Pierce the Veil Singer Talks About Band's Upcoming Amphitheater Headlining Tour

Shortly after the release of their 2016 album, Misadventures, Pierce the Veil began work on their new studio effort. But a few roadblocks interrupted the process. Drummer Mike Fuentes was accused of sexual assault and would subsequently leave the band. Then, in 2020, COVID hit and derailed the band’s efforts.

But the group would eventually get back on track and release The Jaws of Life in 2023. It’s been Pierce the Veil’s biggest album and its forthcoming tour that brings it to Blossom on Wednesday, June 3, finds it headlining outdoor amphitheaters for the first time in its career.

“I think we wrote a little bit in 2017 after we stopped touring behind Misadventures,” says singer-guitarist Vic Fuentes via Zoom from Charlotte, where the band was rehearsing for the trek. “When COVID hit, I didn’t write at all for at least a year. Then, we got back to it, and it’s been back and forth for the past few years.”

Nervous about his ability to sing with the same impact after the layoff, Fuentes worked on building back his voice in preparation for the studio sessions.

“I was honestly self conscious about my singing going into the record,” he says. “I hadn’t used my voice and hadn’t pushed it in years. I was trying to find my way back. I had to push myself to get it to sound like I wanted. It came out cool, and I think we did the best we could.”

His androgynous voice reaches new highs on the careening “Emergency Contact,” a song that bristles with a real sense of urgency. The single has turned the group into a household name.

“I didn’t know that it would hit the radio like it did,” Fuentes says when asked about the tune. “We thought hard on that song. Between us and [producer] Paul [Meany], we had a lot of different versions. At one point, we had three versions of the song. We were sending them to our closest friends. Paul thought the bridge needed to become the chorus. There were drastically different versions of that song. We settled on what we have. What it says it that we all believed in that song and felt strongly about it. Paul specifically thought that song would be a big song.”

Fuentes says that going through COVID inspired the tune and many of the songs on Jaws.

“I think going through difficult times and needing to lean on the people you love and really trying to find your way back to the sunlight inspired [the song],” he says. “This whole record is about getting past the dark days. I am thinking of that moment when you see a hand pop out of the dirt or mud, and it’s someone trying to claw their way out. It’s almost like a prison break.”

For the upcoming tour, the group is playing songs from all its albums, and that has meant going back to footage culled from the past 20 years.

“It’s been really funny to research old YouTube videos,” says Fuentes. “It’s so embarrassing to watch and see who I thought I was on stage and what kind of character I was presenting. I was trying to figure out what works and who I was. It’s hilarious to see the different phases. It’s been cool to revisit these old songs and see them in a new light and play them as we know them now and hear them better that they’ve ever been. Whenever we play an old song, it’s the best it’s ever sounded.”

One major difference with Jaws is the way that the group embraced different influences. It still sounds like your stereotypical post-hardcore Warped Tour band. But it’s added bigger guitar riffs and catchier refrains.

“It had been a long time since we made a record,” says Fuentes. “We wanted to make whatever naturally came to us. We weren’t feeling like doing anything like what we had done before. That felt boring and old to us. We didn’t want to recreate energy from the past. We followed what was exciting to us at the moment. I was leaning into a lot of my ’90s influences. I thought that was fun to explore. I had a great time doing that. I had playlists of stuff from the ’90s that I really loved. The guitar work on Stone Temple Pilots’ albums is so great. It’s an overarching theme of how a lot of ’90s stuff was very simple and powerful and iconic. The riffs might not have been hard to play, but they were still powerful. I didn’t want to make things too complex. I just wanted to make them powerful.”

Meany, the frontman for the indie rock group Mutemath frontman, offered Fuentes the chance to record at his New Orleans studio.

“We lived and recorded in an old house in the French Quarter,” says Fuentes. “The studio was downstairs. The bedrooms were upstairs. We would just wake up and start recording. Third Eye Blind’s Brad Hargreaves plays drums on the album. That was such an honor to work with that guy. We felt so lucky that someone would set us up like that to make a record. It was awesome.”

The just-released The Jaws of Life (Deluxe) contains two new tracks, “Kiss Me Now” and Radiohead’s “Karma Police.” They’ll also appear on a deluxe vinyl release of the album.

“’Kiss Me Now’ was recorded in New Orleans for the record,” says Fuentes. “We left it off the album because we had too many slow songs. We kept it with the intention of releasing it later. ‘Karma Police’ was recorded later in the middle of this album cycle. We recorded it at a local studio in San Diego. We rented it out for a couple of days and did the song.”

Because the songs have an angst-y quality to them, the “Karma Police” cover still sounds like Pierce the Veil.

“The guitars are fuzzy as hell, and we tried to push the distortion to a place where it was really thick but pleasant to hear,” says Fuentes. “I’m so excited they have a place to live. I wanted to have this record of this amazing time in our career. There’s a booklet that comes with that, and it includes photos.”

Another important initiative for the band is the Living the Dream Foundation that supports music fans with terminal or life-threatening illnesses. For Fuentes, it allows the band to give back and capitalize on its decades of experience.

“I inherited this nonprofit years ago,” he says. “We’ve been building it and seeing where it goes. We worked with kids suffering from cancer and other ailments. We worked within the musician industry to find young adults and bring them to concerts and festivals to give them the VIP experience. We get access that most people don’t get. We know the industry and the tour managers and production people. We can get our guests with the band on stage and backstage. It’s such a cool thing. It’s about lifting spirits and energy. A lot of them are going through rough moments in their lives. To get them out and get their energy going and get them excited is what it’s all about.”

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