MEET THE BAND: Vic Fuentes (guitar, vocals), Tony Perry (guitar), Jaime Preciado (bass), and Mike Fuentes (drums)
IN THE BEGINNING: Pierce the Veil guitarist and chief songwriter Vic Fuentes learned to play guitar at age 15 when his dad, a San Diego-based jazz player who grew up on Hendrix and Santana, taught him to play. “He used to play with his bands down on the beach and at friends’ parties and stuff,” says Vic Fuentes. “He’s a super good guitar player. He plays all with feel. He doesn’t read music or anything. He’s just all soul. I try to capture a little bit of that as well. I started on his jazz stuff, which was really hard in the beginning. It’s just not easy music to play. It taught me a lot in the beginning. I learned cool chords and pretty sounds early on. There have always been guitars around and we still jam together and stuff. It’s been cool.” Eventually, Vic and his brother Mike Fuentes gravitated toward the city’s punk rock scene before forming the post-hardcore outfit Pierce the Veil.
THE MISADVENTURES THAT LED TO ‘MISADVENTURES’: The band started writing new songs as soon as it got off the road from our last record. It then tried to hammer the songs out during a “normal recording time.” “We went over the time we booked. We got sick of being in the studio for so long,” says Fuentes. “I started thinking, ‘What the fuck am I doing in this room for so long?’ We went on tour in the middle of trying to write our most anticipated record, but we needed to. We had to remind ourselves why we do what we do.” Eventually, Fuentes started traveling and finished the album in short installments. “It has been written all over the world,” he says. “That’s what made it what it is and kind of interesting. It’ll be something to look back upon so we can remember these last couple of years.”
WHY YOU SHOULD HEAR THEM: Misadventures represents a huge step forward. One reviewer rightly refers to it as “opera-like skate punk,” and the song “Circles” offers up the band’s most accessible pop harmonies to date while still delivering the shrieks and growls that typify previous efforts. “I don’t know why with this record we went the method-actor approach and dove really deep into it,” says Fuentes. “With every record, we’re in different places in our lives. I’m 33 now and everyone is growing up. We’re just at different places in our lives. Every record will represent that. Sometimes life is fun and easy and sometimes it’s harder. This record was definitely a different experience.”
WHERE YOU CAN HEAR THEM: piercetheveil.net.
WHEN YOU CAN SEE THEM: Pierce the Veil performs with I, The Mighty and Movements at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 12, at House of Blues.
