow flannel just like you Sean in Peace Keeper, and I thought that Through It All could be a pretty cool band with no doubt a pretty cool sound.


So, what does the song Peace Keeper actually mean?


SEAN: It’s sort of a self reflective piece that I wrote. When I was in the army when we would talk to civilians and they would ask ‘What did you do in the army?’, and it was just an easy thing to say that we were peace keepers, and it was also an easy way to say that we were basically just glorified security haha. That was where the name came from, and then when I was writing the song, I wrote the song on the day of the tracking of the song. I didn’t know what I was going to sing about, I just had some words and the engineer, Brad, said ‘What have you got?’, and I said

‘I don’t know, I’m just going to start screaming stuff and see if it works’

and we just started to build on the song on the day haha. Yeah, it’s got a bit of personal confliction as a person and as a soldier, and also the current events of the world that was going on at the time, it was very clear that people were very upset about law enforcement and the military.


I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sing about it or not, but you know it’s relevant.


Were you concerned about writing a song on such a loaded topic, ‘military’?


SEAN: I was. It’s not something that really I wanted to or even thought about bringing into the music, it’s always been something that’s in my personal past and a part of my life. I never had any plans about being outspoken about it, but when the world was going through all those changes and it was all over the media, it just really hit close to home, and thought ‘you know what, if anyone is ever interested in this band and the music’ it’s better to know now rather than finding out later and getting annoyed that I was soldier.



What was it like creating the music video for Peace Keeper?


SEAN: It was awesome!


LACHLAN: Yeah it was fantastic! Firstly, it was my first music video ever, so it was just a brand new experience, and working with Corey our videographer from CN Media just made things so much easier working with someone who has that experience and the knowledge that he had was just *mind blowing hand gesture*.


As you can see in the video the things that he captured was just fantastic and he knew what to do, knew what he wanted and knew how to capture what we wanted, yeah it was just fantastic and a really good experience as a whole. The place was incredible to see, because I drive past where we had filmed everyday and hadn’t even noticed that place was there. Just every little change that we wanted Corey was just happy to make, and obviously with this being my first experience he’s really set the bar pretty high. All in all it was a really positive experience.


SEAN: I had worked with Corey before and he’s just that good! Haha I don’t really know what to say to you. He knows his shit! haha.


This sounds terrible... but how many dodgy warehouses did you guys check out before deciding which one was perfect for the Peace Keeper music video?


SEAN: Not too many in person, but we did have a look at a lot. Some of them looked cool, some of them sounded impractical…


LACHLAN: Yeah, there were a few where we were like ‘Hey, if we go there… there’s a chance we might get arrested’ because it would be technically trespassing haha, so we were like ‘Okay, let’s not go to that one’.


There were also some talks about doing the video in a mansion, a really old abandoned mansion as well and Corey sent it through. It looked incredible, but just ended up being impractical.


SEAN: I was really worried, and was like maybe we should do something else, but we were really keen on the idea of an abandoned place, cause it’s such a classic band thing to do, to shoot in an abandoned place, and it was something that I hadn’t done before which was good.


Did you have to take into consideration any noise limitations/ restrictions?


LACHLAN: A little bit when I was filming my takes. Obviously with drums, they’re loud and I’m a very hard hitter haha, so yeah in between takes when they were walking around looking for a good shot I would be just like noodling around and Corey came around a few times like ‘Hey Dude, might have to keep it down, we don’t know if there are any noise restrictions or anything’, and I was like ‘Awah okay’, hahaha.


So if the band gets arrested it will be on Lachlan!


LACHLAN: Hahaha


SEAN: The snare can sound like a gun shot, if you’re far away I guess.


LACHLAN: Which honestly though, it was so cool because it sounded so nice, it just like echoes through the whole thing, so it was really tempting. But yeah, we had a really big speaker that we were obviously playing to so we cranked that pretty well. There was only one time where Corey was like ‘Stop’, other than that, noise wasn’t really an issue.


SEAN: The heat of the day though, that really got to us.


LACHLAN: Yeah, it was a really hot day to start with, and we were there like ‘haha we’ll wear long sleeve T-shirts because we’re metal’, and we were there just dripping with sweat!


SEAN: Our faces were all red, and it was like 35 degrees or something!


When the breeze came through it was just like magic


What are the band’s biggest influences? I know that I hear a little bit of Linkin Park, Saviour and Bloom particularly in Peace Keeper.


SEAN: It’s funny that you say that, because those are some brand new influences I’ve heard from someone who’s heard it. I’ve never heard that we sound like Linkin Park for example, so that’s awesome.


LACHLAN: Now, that you mention it, I can hear it.


It’s like Hybrid Theory-ish/ little bit of Meteora of Linkin Park that I can hear.


LACHLAN: I can’t speak for Break Through or Peace Keeper because Sean wrote them, but I guess with our new stuff when we are writing, or for me I don’t have a certain band or sound that I’m going for. I would just pick a song and go with what’s this song going to feel like. Is it a moshing song? Or a bouncy jumping song? Or is it melodic? and just kind of go from there.


SEAN: It’s always hard, you always have band’s that you’re influenced by and think that it would be cool to sound like that, but then it never ends up sounding like that because you have your own unique thing. I think that we kind of just roll with that, roll with our own unique style and see what we come up with as we begin writing as a full band.


You guys mentioned a little bit about working on new music, what can you tell us about it?


SEAN: We are keen to start writing new music together and bring out some sort of EP at some point.


LACHLAN: I think that logically, that would be the next step for us, to get back into the studio at some point, having said that, we don’t have a direct timeline of anything just yet, but hopefully going into this year would be amazing. Because I’m impatient as hell haha! Yeah, so logically the next step is studio, EP, touring or playing some sort of shows as much as possible.



Speaking of shows, you guys have a gig coming up on the 5th March at ‘Diamond Dogs Music Lounge’ in Woolongong, supporting Heartsick along with Spectre. Is this the FIRST Through It All gig?


SEAN: Yes, yes it is!


Ever?


LACHLAN: Yup first gig ever!


Awesome Congrats! What can your fans expect at your first gig ever?


SEAN: We are putting the work in, at the moment we only have two songs live but we’ve got other songs in the background that we are going to put out.


LACHLAN: We will be debuting a new song there and I guess it’s like ‘ooooh new song’. My personal philosophy, which stems from obviously LOVING being the centre of attention haha, is that no matter if we play to five people or five thousand is that I always give it my all, no matter how many people are there, they’ve paid to see us or to see a band play and make it worth it. Make it memorable!


SEAN: Yeah I’m totally the same with that. I remember playing a show to no one (in a previous band), there was like no one there, people were sitting down and there was just one dude there and I just played haha.


But you know, for the show we will be playing a cover of Kublai Khan TX’s Self-Destruct, we’ve been working on that one for a while, it’s something we’ve always wanted to do and we are pretty keen to rock that one out as our band’s first cover. We are also going to play the first demo I ever wrote in this band, it’s a little bit different from the others but none-the-less it’s still us.


Okay last question for you guys. Do you have any last words or messages you want to get out to your fans on behalf of the band?


SEAN: First of all thanks for checking us out! We are a new band but none-the-less, we have merch on our website, we absolutely love it when people grab our merch and show us/ rep us it’s sick!


LACHLAN: For the first that person I see in public wearing Through It All merch I will probably cry and hug you, if you’re comfortable with that. So, buy merch, wear it, and you’ll get a hug from me.


As a band we are all so keen to start playing and getting “us” out there, always just keep an eye out we are on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, all those places where you can put music.


SEAN: Our release is up on Spotify as well, I know that’s the popular one people like.


Thanks for paying attention. I personally don’t expect anything from doing this, I’m just happy to do it, and the fact that anyone gives a shit is just amazing, and I’m thankful for people like yourself (Jess from Moody Music) to give us the time to talk about it.


LACHLAN: Just quickly touching on that as well, Sean’s right like I’m not going into this expecting to tour the world or anything like that, obviously that’s the dream, but just to see… like one of our friends put up a reaction video to Peace Keeper, and just seeing that, seeing someone enjoy our music is so humbling.


SEAN: He’s on the other side of the world too, in the UK.


LACHLAN: Yeah and that’s just mind blowing! To anyone who supports us, know that we do see it and we love it, it’s so nice to see!



That was Sean and Lachlan chatting to Jess from Moody Music Blog Au about their band Through It All. GO CHECK THESE GUYS AND THEIR BAND OUT! Through It All’s socials are below and don’t forget to check out their music and buy merch to score a hug off Lachlan.


THROUGH IT ALL are (NSW HARDCORE)

Sean Kerwin | Vocals

Joshua Crawford | Guitar

Andrew Barnes Bass

Lachlan Jack | Drums


THROUGH IT ALL’s SOCIAL MEDIA


FRI 12 FEB 2021

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